Mack and Helen were surprised to see me, and I was only somewhat surprised to see them in matching flannel bathrobes. I sunk into their LaZboy couch and didn't move for what could have been two hours as they showed me their family photo albums. Three generations of farmers and at least that many generations of farming equipment. There was a photo album just for the tractors in fact. The photos were generally taken from the same wide shot angle, set against expansive sunny fields and machines in bright colors. This meant that faces appeared small, and often shaded under the brims of baseball hats. I had to squint to see them squinting back at me, definitely smiling.
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| "There's the fam damily," Helen said of this picture. Husband, kids, tractor. |
Finally here were the visual aids to all the farming terminology I'd heard before. Plus more farming jargon, which at one point included "bean barn" and "corn crib" in the same sentence. They told me of lengthy procedures involving combines and tractors and aeration, and stories of bad yields and entire silos of corn rotting ("One of the worst smells there is," Mack said). On another occasion, sometime in the 80s, Mack accidentally spilled a vat of insecticide on himself, head to toe, and he carried on working in his dripping t-shirt and jeans, paying no mind to the increasing itch.
These stories and more on my last night with my unlikely friends. It was nearly 11:30PM when I left them, far beyond curfew for all of us round here. I took my final handful of hallway coffee table Hershey's Kisses before returning to grandma's apartment.
