Biker Under Fire

Scott pushed the pedals hard on his bike as he propelled his way up the bank barn hill. The limestone gravel popped under the off-road bicycle tires leaving little clouds of gray dust in the young man's wake. The ten-year-old sped past the big sliding doors of the red bank barn and past the open shop door. Uncle David was burning a pile of trash across the driveway. Scotty waved as he passed. He rode up to the sugar camp wire and reached in front of him and grabbed the wire in between the barbs and passed it over his head with an ease that could only have been acquired with much practice. He glanced at the pile of locust posts against the west end of the sugar camp as he rode towards the tractor drive at the lower corner of the pasture. 

The pasture was on a steep hill; the kind of hill that made people joke about the cows having legs that were longer on one side of their body than the other. The driveway Scott was on ran diagonally from the southeast corner of the pasture to the northeast corner and acted as an access road to the field on the top of the hill. Scott pedaled hard until he got all the way to the top of the hill. He turned around and took in the view below him. The big blue Harvestore silos stood out against the backdrop of the corn field to the left and the red barn behind. The weathered, gray walls of the sugar camp and its multicolored roof were partially concealed by a large oak tree. Uncle David's fire created thick, black and gray smoke that curled and billowed into the sky in direct contrast to the white fluffy clouds until it dissipated into the atmosphere.

“This view never gets old,” the young man commented out loud to nobody.

He stood straddling his bike for another minute before pushing off down the hill. He pedaled frantically for a few seconds until he gained enough speed and stood up on the pedals allowing his knees to cushion his body against the bumps of the rough road. He veered off the high side of the drive allowing his momentum to carry him up the hill until he almost came to a stop. Then he turned back down the hill to the driveway and right back up the hill again. He repeated this cycle several times until he sped off the end of the hill back onto the main gravel drive. He had a radiant smile on his face as he passed under the sugar camp wire. 

As he coasted past the shop, his elation was cut short by a sudden explosion. The young man caught a glimpse of a fiery burst in his right-hand peripherals as he lunged away from his uncle's fire. He landed on the rough gravel and rolled frantically away from what he could only assume was a terrifying inferno. He scrambled to his feet and reached for his bicycle and pulled it dramatically away from the blaze. He stood with his left hand on his handle bars and his right hand on his seat and tried desperately to regain control of his breathing. 

His heartbeat slowed down and seemed to move from his throat back to his chest. Scott quit hearing his heartbeat in his ears as his brain began to register a different sound. The sound he heard was the sound of his uncles laughter. Scott was standing directly in front of the shop door. He turned around and was surprised to find his uncle David laughing hysterically with his head back and his mouth wide open. The young man found this to be entirely inappropriate because he was certain that he had almost died.

After a few moments, the hysterical uncle attempted to explain himself.

“Oh my goodness,” he chuckled. “That was by far the funniest thing I have seen all day. I'm sure that explosion sounded huge to you and the shooting flame must have looked nearly lethal from you perspective. From where I was standing, it wasn't nearly as dramatic. Your reaction didn't loose any of the drama though. I was burning out a few old oil filters and one of them must have developed a gas bubble and exploded. That's what the noise was and the flames were the burning oil shooting out of the hole. You and your bike were not in in any real danger.”

Scott heaved a sigh of embarrassment and pushed his bike away from the shop without a response as his uncle shook his head in amusement.

A Day For Which To Be Thankful

“Okay, kids,” Christa addressed the five children at the breakfast table. “Here's the scoop. I need you to clear the table. I need the dishes done, and the table set for lunch. I need a couple of volunteers to do a hundred pickup downstairs, and I need a bunch of potatoes peeled.” 

The five kids sat at the kitchen table trying not to make eye contact with their mother while they waited for each other to talk. 

“If you guys speak up, you'll be able to pick your jobs,” their mother reminded them gently. “If no one picks anything, I’ll pick for all of you.

“I wanna peel potatoes,” Scott spoke up.

“I'll wash the dishes!” Kelsey exclaimed as if there would be competition for such a task. 

“I'll dry, I guess,” Luke volunteered with a decidedly defeated tone.

“Okay then,” Christa declared with satisfaction. “Caleb and Lizzy are on a hundred pick-up. Everything on the first floor, no cheating. Deal?”

“Deal,” all five responded in unison.

Scott settled in at the kitchen table with a twenty pound bag of potatoes, a vegetable peeler, a paring knife, and a stock pot. Kelsey started washing dishes as Luke pushed a stool up to the counter. Caleb and Kerry started their hundred pick-up. Hundred pick-up was like a game except not fun. The deal was that the participants in this game had to pick up and put away a hundred items each. Depending on the target cleaning zone and the number of participants, that was usually enough to ensure a pretty thorough cleaning. It was tedious, but effective. Every once in a while the kids would try to pull on over on their mother. They might tear a piece of paper apart so it counted as more pieces or count every page in a book as an individual item. They thought they were getting away with it, but every once in a while their mother made sure to let them know that she knew what was going on in her house.

As the children busied themselves with their tasks, their mother retrieved a twenty-five pound turkey from the back porch. (The back porch wasn't actually a porch. It would have been better described as a mud room. None of the children really knew when or why it became known as the back porch.) The turkey had been marinating in a saltwater brine overnight and was ready to roast. She stuffed the turkey in the back porch wash sink before sticking it in an oven bag and tossing the whole kit and caboodle into a roasting pan. 

“What's that red thing sticking out of the turkey?” Scott asked as Christa put the roaster in the oven.

“That is going to tell me when the turkey is done,” his mother explained. “It measures the temperature of the inside of turkey. When it get's hot enough, the red dot will pop out and we'll know it's safe to eat.”

“Yeah, silly,” Kelsey chuckled from the sink. “Everyone knows that.”

“Apparently not,” Scott mumbled from his potato peeling station. “I guess everyone knows that now.”

It wasn't long before the dishes were done, the potatoes peeled and boiling, and Caleb and Lizzy were reporting back from their hundred pick-up. The five children helped their mother set the table. They were extremely careful as they handled the tan Pfaltzgraff dishes with the dark brown design. These were Chista's special dinnerware, only used for guests and special occasions. There was some discussion over the placement of the silverware in relation to the plate. Finally, it was decided that the napkin and the fork would go on the left side of the plate and the knife and spoon would go on the right with the spoon on the outside and the glass at the point of the knife. With the table set and dinner preparations well underway, Christa turned to address her children.

“Okay, here's the scoop. You guys can go play, but stay clean and don't make a mess. And stay out of the kitchen. Deal?” 

The children nodded. 

“Say deal.” their mother prompted with some sternness in her voice.

“Deal,” the five children responded in unison.

The children separated, each doing his or her own thing until mealtime. Scott went to his room to read one of his Great Illustrated Classics. Caleb got on the family computer to play a military strategy game called Red Alert. (The family desk was in the kitchen, but Christa said it would be alright as long as he stayed out of the way.) Luke joined his brother Scott in their shared room, though not to read. Luke's preferred recreational activity was playing with his army men. He became extremely interested in the stationary, green plastic figures ever since he had first seen the movie Toy Story. The girls went to their room to play with their dolls. The children managed to keep themselves busy and out of trouble for the next few hours, which was really quite and accomplishment.

“Dinner's ready,” their mother called from downstairs.

The children converged in the kitchen withing seconds. They were greeted by the heavenly aroma of Thanksgiving dinner and boy, were they thankful. The turkey sat at the head end of the table. A huge bowl of mashed potatoes, steaming and swimming with butter sat in the center of the table with a gravy boat of light brown turkey gravy on either side. The green beans sat directly in between the stove top stuffing and the cranberry sauce. The entire family sat down at the table, the two girls on the far bench, the three boys on the near bench, Christa on the right and Dale on the left. They all joined hands as Dale led the family in prayer.

“Dear Lord, thank you for this day. Thank you for this food. Bless this meal to our bodies and bless the hands that prepared it for us. Thank you for this family and everything you've provided for us. In Jesus name, amen.”

After a slight pause out of respect, Dale began to carve the turkey and dished out each person's plate as they held it out to him. The potatoes started next, directly followed by the gravy. The rest of the courses followed in no particular order. The family enjoyed their meal immensely as they chatted about the typical family subjects. The main subject of conversation was the general title of the meal they were enjoying. The children were confused because dinner was normally the name of the evening meal. The children wanted to know why what would normally be referred to as lunch was suddenly being referred to as dinner.

“Well,” their father explained. “Dinner is not actually synonymous with the evening meal. Historically, the term dinner refers to the largest or most important meal of the day.”

“I thought breakfast was the most important meal of the day,” Luke commented even more confused.

“Well,” Dale responded with a mischievous smile on his face. “You're right about that, but there is only one name for breakfast so that's why we just call it breakfast.”

The young man nodded with understanding, satisfied with his fathers answer as Christa stifled laughter at the other end of the table.

They finished up their meal and one by one, the children asked to be excused. They picked up their respective plates and silverware, carried them carefully to the counter by the sink and returned to the table for the glass. The children congregated in the living room as they allowed their dinner to settle. After a few minutes, their parents stood in the kitchen doorway and addressed the children.

“Well,” their mother began. “As you all know, the extended family Thanksgiving gathering is underway and usually goes well into the evening.”

“Now, we're going to give you guys a choice,” Dale continued. “We can either head over to my cousin's house and join the festivities, or you can put the Christmas tree up.”

A chorus of cheers erupted from the living room. The decision was unanimous. All five children tore up the stairway to the rat attic. (The rat attic was a crawl space above the kitchen that was used for storage. It was named for its size rather than its contents and did not, in fact, contain any rats...as far as anybody knew.) Moments later two of the boys reappeared carrying a large cardboard box and the other three carried a variety of smaller boxes. The five children gathered around the larger box and began sorting out the color coated, artificial pine fronds. Dale and Christa relaxed in their seats on the double reclining couch and smiled as they watched their children do their work.

Cow Skiing

The four older Henning children walked through the lower level of the barn in their rubber
muck boots. They glanced from side to side trying to decide what to do with their afternoon. They had already jumped from the hay mow into the pile of chopped straw. They had jumped from stanchion to stanchion across the cow stalls until Luke had missed a step and nearly gotten the wind knocked out of him. After that little misstep, the oldest child, fourteen-year-old Caleb,  had decided to look elsewhere for entertainment.

The concrete barn floor was  covered in a couple of inches of fresh cow manure. This
created a slightly slippery surface on which to walk. Caleb smiled and two brothers and sister. Scott, Kelsey, and Luke waited with anticipation to see what their fearless leader had in mind. Caleb started running, with some hesitation, across the slick,concrete floor, stopping abruptly into a slide, leaving skid marks in the manure from his boots.

“Wow! Check those marks out,” he exclaimed. “They must be at least six or seven feet long!”

“Yeah,” twelve-year-old Scott replied surveying the tracks before him. “I'll bet I could do
better.”

“Oh really?!” ten-year-old Kelsey inquired with skepticism thick in her voice. “What makes you
so sure about that?”

“I'm lighter than he is,” Scott responded matter-of-factly. “A little bit of a head start should give
me more distance.”

“I'm not sure it works that way,” nine-year-old Luke argued. “Besides, I'm pretty sure you guys
weigh the same”

“Well, I guess we'll just have to find out,” Scott replied as he started running.

He put on the brakes and went about six inches further than his older brother. Caleb wasn't
satisfied to leave it go at that so he marked his original streak and his brother's so they could keep track of which was which and proceeded to attempt to beat his and his brother's previous marks. He lined up and took off running, with much less hesitation than his first try, and flew past Scott's line by three feet. Scott's cries of mock anguish marked his defeat. Caleb marked his new line as his brother lined up for another shot. Kelsey and Luke joined in and the four kids took turns this way for about fifteen minutes until they got board and started looking for other ways to supplement their fun.

In a weird kind of deja vu, one of the boys got a mischievous look on his face which was
greeted by the same look of anticipation from the other three kids. Only this time, it was the Scott who had the bright idea. Scotty walked up to a cow, several of which had been eating at the bunk or bedding down as if the boys had never existed, and grabbed a hold of it's long tail. The cow, having found the sensation of someone tugging on her tail to be undesirable, attempted to get away from the young man by running away. Scott just hung on and left two long foot marks as the cow trotted through the barn, dragging him along. Scott's skiing pattern became somewhat erratic and he let go before he lost his balance, saving himself from a messy yard sale.

“Did you see that?!” Scott exclaimed as the deja vu continued. “That was awesome! She was
really picking up speed there, wasn't she?!”

“That was pretty awesome,” Caleb agreed. “I gotta give that a try.”

He waited for his chance, grabbed the tail of a passing cow and went for his own ride. He didn't
make it quite as far as Scott before his footing began to give way. He let go and regained his balance
before he jogged back to where he had left his brothers and sister.  The four kids discussed skiing
techniques before they all grabbed a tail for a trip through the barn. Every time they finished a trip, they would compare notes on ways to improve their skiing experience. They would consider each other's suggestions and try them out one at a time some of them improved their distance or stability while others nearly ended in messy disasters.

What they failed to notice was that as they continued to have their fun, the cows got more and
more agitated. They began to run through the barn instead of jog. The Henning children were too engrossed in their fun to realize that they had stopped improving on their techniques due to the
rowdiness of the animals. They had essentially graduated from the bunny slopes to the black diamond
without their knowledge or permission. Soon, more than two or three cows were barreling through the barn at once. They might not have realized what was going on if they hadn't had an unexpected visitor.

A loud holler interrupter the shenanigans mid-ride causing all four of the adolescents to let go of
their respective tails and loose their balance. They fell solidly on their rumps and slid a few feet before scrambling out of the way of the oncoming bovine traffic into the relative safety of the free stalls. They looked around frantically for the source of the booming voice that had brought them from the heights of skiing glory down to the embarrassment of the manure yard sale. They finally saw the intruder on a platform that ran the full length of the feeding trough. The platform was referred to as the cat-walk and the feeding trough, the bunk.

Standing on the cat-walk with his arms folded across his broad chest and a sour scowl on his
face stood Dale Henning. A look of abject fear invaded the faces of the children as they realized that the posture of the older Henning clearly indicated that they were in deep trouble. Caleb, Scott, Kelsey, and Luke rose awkwardly to their feet and made an attempt to hold themselves in a way that projected confidence. However, they realized that it was nearly impossible to project confidence when ones hind quarters were covered in manure. They stood for an agonizing amount of time as the herd calmed down. As soon as it was deemed to be safe for them to move through the barn full of black and white animals, their father addressed the children.

“You four will calmly make your way to the house. Do not go inside. If I beat you there, you
will be in exponentially more trouble than you are now.”

With that, he turned crisply on his heal and walked from the cat-walk, into the barn. The Henning tribe calmly made their way through the barn on their way to what they were certain would be their execution.

“What do you suppose 'exponentially' means?” Luke inquired of his older siblings.

“I don't know,” Kelsey replied. “If we survive this, we can look it up.”

“You think it's that bad?” the Scott pushed.

“He's pretty mad,” Caleb confirmed. “He's probably gonna meet us with four shovels and make
us dig our own graves.”

Nobody had a response to this final statement. They made it to the front yard a full minute
before their father. The suspense was pure agony for the kids. Finally, Mr. Henning approached the
white picket fence and walked straight into the old farmhouse. He returned a few seconds later with a
wooden paddle that everyone recognized as The Double Five. The Double Five was a plain wooden
paddle with ten holes drilled through the business end. The children had argued about the purpose of
the holes. Caleb, however, was old enough to know that they decreased the wind resistance which
drastically improved the performance of the disciplinary tool.

Their dad motioned to the children to turn around. They obliged, placing their hands on the
wooden deck of the wrap-around porch to brace themselves against the punishment that was coming.
Mr. Henning swatted each of them crisply on the rump, twice. Each child reacted in his or her own
way. Caleb pursed his lips against the stinging on his hind end. Scott gritted his teeth and bounced on
the balls of his feet. Kelsey sniffled as she quietly sobbed with her bottom lip quivering. Luke fought
his urge to cry as he switched back and forth between crossing his arms tightly across his chest and
rubbing his nose with the top of his pointer finger. Tears still streamed down his face despite his best
efforts.

“Do you kids know why I spanked you?” He inquired of the sniffling youths.

They merely shook their heads, not really sure if that was the answer for which Mr. Henning was looking.      

“I spanked you because what you were doing in there, although fun I'm sure, was
actually very dangerous,” He explained. “Didn't you see how those heifers were running around down there?”

The kids looked at each other and truthfully shook their heads as their youngest sister, Lizzy,
watched from the porch bench.

“Okay,” their father sighed. “Well, here's the deal. You five are going to promise me that you
will never do that sort of thing again because one of these days, you're going to end up a trampled mess on the floor. Got it?”

The boys and girls nodded.

“Okay, good,” Dale muttered as he stormed back out to the barn.

“Wow,” eight-year-old Lizzy exclaimed from her spot on the park bench. “For once, I'm glad
you  guys left me out. I'm the only one who didn't get spanked today.”

“Give it time,” her oldest brother muttered as he stomped to his room in the basement

Island Excursion

“So, do you think it's changed much?” 

“I don't know,” Caleb responded to the inquiries of his younger brother.

“You never know what sort of things can happen over the course of a winter,” Wayne interjected.

Scotty shrugged his shoulders as he continued the long trek to the island. Caleb and Wayne were best friends. At the age of thirteen, they tolerated the presence of Caleb's younger brother who was two years their junior. Scotty trailed a couple of steps behind the older kids as the best friends chatted about things the younger brother didn't quite understand. He didn't mind, it was either this, or hang out with his younger sister, who always seemed to act older anyways.

The three boys were headed out to The Island. Years earlier, when the farm was in it's infancy, the field the boys were walking through had been covered in trees. The trees had been cut down and used for lumber and firewood. The stumps had all been pushed into a pile in the middle of the field. Over the years, small trees and grass grew up through the stumps and created an island like formation in the middle of a wide open field, hence the name The Island.

The Island had been a favorite canvass for the imagination of the children. They would play all sorts of different games out there. Sometimes they were soldiers fighting unseen enemies in the jungles of Vietnam. They'd weave in and out through the stumps and trees providing cover fire for their comrades as they made their way through enemy territory. Occasionally, one of the old root clusters would become the figurehead of a pirate ship off the coast of South America. The boys would become captured sailors fighting their captors as they tried to escape from the perils of walking the plank.

Sometimes, their imaginations would create more structured environments. Sometimes they'd hold mock senate meetings, with Caleb as the president, Wayne as the vice, and Scott as the finance minister. It wasn't lost on any of the three that the position of finance minister held no power since there were no finances to be placed under Scott's control. The boys had carved seats out of a particularly large root formation and used an old rubber milker liner as a microphone, which the youngest rarely got to hold. 

The summer before they had become convinced that they were going to dig an intricate tunnel system just like the one in one of their favorite TV shows, Hogan's Heroes. They had brought shovels out and started digging in two or three different places. They had gotten a couple of two foot deep holes dug, just wide enough to sit in before they realized that the stump laden soil was not conducive to tunneling.

 

The boys were headed out for the first island excursion of the season. As they approached their yearly hangout, they looked around. They saw their partially eroded tunnel non-starters with hard packed bottoms covered in pebbles and leaves. They saw various signs of animal activity such as nibbled leaves and trails through the stumpage. 

The older two boys immediately pulled their pocket knives from their hip pockets and got to work on a couple of small saplings. It was practically a yearly tradition to pick a staff. Staffs were universally useful. There were the obvious uses, such as using it as a walking stick or for Robin Hood and Little John bridge fighting. However, with the help of some bailing twine, a green staff became a long bow, a fishing pole, or a whip. With a little imagination, a staff became a Kentucky long rifle or a broad sword. The possibilities were endless. A summer in the country just wasn't complete without a staff.

The youngest of the three followed the example of his older companions and picked a sapling for himself. Unfortunately, his hand-me-down pocket knife wasn't nearly as sharp as those of the others. Caleb and Wayne were well into their island exploration by the time the younger brother finished his staff.

“Wait for me, guys,” He called out as he chased after his older companions. “Where are you guys anyway?”

“We're over here, behind the pirate ship stump,” Caleb responded.

Scotty walked around to the other side of the root cluster to find the older two boys examining a small hole in the ground. 

“I don't remember this being here,” Wayne remarked to the brothers.

“Maybe it's a ground hog hole,” Scotty suggested. 

“I don't thinks so,” Caleb disagreed. “I think it's a little too small for that.”

“Yeah,” Wayne agreed as Scotty shrugged. “What do you think it is?”

“I'll bet there's bees in this hole,” Caleb declared with supreme confidence.

Wayne and Scotty stepped back as Caleb drew back his staff. He gripped it with both hands and plunged it into the hole with all his strength. As it turned out, there were indeed bees in that hole. Three pairs of eyes widened as a cloud of stripped insects erupted from the three inch hole in the ground. The three boys turned on their heals and ran as fast as they could from The Island, the stinging insects hot on their tails. 

Caleb, having been closest to the hive, had the greatest motivation for putting distance between himself and The Island. It wasn't long before the other boys had been left in the dust. They paused for a moment and listened. With the lack of any tell tale buzzing, Wayne and Scotty breathed deeply as they attempted to catch their breath.

“Well, I guess we lost them,” Wayne commented in between breaths.

“Yeah, and Caleb lost us,” Scotty wheezed. “Who knew he could run so fast? Do you think he got stung?”

“Probably,” Wayne surmised. “He was right there when those bees came flying out of there. I'll bet this is one time in his life that he wishes he was wrong.”

“For real,” Scotty agreed. “I guess we'd better get back to the house and see how he's doing.”

Wayne nodded and the two of them made their way back to the farm house. They reached the gravel driveway after a couple of minutes and crossed the creek bridge. Scotty made certain to keep to the center. A few years earlier, he had fallen into the creek on his way to his grandpa's house. After that, he made it a point to keep away from the edge unless he actually wanted to get wet. The two of them looked towards the big white farmhouse and could just see Caleb and his mom through the gaps in the picket fence. He looked a little strange. As Wayne and Scotty got closer, they began to see why.

Caleb was standing in the middle of the sidewalk wearing nothing but a sullen, defeated look and his whitey tighties. His mother was using a basting brush to apply a paste of baking soda and milk to the tell tale red spots that dotted the older brother's body.

“Well, there you guys are,” Mrs. Henning greeted. “I was wondering if you two got lost. Do you think you managed to find enough excitement for the day?”

“Yeah,” the three replied in unison.

“So,” Mrs. Henning pressed with some hesitation. “What exactly happened out there today?”

“Well,” Wayne began. “As it turns out, there was bees in that hole.”

Combine Training Day

“So, this is the steering wheel, Scotty,” Dale explained with mock seriousness to his second son. 

“Thanks Dad,” the teenager replied with a smile on his face.

Scott looked through the slanted, glass window as five rows of corn were being pulled, simultaneously, stalk by stalk, into the broad corn head of the old Allis Chalmers Gleaner model K Combine. The movement of the stalks was somehow both fluid and jerky, both violent and mesmerizing. The teenager's eyes locked onto the pointed paddle housing of the center corn head as the paddles guided each stock into the cutting bar. He glanced through the rear window at the crumpled ear-less stalks that were left behind. From his vantage point, beside the driver seat and just inside the open cab door, he had an exhilarating view of the complex machinery at work. 

It was harvesting time. The rolling hills of the one hundred acre, family farm were covered with crops of various colors ranging from the vibrant green of the distant alfalfa fields to the grayish brown of the adjacent soy bean field to the golden tan of the corn field surrounding the two Hennings. Scott loved harvest time. There was so much to do and so much heavy equipment with which to do it.

Caleb, Scott's older brother, had just gone off to his freshman year of collage. This meant that Scott, who had up to this point been allowed to avoid a fair amount of the farm responsibility, had to step up. Scott had then endured a veritable crash course in farm equipment operations ranging from the big 1486 International Harvester tractor to the broad headed, New Holland hay-bine. Today, it was combine training day. 

Butterflies danced in the teenagers stomach as he anticipated his turn to operate the heavy piece of equipment. He loved riding shotgun with his dad, but there was something about have his own foot on the clutch that made him feel important.

“Okay,” Dale nodded. “Switch with me, it's your turn.”

With the gleaner still in full harvesting operations, the elder Henning pushed himself up from the padded seat. He kept one hand on the steering wheel and braced himself on the cab wall behind his son's back. Scott slipped into the seat and took the reigns as his father relinquished them. He grasp the steering wheel with both hands and addressed his father.

“How do I stop this thing if I need to?”

Not hearing a response, the amateur operator looked to his left and found, much to his horror that he was very much alone. His father and teacher had apparently abandoned him with only a cursory knowledge of combine operations. Scott looked around frantically for any signs of his missing instructor. Within a few seconds, the teenager's mind was inundated with frantic questions.

“How do I stop this thing? Is dad okay? How do I slow down? What if it pops out of gear and freewheels down the hill? What should I run into to make it stop?” 

All this took place in a matter of a few seconds. Scott jerked his head between the left cab window and open door and the corn head in front of him. He finally caught a glimpse of his dad rolling down the grassy water way directly to the left of the moving combine. He waited on bated breath until Dale pushed himself to his feet and jogged towards the amateurishly piloted vehicle. Scott heaved a sigh of relief as his teacher climbed up the ladder and entered the cab, slightly out of breath.

“Whew,” Dale exhaled with a slight grin on his face. “I lost my footing and took a tumble. How'd you do while I was gone?”

“Well,” Scott replied with some hesitation. “I guess I didn't crash. I would really love to know how to stop this thing, you know, just in case you decide to leave again.”

The two Hennings shared a laugh and the lessons continued for the rest of the afternoon without incident.