A church friend travels the country transporting automobiles for car dealers and told me, “There’s no good way to get to Denver.” I think he’s right.

We trusted the GPS and found ourselves amongst lonely Kansas wheat fields and windmills for many miles.

Actually we intended to get to Denver in two days. Our son transferred there and asked us to drive his car. The first day was grueling as we drove from Birmingham to Tulsa. But then we learned the moving company wouldn’t arrive for another few days, so we drove more leisurely. After spending the second night in Dodge City and walking through Marshall Dillon and Miss Kitty’s Long Branch Saloon, I saw Garden City was en route about an hour away. I racked my brain for a few minutes until I remembered why I knew that name--Truman Capote taught it to me.

Capote grew up in Monroeville, Ala. where he became friends with Nelle Harper Lee. It’s believed he’s the inspiration for the precocious Dill in her opus, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Later Capote read about the Clutters, a farm family murdered in Holcombe, Kansas, on Nov. 15, 1959. He convinced an editor to fund his expedition and spent six years researching the case, investigating the characters and waiting on the 1965 execution for the story to conclude.

I reread Capote’s “In Cold Blood” recently and marveled once again at the skill of one of our greatest American writers.

The Clutter murder trial took place in nearby Garden City and the Valley View Cemetery is in the same town.

My wife thought it was a bit odd when I stopped and searched the cemetery to pay respects to the Clutters. There was a directory posted at the entrance, but I found it a bit confusing at first. But there under the shade of trees was the burial site of Herb and Bonnie Clutter, and their teenagers, Nancy and Kenyon. An innocent family, alleged to have a safe with a lot of money in their house, but who lost their lives for some $40 in cash.

Human life was cheap on that day.

Capote included in his conclusion a stanza of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”:

The boasts of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

What a sobering reminder.

Scripture says, “There is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment,” (Hebrews 9: 27).

The paths of the innocent and guilty and the rich and poor lead to the same grave, and beyond this, to the courtroom of God.