The Second Sign on Our Farm

The Third Saturday in September

The dedication was set for two o’clock on the third Saturday in September.

Dale had invited the whole road, and Pastor Mike, and Karen from the county Farm Bureau, who was bringing the certificate. Lloyd Voss was coming from the county paper to take pictures.

The day came up clear and bright, the way September sometimes does in Kansas after the heat breaks.

The wheat ground was worked and waiting to be drilled, and the milo was turning red in the field across the road.

Matt and Dale set up a hay rack at the end of the lane for lemonade and bars.

The women from church brought kolaches, apricot and poppy seed, because there is no event in Jewell County without kolaches.

By two o’clock there were about forty people standing in the gravel. Neighbors, mostly. The Petersons from the next section. Old Marlene Baker, who is eighty-four and still drives herself to church.

Emma stood next to me in her good jeans, holding a plate of bars she was supposed to be passing around.

She had read the books too, the night after Matt did. She had asked me a hundred questions.

Barb’s sign was in the bed of my pickup, under a moving blanket.

So was the stepladder, and my cordless drill, and four brass screws I had bought at the hardware store that morning.

Dale’s sign was already on the cedar post. He and Matt had hung it at dawn, before anyone came.

It looked good in the morning light. I want to be fair about that. It looked like it had always been there.

Karen made a short speech about what it means to stay on the same ground for a hundred years.

Then she handed Dale the framed certificate, and everybody clapped, and Dale held the frame in both hands like he didn’t know what to do with it.

Then Dale talked. He talked about his grandfather Otto, who came from a threshing crew with nothing but a team and a stubborn streak.

He talked about Walter’s heart, and Harold in the Army, and Harold’s stroke.

He didn’t mention Hilda. He didn’t mention Ida. He mentioned his mother once, to say she made the best fried chicken in the county, and everybody laughed, because she did.

When he finished, people clapped again. Then there was that little lull that comes when the speeches are over and nobody is sure whether to eat yet.

That was when I walked to my truck.