My Senior Year

Just as school was about to end in late spring of 1970, my dad and I returned from the ranch one Saturday night. I had been working on the D-6 Caterpillar all day, pulling about twenty-four feet of an implement called a digger.

In a field we called "the bottom," there was always a lot of heavy straw, especially from the large straw piles that an attachment dropped that we pulled behind the John Deere Harvester. It appears in the picture below behind the combine.

The implement not only collected a lot of the straw--both large stems and chopped pieces--but some grain kernels also collected in the piles that came out of what they called a Foster Wagen.

In the spring, it was difficult to farm through what the cattle left behind, so we would burn as much as possible while we were plowing the field with the digger, a plow with curved shanks and blades that tore and turned over the damp soil and prepared it for the next crop.

There was no cab on the tractor--no protection from the dust or soot. It was very uncomfortable, and not only did dust cover me at the end of the day, but the burning straw also dusted me with a heavy, black covering of soot.


It was just getting dark on a Saturday night. Dad and I arrived in the '63 Chevrolet pickup. I stepped out of the truck, but as I did, I noticed that a carload of girls from my class slowed down and were driving by our house on Bannock Street. I heard some laughter. Their car stopped.

Without waiting a minute, I walked briskly across the lawn to get to the sidewalk that led to the back of the house. I wanted to hide.

I was completely covered with dirt and soot. I looked like one of those actors in old movies where white guys painted their faces and tried to sing songs about the South.

I didn't make it across the lawn. I heard my dad's voice.

"Jon, I think they want to talk to you." When I turned around, my Annie was standing behind me. My dad had a wide grin on his face.

Ann asked me to go with her to a party her friends were having, and that is how we began dating. The picture at the top was what she looked like--except for the yearbook hairdo--when we dated. And that date began a series of dates that lasted until mid January.

When we went to a school dance together around my birthday on October 27, 1970, my dad had just had Perry Ward install my cassette car stereo. It was a Sony, and a cassette player was the "new technology."

I was playing Buffalo Springfield's Greatest Hits album entitled Retrospective. Not only did my Annie know the name of my favorite band, but she named all of the musicians: Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin. Knowing the drummer Dewey was amazing.

I knew she was the girl for me.