Dad used to say a properly planted field ought to look like a choir standing in formation.
This one looked terrible.
Some plants were knee-high.
Others were barely four inches tall.
There were long gaps where nothing had emerged.
In some places, several stalks crowded together.
The wet planting conditions had caused the seed trenches to harden.
Roots struggled to grow downward.
Weeds spread between the rows.
And the center-pivot irrigation system hadn’t moved once.
It was still sitting exactly where Dad had parked it the previous September.
One tire was flat.
The control panel wasn’t working.
On the east eighty, the crew had planted corn too densely for dryland conditions.
If summer turned hot, the crop would struggle badly.
Everybody in the county could see the problems.
Especially Butch Sedlacek.
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Butch was seventy-three.
He’d farmed beside Dad for nearly half a century.
The two men had spent decades arguing across their shared fence.
But they respected each other.
One Thursday evening, Butch found Phil inspecting the poor corn.
He stopped his pickup beside the field.
Then leaned against the fence.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Finally, he spoke.
“Your father would’ve said a blind mule could plant straighter than that.”
Phil sighed.
“I expect he would.”
Butch looked over the field.
“He’d have plenty to say about those gaps, too.”
“I know.”
“But he would’ve said something else.”
Phil looked at him.
“What?”
“He’d say the crop isn’t dead yet. It needs weed control, nitrogen, and irrigation. And it needs all three quickly.”
Phil looked toward the silent center pivot.
“I don’t know how to start it.”
Butch nodded.
“I figured.”
“I called someone. He said he could come back in two weeks.”
“You don’t have two weeks.”
Phil removed his cap.
Rubbed his forehead.
And stared at the machinery.
Then Butch said something that finally broke through his pride.
“There’s a man eleven miles from here who knows everything about that irrigation system.”
Phil lowered his eyes.
“I know.”
“Then why aren’t you calling him?”
Phil hesitated.
Finally, he admitted the truth.
“Because Dad left me the farm and gave Wade an old truck. How am I supposed to drive over there and ask him to help?”
Butch considered that.
Then replied, “The same way he’d have to come asking you. Slowly, with your hat in your hands.”
That evening, Phil drove to my house.
I was outside servicing the feed truck when I heard tires crunching along our gravel driveway.
I turned.
