I was surprised the old country road was still there, but it was. The original gravel road that meandered through the tall maples and oaks on each side from Darden, Missouri to Mitchell when I was a kid was now a two-lane blacktop with white lines on the sides and yellow painted stripes down the center. I knew from Grandpa Jonas that the road had started out as a wagon road. The twists and turns were there to make it easier on the horses than going up and down hills.
About half way between Darden and Mitchell, the old country road forked, and it was the North fork I drove that day. That fork was still just gravel and ran even deeper into the tree-covered hills and back past what had been two farms on its way to Petesburg. My grandpa and grandma lived on one of those farms -- a little over two hundred acres nestled in the broad valley between two high ridges -- and Wilson Meger lived across the gravel road on the other. It was pretty obvious nobody had used the road in a while. Weeds and grass had begun infiltrating the gravel from the road ditches on either side that marked the road. If I hadn't been down that road a thousand times before, I'd have missed a couple of the turns.
Grandpa Jonas' farm was a nice place to visit anytime, and I'd spent most of the summers of my youth there. He raised a few beef cattle and a milk cow, and the land produced hay and feed for them as well as corn and soybeans he sold at the grain elevator in Darden. Grandma Ellen raised a large garden and canned enough vegetables to last them through the winter. The apple, peach, and pear trees in the back yard let her can enough fruit for a pie or cobbler on Sundays. She also had a flock of laying hens that kept them supplied with eggs and the occasional chicken dinner.
It was a simple life that I enjoyed experiencing every summer. My dad, their only child, had no interest in farming and had gone to Missouri State and earned a degree in Electrical Engineering. He worked in St. Louis so that's where we lived. I hated St. Louis back then with its constant traffic and close neighbors. It was only tolerable because I knew that as soon as school was out, I could head back to Grandpa's farm for the summer.
Wilson Meger's farm wasn't much of a farm even back then. He owned about eighty acres and that was divided into three small patches accessible only by dirt lanes through the trees. As a result, Wilson didn't own a tractor. He farmed just as old Cecil Roberts, the former owner had - with a team of horses. He planted one patch of about six acres in hay every year to feed that team and his one milk cow and her calf over the winter. The other two patches of about ten acres each were planted with corn and oats. Wilson fed the oats to his horses and the corn to his cow and chickens. The rest of the eighty acres was oak, maple, and walnut trees, and shared the creek that crossed the gravel road just west of Grandpa's house and barn.
Like Grandma's, Wilson's chickens included several brooding hens to keep his flock going. His flock was of dubious breeding, but apparently furnished him with enough eggs and chicken dinners. Wilson only sold enough of his crops to pay his electric bill and property taxes; he needed the rest of his corn and oats to feed his livestock. As a result, he seldom had much money so he never ventured off his farm except to help Grandpa once in a while.
When Grandpa baled hay, Wilson would come over to help. Grandpa had only one tractor, so Wilson brought his horses, Jim and Duke, to pull the rack wagon that hauled the baled hay to the barn. I spent a lot of time riding on that rack wagon over the years, and once I got old enough, "earned my keep" as Grandpa said, by stacking those bales on the wagon and then in the barn.
Wilson was a very quiet sort of man, so nobody knew much about him. Grandma said he'd been married once, but his wife couldn't take farm life and had run off with a traveling salesman selling brushes and brooms. After that, she said, Wilson just pretty much kept to himself and took care of his farm.
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I hadn't come to Darden just to drive back to Grandpa's old farm. I was there because Grandpa had passed and willed his farm to me. I had no idea what an electrical engineer like me was going to do with a Missouri farm. It wasn't really big enough to sell as a farm, and it had a well for water and a septic tank. City people always say they want to move to the country, but when they realize they won't have city water and sewer, they start having second thoughts.
The old steel bridge that spanned the creek Grandpa and I had fished every summer looked pretty rusty and rickety, but the man at the grocery store in Darden assured me it was sound. Still, I drove slowly over the thick creosoted planks that formed the roadbed. Once across, I passed the lane to the Meger place on the left, and then turned into the drive of what was now my farm.
The memories came flooding back when I parked in front of the house. I could almost see Grandma walking out the back door and down the concrete walk Grandpa and I had poured the summer I was six. I had to smile when I reached the steps that lead onto the back porch. There was my name -Ted Rork -- and the date -- 1984 -- under the handprint I'd pressed into the wet cement.
The house was still in very good shape. Grandpa didn't hold with letting things go, so he kept it painted and the roof fixed. I don't know how he managed when he got on in years, but he did. He couldn't really do much farming once he turned seventy-five, but he kept up the house and helped Grandma with her garden. The rest of the farm he planted in clover and let his cattle free range.
Nothing had really changed inside the house. There was Grandma's old range, an ancient Hotpoint they bought in 1948 with some of Grandpa's mustering out pay from WWII. I assumed it still worked but I couldn't try it. I'd had the electricity disconnected when Grandpa passed, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do so I hadn't had it reconnected.
As I toured the rest of the house, that life of the past came back to me piece by piece. The big clock on the bookcase started to tic-toc when I wound it, and I remembered Grandpa taking a nap after lunch before going back to work. Grandma and I had to be quiet then, she said, so the only sound in the house was that steady tic-toc and the occasional snore from Grandpa.
I listened to that tic-toc as I went from room to room and re-discovered some of their lives. In Grandma's curio cabinet was the souvenir cup and saucer from the St. Louis Zoo she'd bought when they took the train from Darden to St. Louis to visit us. Also there was the little model log cabin Grandpa and I had made the summer when I was ten. I didn't remember her keeping it, but evidently she had.
In the cabinet in the dining room was Grandma's good china. It wasn't really china and it wasn't really good, but that's what she always called it. Those plates, cups, and saucers only came out of that cabinet on special occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Every other day, they ate on the plates Grandma had gotten one at a time with coupons at the grocery store in Darden.
By the time I'd gone through all the rooms, I'd remembered just how relaxed and comfortable their life had been, and a crazy thought was worming its way into my mind. Was it still possible to live that life, just like Grandpa and Grandma had? What would it take? Would I even remember enough about what Grandpa taught me to make the farm run like a farm should?
It was crazy, but the more I thought, the more I liked the idea. Life in a cubicle wasn't all that much fun, and that's what my life had become. I woke up every morning, showered and ate a bowl of cereal, then drove to my job. Counting the half hour drive each way and at least ten hours in pointless staff meetings or staring at my computer screen, a dozen or so hours out of every twenty-four were burned up by my job. I slept about seven hours a night, so that left five hours a day for me. Five hours was about enough time to fix dinner and then watch a movie every night. Weekends were better but still used up by yard work, shopping and laundry.
If I was living here, I could work when I needed to and relax when I wanted. I wouldn't have a lot of money, but I wouldn't need much and I had a nice 401K courtesy of maximum contributions over the last sixteen years as well as a significant savings account. When you're single and don't date, you don't have much else to do with your money.
The fact I didn't date was of my own choosing and that choice was because of Jane. Jane was what I considered at the time to be the perfect woman. She was pretty and took care of herself but not to the extreme some women do. She was intelligent enough to have earned a degree in mechanical engineering, and had a great sense of humor. She was also the most loving woman I'd ever met.
