Quote:
Originally Posted by Grantham Forester
This appeared in the anthology "The Best of Gray's" edited by Ed Gray. The story is called "The Prairie Queen" written by Jack Curtis. I also read that Yankton, SD (very Eastern part of the State) was one of several areas where captured German POW's were encamped, and put to work on WPA and CCC type projects.
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Not sure what you mean here Grantham, but if you think you saw my piece in an anthology edited by Ed Gray, then I am flattered! It squirted out my fingers just a few days ago. Here is some more:
One of the most memorable things about Western Kansas to me, was to stand in a wheat field and turn and look around and as far as you could see you were the tallest thing in sight....The peak of one's straw hat reached above everything else.
There was a special smell to the wheat as it rippled in the constantly blowing, searing wind. It baked your face nut brown and brought crows feet to the corners of your eyes, even when you were sixteen. It felt as hot as the surface of the sun, but as hot and humid as it was, one did not sweat. There were no dark brown stains in the middle of your work shirt, like they show in the movies. The sweat, which must have been on the surface of your skin evaporated immediately. Sometimes it left a thin white salt stain on your skin and maybe around the brim of your hat. My God it was hot and dry!
Alone for twelve hours a day, going round and round in the shimmering field of wheat on a puffing red painted tractor would have been lonely if one did not have ones self to comensurate with. If you weren't before, you became friends with yourself on that tractor. You and yourself would have long conversations and learn all kinds of things. From time to time you had to stop to pull weeds from the round, razor sharp blades of the oneway or grease the bearings with that tool they named a machine gun after. You'd pump the handle and sqeeze the black goo into the grease zirk until it bubbled out of the bearing like some science fiction monster. Daydreaming, however; was dangerous. Several times a season some farmer would fall asleep and tumble off of the tractor and be run over by the plow.
Sometimes a baby rabbit, or pheasant would run into the furrow in front of your right front tire. Seldom did it jump to the right and safety, even when I shouted at it to do so. I would watch as he stumbled and tired. Eventually I'd have to slow down or even stop so that the little critter could get away. I never ran over one. We were friends, after all and we shared the experience of the hot summer day in that dusty wheat field.