digging required !!!!

     Sleuths come in many forms. Most have questions that drive their curiosity. My brother and I are betting sleuths will come snooping once the bone yard is set up for exploration.  (DOUBLE CLICK ON IMAGES)

       Our father lived a DOUBLE life. To us he was the one who led us on adventures every Sunday afternoon, exploring creek beds, following the old rail routes out into the countryside, climbing over sand piles at the brick yard, making pathways through tall dried weeds. (CLICK HERE)
He made sandboxes for us to dig in, underneath the boughs of a willow. And he stayed with our mother all our lives. He worked, he put a roof over our head, he sent us to school, he read and thought and prayed, he drove us to the city swimming pool and was the first one in EVERY time. Running into the blue depths, ready to receive us, help us to float on our backs, or coaxing us to hold our breath and swim down and under, through his legs and up back to the surface. That was the life we knew and experienced, it shaped us and made us who we are today. Boys with a father. Boys with a MAN in their lives.

     His OTHER LIFE was less defined. Him going off to work. What he did during those hours. Who he associated with. How he got into it in the first place.

     We had heard some stories. Pieces of information lost on boys who were young and living their own lives at school, among classmates, eating lunch, playing tether ball, wrestling, talking on blocks of wood as if they were really walkie-talkies, hiding in the yard during hide and seek, doing our homework, practicing our piano lessons before school, getting to watch SOME television, getting ready for bed.

      Like, when he got out of the army on the GI bill, he went to college, he was at the Chicago Art Institute, waiting for his teacher to show him HOW to paint. The FURY and disappointment he felt when the painting instructor told him "to just START painting!!!!!" How he went at it with ambition, "like-there-was-no-tomorrow,"  "painting day-and-night," furiously. Doing that thing.

     We enjoyed the FAME HE HAD. Yep, it is true, our dad DID complete two giant murals for the Nebraska State Capitol. Yep, he completed against lots and lots of people and HE won, he got the prize, he got the job. That was OUR dad.

      We got to ride in the cool station wagon he painted with its crazy colors and stripes. The off balance circle of white on the tires, that made the wheels look like they were wobbling and soon to fall off!! The back tailgate painted silver. The large unseen red bulls-eye on the top of the car, that no one but the airborne birds could see from above, and could bomb that target with their bird poop. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Dad was so funny. What a great idea.

                 In 1960 - cement, steel rods, and a tall crane was used to lift up the heavy earth-formed "BOOK" on the campus of Concordia University in Seward Nebraska.

      But IN THE MIX of it all, I was NOT INSIDE his brain, I did not see his struggle or his thought process, or how he approached his projects, or the engineering required, or the permission he sought out from third parties. When I was out of college, on my own --- I thought I was destined to become like Dad. That his fame would automatically come my way for me. With the same notoriety I perceived of him. Alas, it did not turn out that way for me. I was his son, to be sure. But my PATH was not assured, not the same, and the One I was most mad at, eventually worked out all the kinks and attitudes and presumptions that I carried with me, thru tears and into His joy.

     So, now, years later, my father gone on to be with Jesus his Lord,
I am looking through time lines scrawled on paper, and thinking about that "other NAME"  his colleagues called him: "Marxy." A fictious character. Distant, cloaked, with me, a 59 year old grownup wondering, what each of these moments in his life, blessed him with.
     Others, perhaps YOU, will make the trek and find a piece of the puzzle. That is what sleuths do. They ask a question, then poke around on the Internet, seek out others who were inspired by Marxy, make a premise, test a theory, test and seek, and form a conclusion from their own perspective. Maybe - - - - post it in a thesis paper - - -OR online -- or in a book- - OR on Twitter -- OR blog about it. They might read what others have written, like Josh Duncan and Abbey Lange Groth.. Wikipedia has not weighed in on the matter.
     My brother hopes we will both live long enough to see and build a specialized website, which will hold much evidence, photos, lines of conjecture, and LOTS of bones. "the compilation of 13,000 images."

      Get a shovel ready.

      If you knew Marxy, please add a comment below for others to read.