"Do you want a book story or a story from me?” This was the question my father always asked when putting me to bed. It was my favorite time of the entire day. I got to choose. And if I went for a story from him, my father would give me two more options. A true story, or just a story. Invariably I would choose a true story, which had to do with him when he was a little boy.

My youngest brother also went through this family ritual. When it came to the true stories, Martin interrupted my father and said. "Dad, millions of years ago there where dinosaurs. That means
that when you were a little boy you got to see the dinosaurs didn't you”? I laughed and wondered how my father would take such a comment, but he just smiled and proceeded to tell Martin a story of the dinosaurs he encounter when he was just a little boy.

As I grew older, my father shared with me more stories, the ones
that actually happened to him. I found them just as captivating as the ones he told me in my younger years. That is how I came to see this world, at the turn of the 20th century and in the land of Montana. I got to know his favorite dogs, the work with the sheep, the buggies and horses, the fly fishing, the habits of the deer and moose, the long winter nights, and the colorful skies of
the aurora borealis.

"Time to go to sleep!" my mother would say, bringing me back to my time and place, and my father would say "we will finish it some other time.” And I would wonder about what had happened next.

The night would come and he would start the story where he had left it, and still there would always be more waiting, always something to look forward to.

When my father past away the stories stopped. It is kind of hard to go on with life without stories.

The substitute for these stories was books, TV, and Movies. They where generic, distant, impersonal. They killed time, but did not infuse it with life.

When my children arrived. And the time came for them to be put to bed. I read them from their children’s books, and then, one day, I told them a story of my father, and the stories that he told me. I found in there eyes the look that my father had found in mine. And magic came back into my life, and I felt my father near, so near. The day came when I told them my first real story. A key moment in our lives. The stories of the adventures I went through when I was just a little boy. These stories have become their favorite. And it's funny; these stories still have no end. For the most interesting story is the story of our life. My father died when I was a young man. My children never met him, yet they know him and his adventures. I have no doubt my children will find themselves telling their children of their grandfather, their father and their own adventures of a lifetime. They to will find their time of Magic.