This is a story about four farmers. They meet nearly every morning at McDonald’s to shoot the bull. Picture them under unnatural light, sitting in a padded booth constructed of synthetic material. The family-run diner they patronized for years has long been closed, and the stainless steel, leather, and wood were sold to whomever buys stainless steel, leather, and wood from family-run diners that become McDonald's.
They are in their early 60’s. These four farmers are part of a cooperative that grows and sells corn. They were raised in the same small town. There was a bustling Main Street when they were younger. As teens, they enjoyed milkshakes, a guilty pleasure on scorching, humid afternoons after the chores were done, with each other at the family-run ice cream parlor. They shared milkshakes at the same family-run ice cream shop with their children. That ice cream parlor is now a pawn shop. No one makes pleasant and lasting memories at Ike’s Pawn and Gold Emporium.
Our farmers are talking about corn. They’ll get to the high school football team in a bit. They all played football together as students at the local high school, its modest campus occupied by a classically architected brick and stone building, topped by a splendid white dome with a rotunda below, and a sweeping marble staircase that ushered students and visitors to the front entrance. Their children played football there as well and graduated, too, lined nearly bottom to top on the marble steps, mortar boards soon destined for orbit. Today, the football team is a cobbled-together collection of kids from three other schools. Most of the kids attend class in double-wide trailers. The only lesson to be learned now is that children are best taught in classically architected brick and stone buildings with a splendid white dome. No one educated in a double-wide trailer finds Socrates or Faulkner or Euclid or Magellan interesting or everlasting.
The farmers wear hats, worn and frayed, stained with sweat, and smelling of the fields. We will identify them by their hat. Feel free to give each of them any name that you deem appropriate. This is a participatory story. Anyone who grew up in a small town that has lost a family-run diner, its Main Street, and high school traditions knows what I am describing. We are all answerable for the writing and reading of this, you, and me.
Carhart: How’d your corn come in this year?
John Deere: Lousy.
Ford: Yep, shit. I can’t keep the crows out.
US Marines: I got blight.
Carhartt: Third year in a row.
John Deere: Yep. Never seen anything like it.
Ford: Crop went bad about the time that new seed guy started.
US Marines: Yep. Co-op said we’d get a better deal.
Carhartt: Yep, both buying and selling, they said.
John Deere: Lots of promises from the Co-op.
Ford: And that fella, for that matter. He’s an odd bird.
US Marines: Yep. He kept callin' me Jack when he came around the farm.
Carhartt: Said over and over, that ain’t no joke.
Ford: Yep. I never thought he was joking.
US Marines: Tol’ me he prit’ near killed a man with a chain.
John Deere: Yep. Heard that, too. He was lifeguarding.’
Ford: Drove a big rig for a while after graduating at the top of his law class.
US Marines: Yep. Said that. He was also a civil rights pioneer. Busted Nelson Mandela out of jail.
Carhartt: Hard to understand. Mumbled a might. Stumbled, and fell a bunch, too.
John Deere: Yep. Wanted to show me the hair on his legs once.
Ford: He sniffed my wife’s hair. Daughter, too.
US Marines: Yep. And then he’d just wander off. Not sure where he was goin.’
Ford: He told me a man could have a baby. Nurse ‘em too.
Carhartt: Yep, crazy talk. Said he cured cancer.
Ford: Nice, sparkling teeth, though. His dentist done an agreeable job.
John Deere: One thing’s for sure, he doesn't know shit about corn.
Carhartt: Yep.
Ford: What was that other fella’s name before him?
Carhartt: Don’t rightly remember. Had red hair.
US Marines: Yep.
John Deere: More orange than red. His hair.
Ford: Yep.
US Marines: Bumper crops when he was selling seed, I recollect that.
John Deere: Yep.
Carhartt: I miss that fella.
Ford: Yep.
John Deere: Let's talk about this with them Co-op sonsabitches at the next meeting.
US Marines: Yep. They’re part of the problem. Buy low, sell high, my ass.
Ford: Yep.
Carhartt: Yep.
John Deere: Yep.
As the curtain closes on our story, and our farmers return to their homes, and we to ours, our saga is not concluded until we fully grasp our responsibility in this entire fucking mess and then do something about it before the next planting season.