As brother Bob, wife Beth, and I approached our home town, I noticed cotton in the fields. At first I thought there were just remnants of cotton, but Bob said it hadn’t been picked yet. He knew that farmers often spray the fields with a defoliant to get the leaves out of the way. The cotton is then much, much cleaner when the machine picks it. When we were children, small country schools had cotton pickin’ time with no school for a few weeks so that students could pick cotton. We were townies, so we didn’t get that time off.

Bob owns a farm in the bottom (area near the Mississippi River), and we drove down gravel roads to see the man who rents the land. He lives on his adjoining farm. He offered to drive us over Bob’s land in his big pickup truck. My ears were delighted to spend time with him, because he has a true Southern accent with a country twist. He is educated and smart, but his speech is different from mine. His words and the way he puts them together would not sound right coming from me. Beth had already gotten in the back seat, and as I was going to the other side he said, “See that flat (tire)? I kin air it up right quick.”

He did “air it up” by pulling a pump over and hooking it up. It seemed just a minute or so until we were driving off. We noticed other scruffy looking trucks not in the car port and assumed they were his working farm trucks. He drove on the road for a bit and then turned right into a field and kept going. We passed a big tree, and he told us it was our dad’s favorite pecan tree. Bob and I remember picking up pecans there when we were children. He drove us around all the land he had cultivated, pointing out a low spot that was too wet to plow. Beth had seen a video his wife posted on Facebook, and she knew he had finished getting in the soy beans just a day or so before.

As we walked toward our car, I asked if I could take his photo with Bob and Beth. He readily agreed, then asked if I’d take the same thing with his phone. I thought, for once, someone didn’t object!

We drove into town and went into Walmart where his wife works. Bob called her, and she rushed out to meet us. She was laughing and said she would have recognized Bob and Beth because her husband had sent the photo to her. We had a lovely chat before leaving. It was wonderful to talk to people new to me who have the same values I do.

I did not post the photos with people’s faces, because I did not get their permission. More than likely they would have said yes. I apologize. You should have been able to see these wonderful people.