MAGIC IN THE MIDWEST - IF YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND IT

Meeting places are very special places in our lives...!

For instance there's our eyes...our smiles...our lips...our thoughts. Then there are farm stands. That's right, farm stands. Those little crate & barrel edifices are the meeting places between city and country, urbanite and farmer. the world of glass & steel and the world of earth & harvests.

Speaking for myself, I've loved farm stands since the first day Dad stopped at one with me back in 1938. Back before the War. Back when America still seemed simple and uncomplicated. Oh, the Depression was still hanging on, but Dad liked to travel the back roads if Illinois where he could briefly escape the turmoil to pick some wonderfully fresh lettuce, and corn, and especially tomatoes. His mother came from Sicily where you make just about everything with big, plump tomatoes. Like she would always say: "God didn't make them a mistake..."

Farm stands today stand in a far more complicated and hurried world; still, they seem to have the same sweet
smells of God's green earth. They are still an unhurried meeting place between busy city-dweller and patient farmer-family. And yes, there still are snug family farms in the Midwest if you know how to find them. Dad always did.

It begins the moment you stop and park. You find yourself easing -- not rushing -- out of the car and ambling over to smell the produce. The folks behind the stand are usually in their 60s or 70s. You know, when you start having the time to do lyrical things like this. They are spectacularly proud of their crops. The great leafy heads of pale-green lettuce, the tasseled cobs of fresh-plucked corn, the neat pyramids of squash and radishes and cucumbers, plus of course those arrogantly red fat tomatoes insisting you hold them in your hand to really experience their great worth.

The earthen fragrances here are so rich and uncompromising, you just know you're in a slightly different place than any other in the whole wide world. And you love it. You really really love it. To the point you kinda hate getting back into your car, because cars are city and farm stands are magic!

Dad died many many years ago. Mom too. That make me an orphan, and frankly I hate it. Maybe you know what I mean?

But those unpretentiously majestic farm stands still stand. All down the byroads of the Midwest. Still a grand meeting place where you can meet the earth. Meet the slow. And in some inexplicable ways, meet Mom and Dad one more time.