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N.E. Iowa | I’m harvesting and you drive by, what do you see?
You see an old tractor with two old rusty gravity boxes parked at the end of the field.
You look in the field and see an old combine running.
After the combine is done you see an old man crawl down the ladder and limp to the tractor. Years have not been kind to him with his sparse gray hair and white beard.
He doesn’t climb up the ladder but rather pulls himself up the ladder into the tractor.
You wonder to yourself “why does that old man still do this?” Why doesn’t he just retire and rent it to some big farmer and take it easy in his old age.
At the end of a long day he drags his tired crippled up body into the house where his wife of a great many years asks the same question every day.
“How did it go today? Hope nothing broke down again. He smiles and says” everything went fine today, nothing major broke. He doesn’t mind the question because he knows that she cares about him. The years haven’t been kind to her either.
All the years of being a farmer’s wife and raising kids and working off the farm to help make ends meet all the while he was struggling to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs.
They never went hungry or lacked clothes to wear.
He cleans the grime off while his wife gets supper ready for them.
He slowly eats his meal while watching the news.
He goes and sits in his chair and rests if just for a little while.
It’s early yet buts he drags he tired body to bed to rest.
Sleep doesn’t come easy. Even though he’s exhausted, the pain makes it hard to sleep. He wakes up in the morning and starts all over again.
His kids you think to yourself, probably don’t even come the old place to visit anymore.
Blaming him for the lack of money and fancy things that their friends had growing up.
He and his wife get excited when one of them calls, if they bother to call at all. They never call to see how their parents are doing but just to complain about how bad their lives are.
One thing that you and their kids don’t understand is that he keeps farming not for the money but the fact is this is all he knows.
This is what he is.
He’s a farmer.
If he were to retire he wouldn’t be long on this earth.
So he keeps going if for nothing else but to stay alive.
So what you see driving by just may be more than you know.
Edited by bspf 10/27/2018 20:06
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What do you see when you drive by ?
