I looked at Katt's oddly pretty face as she stood in my doorway. It was a little bit of a surprise to me that she was there, she never once before ever dropped by, not by herself.
Certainly not at 10 in the morning on a Wednesday.
Her husband Mark was probably part of the reason I never saw her by herself, he always appeared to be a bit controlling, short with her. He made little cutting comments to her all the time, telling her something she said was stupid when she offered an opinion.
Then he would do little things like wave his glass at her, expecting her to instantly jump up and refill it for him.
I wondered a few times what it was she saw in him, but what the hell. None of my business.
We had visited a lot though, always with Katt and her husband Mark together. The guy talked a lot, actually I should say bragged a lot.
I can't say that I really disliked him, but then I can't really say I liked him either. I did like Katt, she was cute, bright, and always pleasant to have around. Nothing the guy said to her appeared to upset her at all.
The expression on her face that morning was not one I had seen before. It was a mixture of worry, hope, concern?
+++
Kathleen and Mark had moved into the two bedroom ranch house a quarter mile down the gravel road in front of our homes. The place just did not fit the neighborhood, I didn't like the way it was built at all. It was modern, single story, it looked like something a person might build way out in the suburbs where every house looks about the same.
It looked like it was made of plastic, fake siding planks and a roof made of those round sewer pipes stuff cut in half.
When I bought my six acres of heaven, with pastures, fruit trees, a barn with a field and a tiny little creek running through the middle of it, my older two story farm house was it out there.
Nothing in sight but fields and trees and the creek down below.
We took hay crops off the fields, so did the old man that owned a farm and home similar to mine. His place was over two miles down the road, much larger at 35 acres.
When the hot days of Summer settled in, he and I and his just past full grown two sons went along picking up the heavy bales, moving them to the barn.
My reward was enough of the sweet natural grass hay to keep my four Black Angus cows fat and happy all Winter. The old man led his huge Bull down the road to my fields each year, so I ended up with some calves to sell in the Fall.
Neighborly stuff, we never paid each other, I helped him and he helped me.
But sons marry, move on to lives. The old man and I kept on, he was a full dozen years older than me. One day I realized I hadn't heard from him for awhile so I walked down there.
I found him in the barn, slumped over the wheel of his tractor. It had been running until it ran out of fuel, so he had been there for quite some time.
I sat there with him for a half hour before getting up to make the phone call.
Our last visit, if you will. I didn't cry but I came damned close to it.
The old farm was quickly broken up, the beautiful fields with grass as tall as the top of my head sprouted homes. The kids wanted the money so they could sit in their apartments someplace and live in comfort, I guess.
In just a couple of years houses were everywhere there was room to put one. Strange trees popped up in front of them, odd looking bushes that I had never seen before. Hedges, back yard swimming pools, lawns where fat and happy cattle once grazed.
There must have been two dozen people that came and knocked on my door, suggesting I sell out. The County even tried to rezone my place, raising the taxes beyond what I could afford. I did understand that, the land was tax valued at $1000 per acre as farmland, $100,000 per acre as homesites.
I went to court on that one, won and my property stayed in a farm deferral. My beautiful six acres sat right smack in the middle of those suburbs I always disliked. I went down to the feed store, they sold trees.
I planted new trees along my fencelines, to hide as much of the outside world from view as I could.
I couldn't hide that one house, though. The damn thing was just there. I would have had to tear down my barn and move my driveway.
+++
I had turned into one of those environmentalists that day of the hearing. I stood up and spoke of the need for open spaces, handed out photos of wild Deer grazing along my creek, a Bald Eagle perched on one of my fence posts, the tall trees blessed with water growing along my creek.
They were all interested when I played the short video of an Osprey, flapping it's wings and hovering in place before folding up and plummeting to earth like a stone. Just before crashing, it opened it's wings and grabbed something, then flew away.
I talked of the added value to those surrounding by keeping a beautiful place like mine for nature and wildlife.
"We must not pave away all that God has blessed us with." I added as a final line.
Me? Eloquent? I surprised even myself, part of that was my passion, I suppose.
The faces at first were set, ready to resist. But then one woman on the panel nodded, the man next to her glanced over at her when she whispered something to him. He nodded, also.
The vote was three to two. I got my farm deferal left in place.
Just where in the hell was I supposed to go if that had not worked? To live in some apartment somewhere?
When the last lot sold and the single story ranch home was built, I was unhappy. I could see that from my living room window.
Deer now seldom ambled across my fields in the cool mornings, the creek was always bone dry by mid July. That meant my cattle had to go. Backyard gardens and lawns upstream tapped the resource. It didn't matter that much anyway, I was already being forced to fence them away from the water by 100 feet.
I protested the creek going dry, it never had before. But some lawyer managed to get the creek classified as a "wash" whatever the hell that is. Then topping that was another man that showed up with a prior water rights document.
My beautiful creek became a trickle except during rainy periods.
Life moves on, they call all of that progress, I guess. The County never noticed the changes that I saw, they moved on to other things and left me alone.
What the hell, I was an old man. I was supposed to live out my life and then get out of the way.
+++
I never remarried, Sally and I had been a lifelong couple, soul mates. We never had children, She had something called a "tipped uterus". I never completely understood the why of it but the Doctor told us she would never conceive.
It was all right, we were happy with each other. That is what she told me anyway, but I sometimes saw the longing in her eyes when she saw others with children.
Sally was two days past her 48th birthday when she left that one morning for town.
The phone rang about an hour later, and I was alone. That was crazy, beyond belief. Two car loads of kids, testing one vehicle against another down the long country straight stretch.
The one leading looked over his shoulder to see where the other car was and that was all it had taken.
The one half million dollar life insurance policy that Sally and I had on each other easily paid all of the bills. It had that double indemnity clause, too.
I purchased the old tractor and equipment from the estate sale after the old man passed away. Each year I went out and harvested my tiny acreage, selling the bales right out of the field.
That didn't make any money, really. Keeping up a tractor, mower, baler for just six acres? It was more for keeping me sane, keeping my life as normal as possible than anything else. I liked watching the few pickup trucks roll in, hand me some cash and then head out to load up.
