Were You Ever So In Love?

Happy summer. Here's another snapshot I couldn't get. The scene came and went at 60 miles an hour on a hot almost first day of summer. It's a scene you won't find along just any road in the U.S. It's as quaint as an Amish village, less common than a mid-Michigan farm store, and as sweet as local honey. But you'll have to close your eyes and imagine the scene because it came and went too quickly.

Moving along Michigan Highway 21, I passed field after field of rapidly maturing hay and wheat, gold and tan in the intense direct sun. As I crossed an intersection at speed I noticed the big green tractor stopped with its hay trailer there at the corner of the field. At the intersection a car was parked, off the shoulder, its far wheels just resting on the margin of the new mown field. The young man was stopped there in his tractor seat, ball cap in place, shirt open in the heat. And then I saw her: In a blue sundress, long dark hair, with a big smile, and lunch in a basket. She was sitting on the big fender of that tractor sharing lunch with her bo. Probably both 17 years old, cast in a scene as old as American farming. Young lovers happy to be sharing a meal-- in spite of the heat, in spite of the hard work, in spite of the table.

I could travel from coast to coast this summer but I doubt I could find a better snapshot of pure old-fashioned American youth than that farmhand and his girl sharing lunch atop his John Deere tractor in the shade of its faded yellow umbrella. It'll have to wait for a painter, though, because it came up too fast, was too intimate, and was just too beautiful to interrupt and steal an image. But I'm glad I stole a peak.