Marco Polo

I don't believe Marco Polo ever went to China, but I do believe my dad went to Kansas. My dad traveled frequently as the president of the non-profit Good Samaritan Society, a chain of nursing homes across the country. My grandfather started it in 1922, and when it got too big for him, my father left his position as campus pastor at a Minnesota college in 1962 to carry on his father's calling. Some listless summers I would drive with him--he didn't like flying--but most times he would go it alone. My brothers and sisters would look forward to him returning and listen at the dinner table to the stories of his exotic sojourns to places like Hastings, Nebraska and Arthur, North Dakota. One time when I was 10, he came back from Olathe, Kansas and told us that he met a man who had known my grandfather.

"Your father was a great, honest man," he told my dad in reverent tones. "I knew it instantly" he said, "because he always looked you in the eye and had a firm handshake."

My dad chuckled, as he related the conversation to us.

"What? That's not true?" I asked.
"Yes and no," he said. "Your grandfather never looked you in the eye and had a dead fish handshake. But he was as honest as ever a man lived."

You see, there's much evidence to believe that Marco Polo never went to China. By most accounts he was a scoundrel and mendacious in his storytelling. Some believe he shipped out one day merely to land 100 miles away at another sea port; he listened to the fishermen's' stories, the rapscallions and rogue journeyman, and then compiled his little book.

The stories you're hearing on this post hew close to the truth. But storytelling is storytelling.

Truly, but wryly,
LV