Message by the Side of the Road
Photographs are returned mysteriously to a grieving father.
A metal box was balanced on a guardrail post alongside a lonely stretch of highway in Montana. The occasional car and truck passed with little or no notice by the drivers until a semi-truck driver decided to pull over and look inside. Little did he know what his actions would mean to a grieving father in Washington.
A friend of mine was determined to gain custody of his two-year-old son when his wife divorced him in the early 1970s. Billy recognized that the little boy’s mother was suffering from mental problems, but he couldn’t find a way to help her. It was a bitterly fought contest, and It’s fair to say that she got the better end of their divorce settlement. But, almost immediately afterward, she sold most everything and headed out to parts unknown with a newfound partner — and his two-year-old toddler, Zen.
Billy spent months crisscrossing the states, looking for them until clues led him to Connecticut. Finally, he found them. He tried to visit his son. However, his ex was adamant about keeping him away, so Billy found a job and dug in for whatever time it might take to resolve the custody issue. Unfortunately, it seemed that things had gone from bad to worse, and Billy could only occasionally glimpse Zen from a distance.