Fathers’ Day Surprise

[Richard Flanders]

My first job at 15yrs old - for all of .50/hr - was baling hay on a dairy farm one woodlot and two fields away from our house. They'd call early, like 0600, if they needed me and I could be there in 12minutes if I ran all the way across the fields and through the woodlot. We got fed lunch daily - OMG, was that a feast! This farm lady was legendary locally for her cooking. Lunch was almost always finished with a peach pie about 3" thick and fresh from the oven. It was so hard to go back out and climb onto the hay wagon behind the baler... One of my jobs at lunch was to go into the milk house and dip a gallon jar of fresh cold milk out of the holding tank - it was sooooo good! You don't know what milk is supposed to taste like until you've experienced that. And that farm is still operating and is, I think, the only active dairy farm in the county. Bravo! I made all of $500 that summer and in the end I had every penny of it in a bank account. There's some things you just never forget.