This essay first appeared on Iowa Public Radio in September, 2005.
Mom and I watch from the living room window as a horse-drawn hayrack bring four, five, then six loads of men in from the fields for the noon dinner.
"I wish the day were over," she says and moves to Dad's recliner on the other side of the room. She says it's too hard to face the neighbors, too painful to talk with friends who will celebrate forty and fifty years of marriage — celebrations she won't experience.
But we need to acknowledge the hundred or so farmers who spent the morning harvesting our corn crop, so I zip my coat and find hats and mittens for my three-year-old and sixteen-month-old sons. The October sun is bright but deceiving, the wind gentle but cool. The boys ask — for what seems the hundredth time — when they can have a tractor ride, then race to the Morton Building, sensing that something important is taking place.
Dad's tractors have been moved, tools hung on pegs, the floor swept and washed. The new set-up — eight-foot tables, each surrounded by ten folding chairs — is eerily reminiscent of our church fellowship hall, where funeral sandwiches were served only two months earlier.
But instead of petite triangles of egg and chicken salad, today's sandwiches are hearty — the kind needed to sustain farmers for the rest of the workday. BBQs. Sloppy Joes. Taverns. Maid Rites. Loose Meat Sandwiches. The names differ depending on the Midwestern community, but they're all served with slotted spoons from white ceramic roasters. It takes two, maybe three, roasters to feed the 100 farmers who have volunteered equipment and time to help their neighbor.
The line for food stretches past the roasters to more than twenty choices of salads and a dozen desserts. Eight women stand guard, dishing up sandwiches, removing empty bowls, and serving coffee. Lots of coffee.
The place hums with laughter, good-to-see-you handshakes, and slaps to the back — the talk probably as much about corn prices, hail damage, and land values as about my dad. Even neighbors who have feuded over land and rights-of-way for two generations tip their hats to each other.
My brother is standing with our new tenant, arms crossed over his chest in typical farmer fashion, even though he isn't one. I'm sure it's a discussion of how much grain to haul to town and how much to store here at home. I hope he's about done. I've been gone for thirteen years and have forgotten many of our neighbors' names. This thank-you job would be easier if I could simply follow him from table to table.
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear he'll be done "farming" soon. So the boys and I move toward the men in plaid shirts, hooded sweatshirts, and seed-corn advertising caps. Many simply nod and raise their Styrofoam cup to me. They don't remember much about me either.
But at one table, a farmer says, "We're glad to do it. Rex would've done the same for me." "You know," another says, "I coffeed with your dad that morning. He looked so good. I still can't believe he's gone."
A woman I recognize but can't name appears at my side. "Come have something to eat," she says. "And how about the boys? I'll bet they're hungry. How old are they now? Keeping you plenty busy I'm sure. Your mom says you're able to stay home with them now — how nice. And how nice for her that you're only five hours away."
I respond as graciously as I can to the neighbor-with-no-name, asking only generic questions of her life and her family. The boys have spied the chocolate cake and for a few moments, the food table provides a refuge, sheltering me from a barrage of questions, protecting me from my memories.
"Do you want red Jello or orange Jello?" I ask. LuAnne, a neighbor-with-a-name-I-do-remember, offers them brownies. Silently congratulating myself, I smile at her and whisper, "who was that woman I was just talking to?"
******
Thirteen combines. Forty trucks. Eighteen wagons. Six hundred acres.
Many of our neighbors arrived before sunrise that morning, and many stayed past dusk. The headlights of their combines, tractor-trailers, and semi-trucks a silent tribute from their fields to ours--and more meaningful than the procession from the church to the cemetery.
Karna Converse is a freelance writer whose work has been published in The Christian Science Monitor, the Cup of Comfort and Chicken Soup anthologies and several regional publications. This piece first aired on Iowa Public Radio in 2005. She lives in Storm Lake, Iowa, with her husband and their three children — all of whom provide her with many anecdotes for essays.