Black and white photo of the author, his mother, brother and two sisters circa 1951.

Her most perfect day ever had started as just another day in March, 1947. They were farming eighty acres and living in a drafty house near Rodman, and had another two hundred acres over closer to West Bend. It was their first year of marriage, their first year farming. The young farm wife was making pancakes for breakfast that morning, as she had done often. They ate, then, did the farmer and his wife; he was a veteran of the recent war, a farm boy gone off to soldiering, and now he was home and he was going to farm. They put butter and syrup on those pancakes that morning - butter the color of the sun melting into the morning's sweetness.

If she wanted cold water, she had to pump it at the sink in a gray corner of the kitchen, had to work the long handle of the noisy pump by hand until water splashed into the pan in the sink, or into a pitcher; hot water she took from a big pot kept on the wood-burning cook stove. She prepared a pan of warm water for dishes, a little soap in it. Then she washed the breakfast dishes, as she had done often.

She was just finishing up dishes when the farmer came back into the house from chores. Ma, he said to her, you want to go with me to look at that oat seeder? They had seen a seeder advertised in the Farm Bureau's paper, a used oat seeder for sale over west of Emmetsburg. This was their first season at seeding and planting and when the soil warmed enough they would need an oat seeder.

Old Tom Maury's farm was five miles west of Emmetsburg. Emmetsburg was fifteen miles west of Rodman. The young farmer and his wife climbed into their 1940 Ford sedan. In those days you could buy an auto painted just about any color you wanted - that was the joke - as long as it was black. It was a black 1940 Ford. They were going to Tom Maury's over west of Emmetsburg and they were going to buy an oat seeder.

Old Tom Maury had farmed all his life. He lived in a big white house set square to the road. He was big and jovial and his eyes tended to well up when he laughed. He was near retirement age now and maybe that was why he'd put his oat seeder up for sale. The black Ford pulled into the farm yard and Tom Maury came out to greet the young couple who got out of the car.

The young farmer asked the old farmer if he was the fellow with the oat seeder for sale.

Yes.

Can we see it? the young farmer asked.

Yes.

And together the three of them, the old farmer, the young one, and the young wife, angled over to the machine shed where the seeder was kept. It was old. It had been well-used. Yet there still was a little paint left on it.

An oat seeder of this kind is set into the tailgate section of a farm wagon. A chain from the wheel of the wagon runs up to a sprocket on the seeder and spins a pair of trays to spray seed out in an arc of about twelve feet. Someone drives the tractor and pulls the wagon across a worked field. Someone else stays in the wagon, shoveling seed into the hopper. You go up the field and back. Repeat the process until the whole field is seeded. Up and back.

"In those days you could buy an auto painted just about any color you wanted - that was the joke - as long as it was black."

Now the young farmer stood at the edge of the light in the machine shed, not far from the seeder; he stood a little side-ways to the older man; he looked down at his shoes, then up into the face of Tom Maury.

How much would you be wanting for the seeder? the young man asked.

Old Tom said he'd probably have to have forty dollars.

The young farmer said he could probably give thirty five.

The old farmer looked down at his own shoes. He paused. There was a bird in the machine shed, making noise. Old Tom looked up into the face of the young farmer. Then he looked over at the softened roundness of the wife not yet four months pregnant.

On such a fine day as this, the old farmer said, for such a fine young couple, I suppose I could let it go for thirty five.

Together the old farmer and the young one set the oat seeder into the trunk of the Ford and tied it into place for the drive back to Rodman. The young wife had been studying Tom Maury's house and buildings and fields from her vantage point in the doorway of the machine shed and now she offered how it was a beautiful place he had. She might have been a little green with envy, and wistful; she might have thought Tom Maury had everything. And Tom - he was proud of his spread, sure. He beamed a little bit at the compliment. But maybe Tom envied their youth, their whole lives stretched out before them. That kind of envy was not something he could put in words.

There you go, then, he said instead, pulling tight the last knot in the rope holding the seeder in place.

They left Tom Maury's late in the morning, the young couple did, to drive home. They were headed back to their little rented farm. To a house without running water. With an outhouse for plumbing. With an icebox, not a refrigerator. In the trunk behind them, the oat seeder rattled and creaked. They would use it later that spring, putting in oats and flax. They'd continue using it as long as they raised oats, all their lives, as long as they farmed, but they didn't know that yet. Still, driving home, the young couple talked of the future. They didn't stop for lunch in Emmetsburg, they went home to bean soup. The sun shone bright all across the Iowa farmland. In the ditches along the roadside there was a faint dreaming hint of green. The young farmer had been to war and did not talk much ever; he was a man of very few words; but even he talked of his plans, his hopes, his dreams. The young wife, she talked too. They talked about everything, the whole life they'd share.

They might have talked about the children they would have. The woman would have told her farmer-husband that if he didn't want a dozen kids, he shouldn't have married her. They might have talked about finding a better farm to rent next year, better than what they were farming now, better soil, better buildings, more acreage; about a big, old empty house that would stand on the place, and how they'd proceed to fill it with children. They might have talked about buying a farm at some future time, once they'd gotten their feet under them good, once they had some experience behind them and some credit built up, once they had sons and daughters to help with the work.

They might have talked about old Tom Maury and how maybe they'd name their first-born after the old farmer.

They might have talked about the first refrigerator they would ever buy; how they'd get it at Wilson Hardware in West Bend, a new Kelvinator model called the Shelvador, how they'd pay for it with some of the one hundred dollars a month the young farmer had earned as a soldier fighting the Nazis.

They might have talked about earning a reputation for paying their bills. That would get them good credit. Why - in the year or so that the rural electric cooperative made such information public, three times it announced this young farm couple had been the very first to pay their electric bill this month, and this month, and this. Do you get that bill and always run right out to pay it? a jealous sister would ask the young farmer when she saw his name in the paper time and again.

They might have talked about grandchildren and great-grandchildren, about fifty-some years of married life, a life busting full of happiness, a life with its sadnesses as well.

Maybe they didn't talk about the lonesomeness in those early years. About the day the young farmer would be planting corn in the near field. His wife would be so lonesome for him, she would want an excuse to go out and visit with him. They would have had bean soup for lunch. She'd think: I'll take him a bean sandwich and talk with him while he eats it. Bean sandwich! the farmer would exclaim. Whoever heard of a bean sandwich! Well, the wife would say, in my family we have bean sandwiches all the time. We have bean soup for dinner and then a bean sandwich for supper. The young farmer would go ahead and eat his and the couple could talk.

Driving home from Tom Maury's farm, the oat seeder rattling in the trunk, maybe they didn't talk about the morning the young farmer and the hired hand headed off to work the other two hundred acres over near West Bend. The young wife still had chicken chores to do, but they didn't have to be done right away so she went back to bed. Along comes a knocking at the door and there's a young fellow who says he's selling magazines to work his way through college. I don't have any money for magazines, the wife would tell him, but I sure get bored out here. Tell you what, she says, you help me to do the chicken chores, and I'll play cards with you. So that's what she did. The young wife and that magazine salesman did up the chicken chores, then they went to playing cards all morning. Along about half past eleven, the wife told that young salesman that her husband and the hired man would be coming home for dinner at noon and he'd have to get moving along. It wasn't until years later she wondered what nosy neighbors might have thought about her entertaining a young fellow all morning while her husband was away. She was still that innocent.

Maybe they didn't talk about the coming August. The young farmer would be working with the threshing crew to get the flax in. His wife would see in the paper there was a 320 acre farm at Curlew for rent, from an important man in Graettinger. The young wife would have the nerve to call that important man and say to him: would you mind not renting that farm until my husband can come see you about it? And the important man would say: let me see if I have this right - you want me to hold off renting my farm until your husband has time to come see me? Yes, that's right, the young wife would say, we want to rent it.

The very first day they could, the young couple went to see the important man with the farm for rent. They sat with their straight backs in their straight chairs in front of the important man's wide desk. He told them what was obvious - they didn't have money enough to farm his land, they didn't have equipment enough, they didn't have sons to help with the work. It all sounded hopeless.

	" That morning of making plans for the rest of their lives, that day in spring, long ago now, in March, 1947."

The young wife spoke up. She said: if we had enough money and equipment and sons, we could afford to buy a place of our own, we wouldn't have to rent yours.

Let me call my brother, Charles, at the bank in Emmetsburg, the important man said. Charles said the young farmer had had an account at his bank for years and if he could get his father to co-sign the lease, the young couple could rent the farm.

Then two weeks later the couple would have a son and they would call him Tom and would send a birth announcement to the important man.

They started to fill up that big old farmhouse with children and every winter one more baby had to endure its draftiness - wind came in around the windows in the bedrooms, in all the rooms.

It would be another autumn, another winter approaching. The farmer would be out harvesting corn. His wife would be hauling the corn up to the crib, unloading it, taking the wagon back to the field for another load. As she waited at the end of the field for the corn picker to come around with a full load, she'd bend to pick up the corn which had dropped onto the headland. The cornpicker loses some ears when it is turned around.

One of those chilly autumn days, it would be a Saturday afternoon, the farmer's wife was out there again at the end of the field, waiting for another load of corn, bending to pick up ears that had dropped. Into the field would drive the landlord - the important man with his important Cadillac. The young wife would think this is as good a time as any to ask the very important man for storm windows for the second floor of the farmhouse. In winter, frost came into the corner of the ceiling of the stairwell and piled up two or three inches thick in there; something had to be done about it.

So she would ask for storm windows, the young wife would.

The important man would say: no, we can't buy you storm windows. We have forty-some rental houses and we couldn't possibly afford storm windows.

So the farm wife would bend and pick up an ear of corn. You can see her, it's almost like slow motion. She throws the ear into her empty wagon, just as she had been doing all day, just as she had done often, but she throws it hard. When the ear of corn hits the far side of wagon, nearly all the kernels explode off of it - she threw that hard and the corn was that dry. If you can't get us storm windows, the farm wife says to the important man, you can bet that's the last damn ear of corn I'm picking up for you.

The young farmer, when he heard about this exchange, would be furious. He would say: Mother, it's just things like this that's going to cause us to have to move.

That would be a Saturday afternoon. On Monday morning, even before the sun was up, 5:30 a.m., the phone rings in the drafty old farmhouse. The young wife answers. Ah, says the important man on the other end, I got the boss. I wanted to talk to you. Charles and I were visiting yesterday and we thought it would be a good idea if you had the fellow at the lumberyard in Curlew come out and measure the house for storm windows. You want to have him put storm windows on the first floor, too.

The couple farmed that land near Curlew for more than fifteen years. Every year they worried this would be the year they'd have to move. They didn't know that the important man would tell them, once they'd made a down payment on a farm of their own, that he would never, not ever, have made them move. But buy a farm they would, that couple, no longer as young as they once were.

They'd go to the bank in Emmetsburg to tell the very important man's brother, Charles, that they'd bought a farm. The hell you did, Charles would say. Your account is overdrawn.

Well, that's what we need to see you about, the farmer would say. We wrote another check yesterday, for a $5000 down payment, and we need you to cover it.

All this lay before the young couple, lay off in the future. As they drove home that morning in March, maybe they talked about how 1947 would not be a good year for farming, or maybe they did not talk of it. A storm on May 28 would put four inches of snow on their fields. The corn that had been cultivated already was killed. The corn that had not been cultivated, that corn survived. Did they talk about the hail storm that would come on the sixth of June, followed by another one two weeks later, chopping at the crops; then the heavy, wet weather until the Fourth of July? About the rest of the summer without a drop of rain? About the beans that had been replanted because of the hail and that wouldn't sprout until the end of September?

Maybe they didn't talk about this: after their first year farming, they had less money than they had started with. On their tax return for the year, they would include this note to the IRS: "As near as we can tell, you owe us money."

Never would they remember exactly what all they talked of that day, driving back to Rodman from Tom Maury's farm with the oat seeder clattering in the trunk of the old black Ford. They never talked to old Tom Maury again, though they drove past his farm a hundred times over the years. Every time they did, the farm wife would relive her most perfect day. That morning of making plans for the rest of their lives, that day in spring, long ago now, in March, 1947. The snow of winter was gone then - none was left in the ditches, none along the fence rows. As the young couple drove back towards their first home, they could smell the freshness of the new earth. They could feel the weight of the sun against their skin, the wind at the hairs of their forearms. The whole world was throbbing around them, through them, in them. Their whole life together was rolling out before them. Electric. As alive as anything can be.

Montag has published nearly 25 books and chapbooks, including a large collection of poems entitled Middle Ground. His most recent book is Curlew: Home - Essays & a Journey Back, a memoir about growing up on a farm in Curlew, published by Midday Moon Books.

In recent years, Montag's essays have appeared in a variety of magazines including: The Baybury Review, Bellowing Ark, Cream City Review, Flyway, The Heartlands Today, The Journal of Unconventional History, The Midday Moon, New Stone Circle, North Dakota Quarterly, Northeast, and Rosebud.