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This story is dedicated to Keith and Mildred Gregory, or more appropriately, Papa and Mama.  After spending eight summers on their farm in Oklahoma, I have discovered that very little really matters in life besides family.  The many lessons I’ve learned and values I’ve gained are invaluable.  Thank you for great times and lasting memories.

         Papa and I stood in the middle of the wheat field carefully studying the grain.  It was a hot, windy day with barely a cloud in the sky.  The swirling wind blew across the field making the wheat roll like the sea.  The endless waves stretched out as far as the eye could see and then suddenly disappeared over the hill, while right behind it was another crest and still another.  To stand and absorb this field of gold is to catch a glimpse of what awaits me in heaven.

        “Grab a head, Ace, and crumble it up in your hand like this.”  Papa bent over and pulled a head off one of the stalks.  Holding the head of wheat with his right hand and making a cup with his left he gently ground the head into his palm.  As he opened his hand to the wind the chaff blew away, leaving only wheat seed in his hand.  Tossing the seed into his mouth, like a child would popcorn, he sighed, “I think it’s a little wet to be cuttin’.  Maybe it’ll go tomorrow afternoon, but I doubt it.” 

        It was my seventh summer down on the farm in western Oklahoma.  It is a beautiful land of rolling hills, red soil and breathtaking sunsets.  Golden fields of wheat alongside green pastures and striped hills of cotton are all there is here.  Every mile, on the mile, a thin dirt road barely wide enough for one pickup crisscrosses the landscape.  Stretching out across the horizon is a blanket of dust formed by the multitude of machinery traversing the land.  This is farm country, and if you asked Papa, “This is God’s country!”

        Early the next morning I could hear Papa trouncing down the hall toward my room.  “Get up, Ace, we got work to do”, Papa bellowed.  He opened my door as he always would to let the sunshine slap me in the face.  I tossed and turned and buried myself under my sheets trying to avoid the unavoidable.  When it came to early morning risers Papa was king, expecting all his loyal subjects to do the same.  It was not so easy for me, and unfortunately Papa knew that as he seemed to enjoy making my mornings extra hellish.  Before long I was up and sitting at the kitchen table.

        “Good morning, Chad, how are you this morning?”, Mama quietly asked.  “Can I make you something for breakfast?”

        Mama is a kind and gentle woman.  Seemingly passive and unknowing she is the cornerstone of the entire farm and without her the family operation would be nothing as it is today.  She spends nearly all her time in the house with an occasional trip to town to get groceries or send something off in the mail.  At home she does what most housewives do, coupled with chores most housewives wouldn’t have the time or energy to do.  Besides the usual cleaning, cooking and laundry details, she manages and organizes all the paperwork and receipts that can swallow a farm.  Mama has no schooling in clerical or secretarial work; rather she relies on common sense and a lot of practice.  All this aside there is one thing she does that, no matter how simple it is, no one can equal–making the perfect hamburger.

        It’s not just the making of the hamburger, but the packaging of it as well.  This delicious, delightful morsel, when wrapped in aluminum foil and placed in an old, rusty pot and then driven approximately twenty miles on the floorboard of a dirty pickup on dusty roads and hand delivered to a dirty pair of hands, is a delicacy that even Dave Thomas would fall to his knees for.  This is absolutely and unequivocally the finest hamburger in the entire universe (they’re pretty damn good straight from the skillet, too).

        “How about some cinnamon toast,” I mumbled, still half asleep.

        Meanwhile Papa strolled into the kitchen, “What! You still haven’t eatin’ yet?”, he razzed.

        “Oh Keith,” Mama stepped in, “he’s waiting on me to make him some toast.”  Mama always seemed to back me up.

        “When you get done I want you to take your combine up to A-340 Bob’s and cut a swath and test it.  If it’s too wet then shut ‘er down and we’ll come get ya’.  If it’ll cut then keep goin’ around the field and we’ll come up with the other machine and the trucks.”  Papa left and I quickly ate my toast and filled my water bottle.

        “I’ll see ya’ later, Mama, thanks for breakfast”, I yelled as I hurried down the hall and out the door.  Harvest was starting and I was jumping in like a drunk cowboy at a bar brawl.  I had waited all winter for this and finally the time had come.

        We had two John Deere combines on the farm, both of them identical.  These were awesome machines standing two stories tall, twenty-four feet wide and green from reel to chopper.  The front tires stood five feet tall and as wide as a linebacker.  One glance and a person knew that these were harvesting monsters, hungry for wheat, straw and chaff, ready to take on any wheat field that lay before them . . .except this one.

        “WZG-260, Ace to base.”, I called on the radio.

        “This is base.”, Mama always replied.

        “Uh, I don’t think we can cut up here at Bob’s, I’m getting 16.8 percent moisture.  I’ll sit here and wait for Papa.”

        “Okay, I’ll tell Keith, base clear.”

        Papa drove up in his red and white pickup and told me to park the combine and get in.  On the way home I noticed once again the fishing hook stuck in the cloth roof of the pickup.  I smiled and remembered back to that unbearably hot day a few summers before.

        “Get a five-eighths inch socket would ya’, Ace,” Papa asked.

        “Ah shit,” I mumbled.

        “What is it?”

        “My lens just popped out of my glasses.”

        “Well how the hell did that happen?”, Papa asked sternly.  My glasses at the time were frameless and one of the thin wires holding in the lenses had broke.  Papa sure didn’t understand why I would wear a pair of glasses held together by fishing wire.  “Sur’s shit weren’t made in America,” I remembered him saying.  As usual, however, he did what he could to help.  “Let’s go down to the bridge, Ace, and find some fishing wire to fix your glasses.”

        We sped to the bridge and within a minute had found an old, rusty fishing hook with about two feet of wire on it.  Before long the glasses were fixed and we were on our way back to the field to finish fixing the tractor.  Just as I was going to throw the hook out the window Papa stopped me.  “Gimme that,” he said, smiling.  “If your damn glasses break again, I don’t want to drive all over God’s green earth searching for wire.”  Papa jammed the hook into the roof.  “There!  If they break again, there’s your wire.”

        As I faded back I glanced over at Papa with a small grin on my face.  If I had a dime for every time I smiled at Papa without his knowing, I’d be a fairly wealthy man today. 

        We didn’t start cutting for a couple of days after that because the moisture was so high.  Before long harvest was over and we were working the ground in preparation for sowing next year’s wheat crop.  Not long after that the summer had ended and I was on my way back to Colorado to start another school year.  I spent my last evening on the farm as I usually did.  I would stare at the setting sun, watching the infinite number of bugs flying in the dusk.  The peacefulness surrounded me and led me to a place of perfection and before I knew it I was right back where I stood.  I took one last deep breath and reflected upon the events of the summer and how they had impacted me.  That one deep breath of air tells everything there is to know about this place.  It’s the smell of freshly turned earth, but for those who live and love this life it’s much more.  One deep breath tells a long history of hard work and a hard life.  I can sense the fragile harmony that exists between man and mother earth; a symbiotic relationship few can recognize or even appreciate.  It is here and only here where everyday is mine.  This land and this life allow me to know myself and find my place in this world.  This is home to me; it is where I hang my soul.