Spring Is a Brave Yellow Wave, a Loud 'How'do!' and a Glint of Gold
Published: Friday, April 3, 2026
Spring often just burst onto the southern Illinois farm of my youth. One morning you'd see a green blade of something peeking through the bare ground by the mailbox and by the time you got off the school bus a day later a brave daffodil waved, welcoming you home.
Spring was also the season we'd see more of our neighbors who, like us, had spent most of winter close to home caring for animals and feeding always-hungry wood stoves. We only had three neighbors; two north of us and one south.
The southern neighbor was a younger brother of Jackie and Howard, the bachelor brothers who worked for us and lived on our farm. Their sibling, Earl, was a family man who operated heavy machinery. We usually saw him driving to or from work.
Our nearest neighbor to the north, Mr. and Mrs. M, were retired but still maintained a small flock of laying hens, fed out a butcher hog or two every year, and usually had a young steer searching for a meal in the thick curly dock of an overgrown pasture.
Spring's better weather meant I could restart the Saturday afternoon ritual of riding my bicycle the half mile to their house to carefully place four dozen eggs in a split-oak basket and return home without breaking any. The cost, a slim $1 for all, never varied.
Also invariably, one of Mrs. M's two at-home, bachelor sons would drive to our dairy barn—usually later that same Saturday—to buy two gallons of fresh milk. The cost: a slim $1.
Their nearby neighbors, and our third and final grouping of neighbors, lived in the shadow of the busy Missouri Pacific railroad. They, too, were bachelor brothers. Francis, who went by Tanty, was the oldest; Elvin was the middle brother; and William, who everyone called Woodrow, was the youngest.
They farmed a patchwork of land on the north and south sides of our farm so Tanty and Elvin—but rarely Woodrow—often drove past our house on their loud John Deere "A" either going to or coming from their seasonal tasks.
Each time they did, however, the unforgettable "pop, pop, pop" of their Johnny Popper tractor alerted my schoolboy brothers and me to run to our front yard to wave to whichever of the brothers was bringing excitement to our dull days.
Usually it was Tanty, a brown canvas hat pulled so low we couldn't see his eyes, who returned our waves with a casual, no-look flip of his right hand. Behind him trailed the implement of the season: a Deere two-row planter in the spring, a Deere rotary hoe in the early summer, a small two-bottom Deere plow in the fall.
Despite his eyebrow-riding hat, Tanty was known throughout our part of the Bottoms for planting the straightest corn rows anyone had ever seen. My father often admired Tanty's rifle-straight rows from his farm's miles of crooked rows.
"That's real art, boys," he'd say every year and every year he was right.
Elvin could not have been more different than his older brother. When he drove past on the "A," he'd rise half out of the tractor seat to throw us several wide, exaggerated waves, yell a loud "How' do!" and finish with a grin so big that a glint of gold often flashed from inside his mouth.
Today, any evidence of each of those farmsteads and the lives they sheltered, save Mr. and Mrs. M's, is gone. Most were burned or buried years, even decades, ago.
Their little yellow tombstones, however, emerge every spring to bravely wave a loud "How'do!" to another season of hope.
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