I saw acres of machinery where a man who took a wrong turn into the liberal arts can contemplate a life he'll never live and stuff he'll never own. A beautiful, 29-foot flatbed trailer with pine flooring on which you could carry hay bales or a tractor. A 4-by-4 double-cab pickup you could pull your trailer with. And beyond it an acre of FFA-restored tractors that put an older Midwesterner in a very thoughtful mood. The green John Deeres and Olivers, the red Farmall and Allis-Chalmers, the yellow Minneapolis Moline. The steel bucket seats on a coiled spring, the exhaust stacks, the brake and clutch pedals. You could climb up in that seat and be 14 again. I was happy back then, pulling a manure spreader across the corn stubble on a September day, big clots of matter flying through the air. I miss those days.
And then I wound up at an open-air brick pavilion for the llama judging. Llamas are gentle, dignified beasts, and here were four of them being shown by teenagers. The animals' military bearing, heads high, their stately gait, their dark, soulful eyes - and it was sweet to see them being handled lovingly by teenagers. Pigs are something else - you can see how a person might need to whack a pig. But nobody would ever whack a llama. According to a poster, they are raised for "fiber, showing, carting, guardians and companionship."
