The Anderson farm had been in the family for several generations. During the autumn of 1959, Old Mr. Anderson still milked 15 guernsey cows in the old red barn with the date "1902" stencilled in white letters just below the peak of the roof. Every November, after we'd finished filling the two corn cribs on the home farm, Mr. Anderson would hire us to fill the old wooden drive-through crib that was nestled beside his pig sty. My older brother Henry was always the one running the New Idea picker behind the Oliver 66. My job was to bring the galvanized gravity wagons back to the Kewanee elevator that dumped the ears of corn into the crib. Perched on the wagon watching the corn tumble onto the rattling elevator, I had a pretty decent view of the farmstead. The old white farm house, the barns, the rusty windmill with the missing blades, the hogs rooting around in the barnyard, and old Mr. Anderson himself in front of the milkhouse, loading milk cans into the back of his Studebaker truck. Further out I could see the golden guernsey cows out on pasture and the colorful leaves of the trees along the back fencerow. I couldn't see Henry behind the tall corn, but knew we only had one or two wagons left to fill this morning before we'd be done for the season.
Now, decades later, I sometimes wish I could be that 14 year old boy picking corn in rural Illinois again.
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