Last week a visit to my Midwestern roots included stops to reminisce with family and friends – living and deceased. Wandering aroud Sacred Heart Cemetary, where generations of my family are buried, on a beautiful summer day full of sunshine and fresh air I felt a sense of connection. My father’s gravesite is in the shade of a beautiful oak and I envision him napping the way he used to on Sunday afternoons. My grandmother, aunts and cousins are comparing recipies and preparing enoromus feasts along with elaborate handi-crafts with colorful yarns, fabrics, needle and thread. Going out to admire the new buldings my brother built on the family farm filled me with a sense of awe at how he has brought the homestead into the 21st Century while maintining the footprint of the family farm we grew up with. Our father’s old International truck was the first vehicle he parked in the latest multi-purpose building. Still standing is the little Pump House where we’d bring the milk to keep cool until the milk man came by to pick up the milk cans. It was also the half way point on my tractor driving route during hay baling. Ordinarily, I wasn’t needed to drive tractor since I had two brothers more than willing and capable of doing the driving. But everyone is needed for some kind of a job when it comes to getting the hay bales out of the field and into the barn. Stacking the heavy bales on the hay wagon was not something I was tall enough to accomplish. But, I was tall enough to reach the pedals of the Ford tractor and that’s how driving the tractor became my job. The Ford pulled the cable holding the hay rack clamped full of hay bales up into the hay loft in the barn. I backed the Ford from the barn, across the width of the yard, carefully avoiding the Pump House, and stopping just shy of the back door of the house. I never managed to get the hang of the clutch, so it was never a smooth ride. But I didn’t run into the Pump House, nor did I hit the house – although I frightened Mother a few times.

Pump House on family farm