Today marks the 9th anniversary of my Father, Barry D Bastian's death. The day after Father's Day, Monday June 16, 2003, Barry was riding his bicycle at 8:30 am on S. Robinson Rd and was struck by a '95 Chevy Truck pulling a trailer, and the sprayer boom arm was unlatched an swung and hit my father in the back. He was rushed to St. Alphonsus hospital in Boise but tragically passed away June 17. Barry had survived a pickup truck accident in Nampa, Idaho in 1976 and previously a bicycle accident on his Mission in Briston, England in 1962. He joked that he was like a Timex watch that took a beating but kept on ticking.
After the funeral, my brother Sid Patrick received a phone call to come and pick up our father's watch from St. Al's. It continued to tick a full year after the accident. The alarm on the watch would occasionally beep and that chime would be a reminder that our father was gone from mortality but continued to exist in the spirit world. That beep was a binding link, a reminder that love and family crosses time and distance for eternity.
One of my childhood memories is of my father working in and under the big white Bastian silo. That silo existed before my father arrived in Idaho from Selina, Utah. His family moved to Nampa in 1950 when Barry was 8 and the silo stood there silently abandoned, damaged, just waiting to be torn down. My Grandfather Sid Bastian recognized the worth of the battered silo, and had it renovated. That vision paid off as years later my father Barry planted, harvested and stored grain in that silo. Year after year, it continued to stand tall and erect and kept our livestock fed through the long cold winters. I associated that tall column with my 6 foot+, strong, enduring, capable father. While the Bastian's no longer farm the land or use the dairy on McDermott, that silo still stands. I wonder sometimes if I go back and visit the old farm if I will hear my father's laugh in the hollow center of the silo shell or hear a faint echo of a beep from a battered Timex that says "I am still here and my love stands for eternity...."
Idaho Farmer Nov. 6, 1969Katherine Bastian Moore
