The thrill is gone

          In 1953 mom, dad and I went on the only one week vacation that I can remember. We headed to the Missouri Ozarks to go fishing. Along the way we stopped to taxi mom's aunt to her farm in Washington Missouri. We spent the weekend there and I fell in love with the farm. It had 160 acres with pastures, woods, creek, pond to fish in and swim in, barn, grain bin, outhouse and lots of lizards to try and catch. The only heat was a cook stove, water was from a pump in the front yard and there was no electric service. I had free run of the place and I loved it. That set my dream to have a farm myself. The rest of the vacation seemed to lack what the farm had for me.
          Life went on with discovering girls, working jobs, joining the navy and seeing half of the world, getting married, raising a child, but in the back of my mind the idea of getting my own farm never left me. Then in 1989 I finally found a farm that I could afford and the dream came true. Joyce's mother told her this was just a phase I was going through and it would pass. I suppose she was correct, because 27 years later I grew old, could not keep up with all the work and grew tired of being there. As B.B. King sang, "The thrill is gone."
          Now the farm has been sold and we are in a town, living in an apartment (something I prayed for years would never happen again) and we are relieved to be gone and happy to be where we are. The odd thing about this is the people who bought the farm are now just beginning to live the same dream I had 63 years ago and they are moving away from the same town we have moved into and they lived just a few blocks away from where we are now.