16. The Old House ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

The birthday gift that Joe presented to Ida in 1968 was a set of tickets for the family to laugh along with comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in the Edward C. Elliott Hall of Music at Purdue University on May the 11th. To Robert, one of the funniest moments occurred when Anne walked down the steps into the audience, sat in the lap of a gentleman wearing a mustache, and said, “Do you know there’s a wooly worm crawling across your face?”

Before leaving the farm in Pine Village, Joe had sold the Holsteins—all but Buttercup, who had grown to quite an old age and had passed away shortly before the move. It took Joe, Charles, and Robert a long time to dig a hole that was large enough for her to receive a decent burial. Joe had decided not to spend the fortune required to build on the Williams place a dairy barn conforming to the federal regulations recently enacted to ensure cleanliness of milk: hence, the loss of his small Holstein herd. Robert still had his string tie topped by a Cloisonné Holstein to serve as a reminder of the family’s sweet-tempered dairy cows.

Robert felt sorry to leave the old house that had sheltered his ancestors for two generations before he was born and had watched over his immediate family. He took a last look at the front porch, scene of so many conversations and so much laughter. He looked along the line of the white board fence. He took the time to say silent goodbyes to all the trees, including the giant catalpa by the road. Then he turned to see the tennis court and basketball net that the school had added a few years earlier. There, Joe, Don, Charles, Robert, Matt, and Lon had played basketball together. Joe had made his last examination inside the house and had concluded that nothing was being left behind by accident. He and Robert then slid onto the front seat of the nondescript Bel Air and drove away for the last time.

Robert’s father was pensive. Joe had not slept well in the new home. He felt cut off from the town that had been his secure haven all his life. He feared he might be making unwise decisions.

Ida had been right: Joe felt homesick and scared.

Meanwhile, Robert turned the new leaf. He was eager to discover where the story led. During his free minutes, he roamed the Williams place, taking the keenest interest in every feature. He studied raccoon tracks in the mud around the pools that the spring rains had made in the driveway winding back to the fields. He explored the line of hedge apple trees between Joe’s farm and the McFatridge farm to the east. He walked the perimeter of his father’s 115-acre farm that took the shape of a narrow rectangle stretching almost a mile to the north, where one corner touched that of the Brutus home place. He found gelatinous masses of frog eggs and mudpuppy eggs in the deep ditches along the gravel road.

Behind the original garage—a small open-ended building made of corrugated metal—Robert inspected a set of wooden wheels rotting away in the undergrowth not far from the slough that the Pekin ducks were enjoying. Suddenly, he discovered a large cocoon of a silkworm moth. It was hanging from a ragweed stalk. He saw nothing to suggest that the pupa inside was not viable. He carefully broke the stem and carried the cocoon to his room.

Within a few days, one of the largest luna moths that Robert would ever see emerged from the cocoon and hung suspended until its pale green wings, measuring a full five inches across, had expanded and dried. It seemed to have captured moonlight in its coloring. 

The summer felt uneasy, culminating in rioting against the Vietnam War by protesters in the streets and parks of Chicago during the political convention there.

Cultural changes were occurring at a fearful rate, as could be heard in the music that young people liked, seen in the pages of glossy magazines, and witnessed in the news that the television proclaimed in dark tones each evening. Robert did not feel isolated from these events by living on a farm with the gentle breezes of sunny days and the gleaming stars of summer nights; on the contrary, he often felt that he was not isolated enough!

One of the rare bright spots was the television coverage of the moon landing. After that, Robert looked at the silvery disc in the night sky and wondered.

In the country, Robert could not spend a merry hour on his roller skates with the key dangling by a string around his neck nor squander a happy afternoon on his green Schwinn bicycle. He mused on these facts while he and Charles awaited the bus on a chilly fall morning. The only sounds were those made by Spot foraging among fallen leaves in the fenced yard behind them; otherwise, the world lay perfectly still. Robert thought back to the brief graduation ceremony acknowledging completion of eighth grade. He was now a freshman in high school, after all.

For Freshman Dress-Up Day, the senior who drew Robert’s name for the initiation, wrote, “ … I realized there was a need to let you know what you will be wearing. 1. Old coveralls with ‘69’ painted in red on the front and back part of the upper leg, 2. Workshoes, and 3. T-shirt with ‘Property of Seniors’ written on back. … Consider yourself lucky.” Robert did. Several of his classmates had to wear outrageous getups.

Robert helped his father farm, and he spent evenings doing homework and practicing piano and clarinet. He decided he didn’t mind becoming an adult—which was inevitable—but he missed his skates and his bike.

From far away to the east came the hum of the motor and the crunch of the tires on the gravel. Glen J. Brutus was driving the school bus. In anticipation, Charles and Robert edged nearer to the road.

Eventually, the bus approached but did not slow down. Just as Glen passed the boys, he put on the brakes. Charles and Robert hurried down the road to the west, where the bus had come to a halt. Glen’s smile was infectious. “I can’t get used to stopping back there,” he said to the boys, as they took seats near the front.

Frosty gray fields stretched to either side of the byway. Glen had to make only a few more stops before reaching the school. Robert looked forward to his English class, for he loved to read and fancied himself a writer. Band rehearsal likewise captured his attention every bit as much as English inspired his imagination. Mr. Davis had moved away, and Mr. Tony Boots had taken over the baton of the Marching Pine Knots, who marched in sock feet on the basketball floor during the halfway point of the home games. The school was too small to host a football team, even though the town was known for having had a famous community football team in the early years of the sport

That team of yesteryear made national news. The legendary Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe carried the ball for Pine Village. In 1914, Pine Village beat an Indianapolis team by a score of 111 to 0. As the manager of the team, Claire Rhode, one of Joe’s relatives, began hiring top athletes from Purdue University, Indiana University, Notre Dame, and the colleges of Wabash and DePauw to play a few games as members of the Pine Village team, which was undefeated from 1903 until 1916. The famous Pine Village team was an independent organization that would be called a pro team today.

On the 20th of December in 1971, Robert would publish a story in the Pine Village High School newspaper, which he would serve as editor. Entitled “Football Was Alive Here Then,” his article would feature his interviews with his great uncle Charles “Charlie” J. Rhode and Eli Fenters, who played for the team. The title of Robert’s article would be a quotation from Great Uncle Charlie. What must it have been like to play a game shoulder to shoulder with Jim Thorpe? Thorpe played one game for Pine Village, which defeated the Purdue All-Stars by a score of 29 to 0. An anecdote often repeated when Robert was growing up might have been based on fact. Supposedly, Thorpe complimented Eli Fenters as the best “natural quarterback” Thorpe had ever encountered.

In Robert’s time in junior high and high school, where would there have been enough boys to form a football team? So the band’s halftime shows occurred noisily indoors on the basketball court.

Music filled the life of the family. On the 4th of December in 1968 in the Edward C. Elliott Hall of Music at Purdue, Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert heard the Man of La Mancha with David Atkinson, who replaced Richard Kiley on Broadway, performing along with the national touring company. The rousing themes inspired Robert. One of his defining characteristics, after all, was to entertain apparently impossible dreams.

On the weekend, the family drove to Lafayette for Charles and Robert’s piano lessons. Miss Beegle had abandoned her studio at Allen’s Dance Studio and had begun teaching from her home, where she had two grand pianos side by side. While Charles had his half-hour lesson, Robert crossed the street to the public library, an impressive building with a long flight of stairs. He passed the circulation desk and entered the open stacks in back. He walked straight to the shelf containing all the books that Hoosier author Gene Stratton–Porter had written, and he selected them one by one, until he had read most of them. He always took a seat in one of the deep window sills on the north wall of the stacks and eagerly opened his book. One of his favorites was Moths of the Limberlost, a nonfiction title boasting many photographic prints that Stratton–Porter had painted by hand in spectacular color. Gracing the pages were luna moths of the same moonbeam hue that Robert had witnessed. Many other large moths in dazzling tints were fully represented.

At the end of thirty minutes, Robert put the book back where it belonged, crossed the street again, and entered Miss Beegle’s lovely Victorian home for his music lesson.

“We’re going for Big Macs,” Joe announced when he and Ida picked up Charles and Robert on the sidewalk in front of Miss Beegle’s porch. Joe drove over the Brown Street Bridge and into the McDonald’s parking lot. The family took a booth while Joe ordered for everyone. Soon, he came carrying a tray filled with Styrofoam boxes. Even though the new, large sandwiches caught the eye, Robert could not be sure if he preferred a simple hamburger with plenty of mustard.

Next, the family bought groceries at Smitty’s. Into the cart went milk and butter because there were no more dairy cows at home. Then there came the eighteen-mile drive back to the farm. Robert liked lying down, so that he could see only the treetops. He would call out to Charles the landmarks that Robert thought the car was passing, and Charles would confirm or deny Robert’s guesses. Catching the Goose Creek Bridge was easy to infer from the sound of crossing, and naming Indian Hill was simple to do from the motion of the car slowly winding around the steep slopes, but the long stretches through the flat countryside were challenging.

“Are we near the road to Otterbein?” Robert would ask.

“Nowhere near it,” Charles would state matter-of-factly.

Robert would wonder where he was on the road that linked the city of pianos, libraries, Big Macs, and milk cartons to the country of moths, mudpuppies, frosty fields, and shimmering stars.     

     

5. The Old Barn ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

On a warm summer’s evening, Joe brought Robert along in the 1951 GMC pickup through the barnyard and through the pasture to the edge of the cornfield. Robert opened and closed the gates for his father. Joe then began using a machete to cut cornstalks, which were still green but had well-formed ears. Robert lifted the piles of cornstalks in the back of the pickup, which had the tailgate down. The Holsteins in the pasture could foresee the treat that was coming, and they gathered near the gate that the truck would pass through when it exited the cornfield. With the stalks about three feet deep, Joe climbed back behind the steering wheel, and Robert stood by the gate. Joe drove into the pasture, and the cows strode over to mill about the back of the truck. Robert jumped onto the running board, balanced his knee on the hot metal of the rear fender, steadied himself, and climbed over the short side panel into the truck bed.

“Ready?” Joe asked through the open window.

“Yep,” Robert replied.

The GMC crept forward, and Robert slid three cornstalks over the edge of the tailgate. No sooner had the corn fallen to the ground than the lead Holsteins were standing over it, finding the sweet green ears. Meanwhile, Robert shoved a few more cornstalks onto the ground in front, and cows of lesser status in the pecking order came around to take their turn to feast on the corn. The GMC kept inching along until all the corn had been shoved out. The herd would keep working on the corn until only traces of it remained.

Next, Joe and Robert drove through town to feed the Hereford herd at the Old Barn. Joe’s farm on the east side of Pine Village was really two farms joined catty-corner. The smaller farm bordered State Route 55 and could be accessed from the farm that bordered State Route 26 by driving along dusty farm lanes, through many gates, and across the corner that joined the two farms, but driving through the town meant having to pass through only two gates.

Before Joe was born, the Gady brothers ran a butcher shop just north of the intersection of the two main highways in Pine Village. Elmer Gady bought the stock and Bill Gady prepared the meat, which the Ogborns sold in their grocery. The Gadys had a large barn on their farm just south of town. Elmer always thought “big.” He shipped in western lambs that were fed in the barn, which boasted nearly 6,500 square feet under roof on the first floor alone. To accommodate more and more sheep, Elmer added wing after wing to the barn, making a large barn a huge barn. He and Bill were earning handsome profits.

Elmer decided he could afford to mortgage his farm and speculate on the Board of Trade. Elmer lost his farm and the butcher shop. He became a day laborer. Bill, meanwhile, moved to Chicago to work for a big farm, but Bill fell from a streetcar and broke his back. He returned to Pine Village. He walked stooped over. Frank Ogborn’s department store and grocery hired Bill to take orders and make deliveries.

The Old Barn, as Joe referred to it, was still standing, although it had not seen paint in so long that the boards were silvery gray, the roof rusty red.

Just outside the barn on the east side was a stock tank that once featured a windmill to pump the water. Now the pump was electric. Joe kept a long stick, which he used to push up the curled rod on the side of the switch box that started the motor. The box was affixed high on a pole, so that cattle could not accidentally start the motor by rubbing the box. The pipe that delivered the water to the tank was rusted through in several places. By covering the end of the pipe with his left hand, Robert made a water fountain through a quarter-sized hole in the top of the pipe. He drank the clear water that came from so deep down that it was icy cold.

South of Pine Village stood a large building that housed a rest home for elderly patients. Despite its size, the building was only the small remnant of what earlier generations had known as a vast spa named Mudlavia: nearly all of it long gone by the time that Robert’s family visited. Joe and Robert often stopped by Pig Gady’s room. Ernest Alvin Gady, a 1910 graduate of Pine Village High School, had acquired the nickname “Pig,” and it was just too good not to stick. Everyone knew him as Pig, and many had forgotten that his real name was Ernest. Pig was Elmer Gady’s son and had played in the Old Barn when he was a lad. For a brief time, Pig had taught lower grades, but his father’s downfall prompted him to seek independence. In 1913, when he celebrated his twentieth birthday, he decided upon the life of a transient laborer and lit out for the West.

When Robert and Joe visited him, the 74-year-old Pig wore brown plaid flannel shirts and jeans. Whenever he saw Robert, his eyes lit up.

“Say, what do you know?” Pig asked, grinning and slapping his knee. Then came the best part. Pig would lean forward and begin telling stories of his train-hopping days as an itinerant thresherman. The walls of Pig’s room in Mudlavia faded away, replaced in Robert’s imagination by the broad expanse of Kansas wheat fields and Kansas skies.

Pig was running for his life down an alley in Burlington, Kansas. He clutched a broad-brimmed straw hat in one hand and seemed to be swatting at hornets, he was sprinting so fast! He kept glancing over his shoulder, until he was sure he had lost the Industrial Workers of the World members who were chasing him. Pig slowed to a walk, his sides aching, his heart pounding. The nest that Pig had accidentally run into was not a nest of hornets but a nest of I.W.W. men, otherwise known as Wobblies. They had made vague threats to try to force Pig to join their socialist order. Pig wanted nothing to do with the I.W.W. because he would not hide shrapnel inside wheat bundles to wreck threshing machines and bring work to a halt. “Why would anybody want to bust up a separator?” Pig wondered, shaking his head in consternation. Higher wages for workers was one thing, but sabotage was another—and sabotage was criminal!

“What am I gonna do?” Pig mumbled, sauntering along. A colorful poster for the Barnum & Bailey Circus caught his eye. It was plastered to a tall fence made of rough-cut boards. With his pocketknife, Pig cut a small red rectangle from the poster. He slipped the card into the pocket of his shirt. He smiled and strode confidently along. Heading north on Third Street to find work as a thresherman, he encountered two men he thought might be Wobblies. He flashed the corner of the red rectangle and winked. One of the men produced an I.W.W. red membership card from his pocket and nodded. The Wobblies paid Pig no further notice. He strode past them and began whistling a merry tune.

Pig was fortunate enough to find employment as a spike pitcher for threshing rings in eastern Kansas. “Much of the wheat out in Kansas was winter wheat,” he told Robert. “It was spiky and tough, but it sure did grow well there.” He fondly recalled the steam engines belted to the threshing machines in the barnyards, but, in western Kansas and in states farther north, he came to know threshing on a vast scale with fields of wheat shocks stretching toward the horizon and with half a dozen columns of smoke indicating the locations of various steam engines and crews under the command of custom threshermen. Pig slept beneath the stars. He slept the sleep of a young man who has done hard work, honest work.

Pig’s stories often led back to 1913, and, in his mind, Robert was there, too, jumping down from the boxcar and looking for work. A custom thresherman, scrutinizing the hopeful unemployed men who had gathered near the train station in some Kansas town, chose Pig (and Robert) to pitch bundles. Pig (and Robert) climbed into a wagon and was hauled to where the work was to be done. Pig (and Robert) was doing what he loved best: lifting sheaves high above his head and expertly dropping them for the bundle loader perched atop the wagon.

When Joe and Robert would leave Mudlavia after visiting with Pig, Robert left with his vision expanded. Walking past the goldfish ponds of the once lavish resort, Robert peered at the flashing orange fish beneath the rippling surface that reflected the clouds. He thought of Pig flashing the red card and grinning. To Robert, the past appeared to be separated from the present only by a rippling film.

Robert thought of Pig while helping Joe load the pickup with freshly cut corn stalks for the herd of Herefords that had gathered in the pasture beside the Old Barn. Then Robert repeated the process of scattering the stalks while Joe drove the GMC slowly forward.

38. The Champion ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

The first day of the 4-H fair week dawned, and Joe had already been busy, loading the new wooden box that held the brushes, halter, and products necessary to keep Buttercup looking beautiful. As soon as the sun peeked over the horizon, Ida and Robert were walking the rows and scrutinizing the vegetables to decide which ones to pick for the gardening display. With sunbeams lighting its yellow feathers, a meadowlark perched on a fence post and sang, “How are you today? How are you today?” in answer to the crowing of a rooster in the chicken yard. Then the meadowlark flapped its wings and flapped them again as it dipped and rose, dipped and rose, above the pasture.

Yawning, Charles came to help Joe as he led Buttercup up the chute into the pickup for the ride to Williamsport. She seemed eager to go. Having seen Francis the Talking Mule at the movie theater in Oxford and Mr. Ed on television, Joe and Charles had little difficulty imagining that Buttercup was saying, “Let’s get this show on the road! My fans await me!”

With Robert as her passenger, Ida drove the Chevrolet behind Joe’s GMC, where Charles was seated next to his father. When Joe passed the Mitchell farm, he kicked up dust on the berm as the pickup’s right tires ran just beyond the edge of the pavement. Joe was too busy looking for the Mitchells’ cow to watch the road. Russell, Roger, and Richard were loading a stylish Holstein heifer in their truck. Joe waved. Russell winked and waved back. Joe ran the tires back onto the asphalt.

When the truck and car passed Mrs. Arvin’s house on the left, Robert spotted his former teacher in her garden, and he yelled, “Hi ya, hi ya, hi ya, Mrs. Arvin!” He waved through the open window. Robert was so loud that Ida flinched, grabbed the steering wheel tightly, and pushed the throttle to the floor. The car lurched forward before Ida lifted her foot and brought the vehicle back to a normal speed. Mrs. Arvin straightened up and watched the Chevrolet as it went on down the road.

“Do you think she saw me?” Robert asked.

“Oh, she saw you alright, and she heard you, too,” Ida confirmed. When she told Joe about Robert’s outburst later, he laughed. The saying “Hi ya, hi ya, hi ya, Mrs. Arvin!” became a family quotation, repeated on seemingly endless occasions for years thereafter.

Driving the pickup with Buttercup happily watching the world go by, Joe, meanwhile, was whistling the tune to

Late one night, when we were all in bed,

Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed,

And when the cow kicked it over,

She winked her eye and said,

“It’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!”

Red-winged blackbirds sitting on the passing fences chortled in harmony.

Soon enough, the pickup pulled into the fairgrounds of the county seat. Joe maneuvered his GMC into the line of trucks unloading animals to be housed in the south wing of the coliseum and livestock barn. The men in charge of the dairy exhibits assigned Buttercup the southeast corner: an ideal location! No sooner had she taken up residence in the large space than teenage girls walking past saw Buttercup and came up to pet her nose. Ida had parked in one of the regular spots along the shady road, and Robert ran to help his father and brother scatter golden straw in thick crests around and under Buttercup. Joe wrestled the show box in place just behind Buttercup. For weeks before the fair, Charles had decorated it with vibrantly colored Amish star symbols around the sides, and he had perfectly painted large green letters spelling RHODE in the center of the lid. Then he had given the box several coats of glossy varnish. It was a work of art!

Robert ran back to help his mother carry the vegetables to the aisle beneath the bleachers where the gardening exhibits were arranged. In preparation for the event, he had used marker pens, crayons, and poster board to duplicate the Great Seal of the State of Indiana. A magenta and fuschia sunrise colored hills pink and violet while a cinnamon and ginger bison leapt over a log and a woodsman swung an ax to chop an emerald and turquoise tree above aquamarine grass dotted with pale yellow flowers. The kaleidoscopic depiction hung from tiny gold chains behind Ida’s oversized cornucopia basket with a huge cabbage in its maw as beans, corn, carrots, onions, kohlrabi, and turnips poured forth in spectacular array.

Having fed and watered Buttercup, Joe sauntered down the aisle and took a close look at the competition. He felt satisfied that the Mitchell heifer might take the honors away from Buttercup.

“That heifer of yours,” Russell said, as he chewed on a straw and squinted in Joe’s direction, “will put a smile on the judge’s face.”

Joe grinned. “So will yours,” he admitted.

Russell glanced appreciatively at the better heifer of the two that his boys were going to show. “She’ll be a contender,” Russell remarked.

“With the Holstein judging as the first event tomorrow morning, we won’t have too much longer to learn what happens,” Joe said.

Russell turned to Joe. “May the best heifer win!” he said, chuckling.

In the afternoon, the whole family helped give Buttercup a bath in one of the special pens set up for such purposes. She obviously loved being shampooed and rinsed, toweled and brushed, until her coat shone.

The day passed rapidly away. At dusk, the GMC and the Chevrolet caravanned back to Pine Village. That night, Joe hardly slept a wink. At four in the morning, he sat sipping instant coffee as his mind mulled over the finer points of Buttercup and her adversary.

Charles dressed in his show clothes. He wore jeans of the purest white and a new plaid shirt with white, avocado, and light blue squares. Buttercup wore a brand new halter of shiny black leather that Joe had purchased at considerable expense.

The crowd began gathering in the coliseum. Mr. Charles Coffman slid onto the bench before the electric organ on the platform stage, smiled at the audience, and launched into a rousing rendition of “Fine and Dandy.” He completed the song with a flourish and nodded to the families seated on both sides.

Mr. John F. McKee, county extension agent, clapped his hands and strode to the microphone. “Very fine! Very fine!” he exclaimed. He adjusted his silver hair and his equally silver glasses. “Now will the 4-H members bring in their Holstein heifers.”

Roger and Richard Mitchell led their cows into the ring. Then Charles brought Buttercup, who put on her best show for the crowd—and for the judge, a professorial gentleman wearing glasses, a dazzling white shirt, and what appeared to be snakeskin boots. In all, five cows were competing in the class, two led by girls.

Wearing a printed shirt and slacks for show day, Joe stood near one of the wooden panels leading to the judging area, his arms folded and his brows drawn in what Robert called his “eagle-eyed look.” Joe’s friend, Don Akers, strode up from the hog barn. Don’s cap was pulled forward, shading his eyes. His smile, as white as his T-shirt, lit up his tanned face as he rested one foot on the bottom board of the panel and put his hands on the top board. “Well, Joe, how does she look?”

As soon as Joe had seen Don, Joe had dropped his arms, tucked his thumbs just inside the upper edges of his back pockets, and leaned forward in a characteristic posture that meant he would now give the fullest consideration to whatever Don had to say. “I think she looks good,” Joe said, grinning and blushing from having complimented his own heifer.

Don offered, “It’s a small class—”

“—but there’s strong competition,” Joe added, shaking his head with worry.

At the same instant, Joe and Don looked across at Russell Mitchell, who waved at them. With one accord, Don and Joe raised and lowered the first fingers of their right hands in the universally accepted gesture of acknowledgment.

“Russell often wins this class, doesn’t he?” Don asked.

“Yes,” Joe answered, repeating, “yes, he does.”

“Don’t you wish you could tell what the judge is thinking!” Don exclaimed. “But maybe it’s just as well that we don’t know. He might be wishing he had a coin he could flip.”   

Joe laughed, removed his seed corn cap, ran his hand over his head, put his cap back on, and said, “We could give him a quarter, but people might think we were trying to bribe him.”

“What counts is what those boys and girls are learning out there,” Don said.

The judge had the 4-H members walk their heifers around the ring and then stand them. Buttercup needed no encouragement or instruction. When she walked, she strutted, and, when she stood, she posed. Passing his hands along their backs and flanks, the judge studied every detail of each cow.

He approached the platform. A hush fell throughout the coliseum. The judge pointed toward Buttercup and immediately pointed toward Richard’s heifer. “Number one and number two,” the judge barked.

Robert, who was seated beside his mother in the stands, could not be sure what the judge meant. He glanced worriedly from Ida’s face nearby to Joe’s face across the ring.

“I think Buttercup just won,” Ida said, but she was uncertain, too. From their angle, it was difficult to know which way the judge had pointed. Ida looked at Joe. He was frowning, staring straight ahead, and not moving a muscle, but Don was smiling.

The man with the ribbons in his hand stepped down from the platform and into the ring while the judge ascended the platform and strode toward the microphone.

Smiles crept across Ida’s face and Joe’s face and Robert’s face as the man with the ribbons came closer and closer to Charles. The man briefly held the champion ribbon over Buttercup’s neck before handing the coveted purple treasure to Charles, who grinned from ear to ear.

While the reserve champion ribbon went to Richard’s entry, the judge said, “These winning heifers are so nearly alike that they could be twins. It’s really splitting hairs to say there’s a difference between them. For me, it came down to personality. I like the attitude of the champion.” The judge paused; then he shrugged. “She just acts like a champion!” he declared, to the amusement of the crowd. Farm wives and farmer husbands turned toward one another and laughed heartily, nodding in agreement with the judge. “These 4-H’ers,” the judge continued, “deserve a great deal of credit for raising such fine animals, training them, and bringing them to our attention.” With that, he signaled the helpers to assist the boys and girls in leading their cows from the ring.    

Robert and Ida were standing with Charles at Buttercup’s stall before Joe and Don got there. Don’s wife, Mary, came up, almost on the run.

“I was helping in the Craft Building,” Mary said, nearly out of breath, “but I caught the tail end of the judging—” Mary hesitated a second, catching her pun and adding, “so to speak. Congratulations!”

“I have the camera,” Ida said, lifting the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye to show Joe.

“Let’s take Buttercup around the corner outside where there’ll be more light,” Joe suggested.

Charles held the lead strap while Buttercup took her position with the glistening championship ribbon draped across her back. Sun dappled the white-painted building, and Buttercup’s black-and-white coat wore a velvety sheen. The heifer fluttered her long lashes; she knew she was the champion. The snapshot would be preserved for years thereafter.

“That makes it feel like all the work was worth it, doesn’t it, Charles?” Don asked.

“Yes, it does,” Charles assented, while he led Buttercup back to her stall.

“Let’s all get together for dinner in the Cafeteria Building to celebrate,” Mary said to Ida and Joe.

“Want to meet there around 11:30?” Ida asked.

“We’ll see you there!” Mary smiled. “I need to get back to the Craft Building,” she said while excusing herself and dashing away.

Don said, “Now that we know the best heifer won, I can get back to cleaning up my hog pens!” With that, Don headed down the aisle.

“The gardening exhibits should be judged by now,” Joe said.

“We’ll go see,” Ida said. She and Robert marched off to the room, which had been locked during the judging. The wire door stood open. When they walked to where the Great Seal of Indiana stood in all its glory above the cornucopia, they could not believe their eyes. A big pink rosette with the words “Reserve Sweepstakes” on it was pinned to the basketry. An older 4-H member’s exhibit had taken the sweepstakes, but, with so many entrants, being second best was the same as winning.

Even as exciting as the reserve sweepstakes in gardening was, the family felt that the most thrilling experience had been watching Buttercup win her championship.

On the way home that night, Joe silently concluded there had been other champions that day: Don and Mary.