-Pa, how do you get the coverin’ disks to hit the furrow?

-They jest do, son.

-But you never look, pa.

-Keep your eyes on the horizon, boy. Sound advice always.

-But how do you know?

-Waste of time to tend that which tends itself, son. Got to trust to God and yourself. Who else you gonna trust, exactly?

-Did you learn what goes on behind you?

-Same as you, son, riding and asking a lot of damn fool questions. My pa said that if the nattering ever stopped in his wake, he’d know enough to turn the rig back towards the house and arrange a funeral. Nothing else would shut my piehole.

-You’ve gone quiet now, pa.

-What a man says has meaning, son. Gotta choose your words careful. Can’t get two drinks in you and start a ruckus with a neighbor you might need someday. Makes a man pick through his words like picking through the taters looking for eyes. Don’t pay to plant them if the seed ain’t there, or the ground is like to be barren. Children can talk as they like.

-I’m a man now, pa.

-Shaving don’t make a man, son. You’ll go quiet in your turn. Don’t rush it. Talk to that girl, the one from away, at the Grange Hall fetes a bit first. Or you’ll never get anyone to hound you from the back of the tractor for your own.
And sakes; keep your prayer handles between the hoppers or you’ll muck up the line of the pickers and the furrow opener. I can feel it.