Fields

Photo: Ella’s sister ice skating on an Illinois pond — approximately 1980.

My field: As I’ve written, our rattly parsonage circa 1905 sat on the corner of a wheat field in Northwest Kansas, an acre lot carved from a quarter section, 160 acres of Kansas earth (the land was actually donated to the church by the owner’s grandfather for purposes of building the parsonage). In alternating years, this surrounding field grew Hard Red Winter Wheat or milo (a type of sorghum), and then rested in summer fallow for a year, a cycle so common for dryland farming. In the fall, Victor Lindstedt would encircle the field with a single, mile-long strand of electric fence and run cattle to graze on the wheat stubble or milo stalks. We frequently had bovine visitors right up to the edge of our driveway and yard, as the cows roamed the field, foraging for the fallen grain that inevitably escaped the combine a few months earlier. The virtuous grazing cycle continued–the field benefitted from its bovine visitors’ fertilizing efforts.  That field persists as farmland to this day.

Ella’s field: In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, during Wheaton’s transition from farm town to suburb, the field between the Palmgrens’ parsonage home and the Arrowhead subdivision remained undeveloped. Ella and her younger sisters could play for hours among the thirty or forty acres of prairie tallgrasses, catch crayfish in the ponds that would fill up following the spring rains, pick handfuls of wildflowers and cattails, ride their bikes over the dirt mounds, and build “forts” from assorted branches and materials drawn from around growing neighborhoods. Come winter, the largest summer pond in the field would be transformed into a skating rink and broom ball court. It was a place where the girls could disappear for the day, make mischief with kids from Arrowhead, and come back for dinner as the sun set, beckoned home by the ringing of a cow bell. As houses sprung up closer to the church, the number of friends increased, but the field persisted, undeveloped, for many years. Ella spent her elementary grades traipsing through this idyllic field to Wiesbrook Elementary School.

This field is now an orderly subdivision, homes for hundreds of Illinoisans; the gauzy remembrances of an eight-year old girl playing amongst the grasses linger, however.

Some fields persist. Others are memories.