Watermelon, Old Glory...and Sheep

What do watermelon, Old Glory and sheep have in common? Simple, a parade! But not just any parade. No sir. We’re talking the Fair Parade. 

Watermelon, a late summer’s gift, an easy simple retreat from the Iowa sun. Dripping from chins as the parade passes, announcing the fair is ready for visitors. For young and old alike, table manners can wait. 

Old Glory commands the attention of all. Eyes snap, hats in hand, palms on chest or drawn to the forehead of those who have served.

Then there are the sheep. They follow whoever will lead. Sometimes the strongest, sometimes the loudest and sometimes directed by whatever nips at their heels. Sounds like a group of hens I know, and I don’t mean poultry.

Sirens blare! Welcome to Gracier and this year’s county fair!

Suitors at the Gate

A  tiny, paper thin, yellow blossom shrivels. The bloom sheds. A small green nubbin is revealed.

Taking its own sweet time it expands. Humid Iowa summer mornings bath the newcomer in dew. Blistering noon day sun soaks deep into the green flesh. Night time comes, and the green gift rests on the vine until the next sultry day. 

Patient, it is in no hurry to show its true color until the days grow heavy with the haze of a long, hot summer. All the lime green orb has absorbed starts to radiate from within. A glow, faint pinkish-orange begins to blush. 

Then the red lady appears. And she is ready to greet her suitors. For she will have many come to the garden gate. But only the one… patient, caring, trustworthy, will call this prize his.

Summer’s First Day

Corn makes its assent to knee high status. Green flickers in the bean fields. Calves have gotten their legs and dance through the pasture. The morning breeze carries the hint of July heat ready to greet us, all too soon.  Gracier folks bid their fond farewell to Spring.

What makes a man evil?

Born with it? Learned? 

Or, has he been cast his lot as a reminder to those who might stray… ”This is what power and obsession can become if unchecked.” 

Maggie somehow saw past it...or was blind to it.

Her maker might say, "Maggie McCabe knew full well and used his evil for a greater good, to protect an unborn child." 

But Joseph Cassidy’s evil slipped through the cracks of time, unfulfilled. And now seeps into the life of the woman it was used to guard.

What makes a man evil... 

Royalty in the Garden

Royalty of the garden, an iris, its golden throat, spilling into purple velvet, a scepter, grasped between the chubby fingers of the little girl who marched about.  So rich, to touch it with those tiny fingers, you’d expect them to come back awash with violet.

Some gardener’s in our tiny town thought it a shame to slice the stalk of the striking flora. Not her grandfather, Jonas McCabe.

Whisked away in to her imaginary kingdom, talking to the queen, ordering the jester to dance and commanding everyone must pause for tea, time stopped.

 A rustle of a skirt would respond to the chair she directed her Grandmother Anne to sit in. From heaven she came to Jessica’s quite real kingdom. On a farm some years ago just outside Gracier, Iowa.

Soon Enough

You have never…I mean never seen anything more antsy, more impatient than a farmer waiting for two things. Crops to go in…and crops to come out.  Like a church lady getting ready to serve the congregation, or a hungry nursing baby. It can’t happen soon enough.

Matthew’s passion for the smell of freshly turned dirt, he inherited from his grandfather. He can’t get out the door of the law office fast enough come spring. 

His father, Joseph, on the other hand, would let it all go. Let me rephrase, let it all go, for a price. Every stitch abandoned to Joseph Cassidy’s greater good. That too will change...soon enough.

Spit, Slobber, and Fireworks

Sparks fly like none other when those two cross paths. I mean to tell you, firecrackers have nothing on them. 

How bad you ask? Well, when Jess shot out of the spit and slobber float’n in that cow’s trough, the heat simmering off her flaming cheeks, swear I saw steam. God as my witness. 

Matthew, however, well I don’t think he noticed…at least her cheeks.