Can't Even Imagine

All summer the news for farmers has been bad because of the drought. As I have been driving by the farms in Iowa and Nebraska I have noticed the brown fields of corn that almost was" as high as your eye on the Fourth of July". But it never made it ...fields and fields of brown corn stalks.

I thought that I understood the heartbreak of the drought. Forget the financial loss , it just must be a real bummer to look out and see your crop of corn failing day after day because of a lack of rain. Now, I have noticed that different farmers seem to have planted fields of soy that appears green and good to me...so they have a strategy and maybe they have some success for this tough year.

But on this trip across the 80 I have noticed a even more heartbreaking aspect of a crop that just won't come in. The sun was going down ...then the sun was gone and I was driving in a twilight and there are farmers on combines cutting all of those fields of dead corn. During the \day it first came to my notice as an outline of the field, sort of like mowing our yard....mow all around the edge first. Then you would see the combi\ne and a big truck off in a distance cutting and dumping the result into the big truck...in a huge cloud of dust .And, during the twilight the  combines had their lights on in an eerie shadow dance of light,dust and odd shadows.

So, not only is your crop bad...but now you have to go out and chop it all down so you can plant something else ...it just can't be easy. The proportions are staggering////remember as I view the farms from the highway I see only a sort half mile swath of what must be just amazing areas of cornfields. I can't even imagine how they go out and work from dawn and into the night cutting away the dead  corn stalks.

As I seem to have been the night shift lately I have found I enjoy being a denizen of the night. No Traffic!...well not as much anyway. Cruising through St.Louis,Kansas City,Austin and Dallas at two or three am is real cool. These big cities have some very cool areas and with the trusty Rand McNally trucker GPS guiding me along the way It is very cool to cruise on through floating gears and listening to some good old George Strait "Write This Down"or Neal Young "Southern Man" along the way.