The Ford is Lon’s 1953 Golden Jubilee, the one Dale keeps running because he cannot stand not to. It is not a big tractor. It will not plant your corn. But it will pull a wagon full of children down a gravel road at four miles an hour all evening long and never complain.
I went in the house and I got out the township plat map, the one in the drawer with the rubber bands, and I looked at our section.
We live on a gravel road, half a mile of it, that runs along the south edge of section fourteen. There are seven families on our road. The Hendricksons have three kids. The Vogts have two.
The young couple in the Lindqvist place, the Ahos, have a baby and a four-year-old. The Schultes have grandkids every other weekend. Us, we have two. Old Mr. Dittmer on the corner has none at home but he has a yard light and a soft spot for noise.
I counted up the children on our road and I got to fourteen, counting babies, not counting the Schulte grandkids if they happened to be out.
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
Fourteen kids. One wagon. One Ford. One narrator, as Ella would say, because that girl reads too much.
I did not call it a plan. I did not tell anybody but Dale, and I told him over supper, careful, because I was not sure he would want to poke his sister even sideways.
“I want to give the kids on our road a hayride,” I said. “This Saturday. Lon’s wagon, the Jubilee. Just our road.”
Dale chewed for a while. Then he said, “The wagon deck has a soft board on the north side. I’ll pull it and put a new one in.”
That was his whole answer. That is how I knew he was in.
We spent Thursday evening on the wagon, the two of us, with a trouble light hung on the rafter.
Dale pulled the soft deck board and cut a new one from oak we had, and he went over every other board on his knees, pushing with his thumb, the way his grandpa taught him.
He checked the running gear and he greased the wheel bearings and he looked at the tires and put air in the one that was low.
I cleaned the side rails and I went over them with a rag and some linseed oil, and the oak came up the color of dark honey under the light.
I found Lon’s initials where he had burned them into the back rail with a hot nail, L B, 1961, and I put my thumb on them and stood there a minute.
“He’d like this,” Dale said, not looking up from the bearing.
“He’d be out here in his coveralls telling us we’re doing it wrong,” I said.
“That too,” Dale said.
We hung the old barn lantern on the front rail to see how it looked. It is a real kerosene lantern, Lon’s, and it still works, and when Dale lit it the whole shed went gold and soft.