When I was a young girl, sometime around the middle of the century, wheat harvest occurred later than it does now at the approach of the new millennium. To celebrate getting the wheat in the bins, neighbors would bring icy cold homemade ice cream to our farm in Grant Township about two miles east of Lawrence. After dusk, our families would sit on bales of straw, the handiest lawn furniture of that era, and the bluegrass would tickle my bare feet. There, under the canopy of elms, we would keep our eyes low on the western horizon where from time to time showers of fireworks exploded like great Roman candles. These missiles were being launched out of Memorial Stadium on the [University of Kansas] campus because it was the 4th of July. Trying to keep ahead of the ice cream melting quickly in the heat of the harvest evening spelled a farm girl's contentment--and a farmer's too: only stubble remained in the wheat fields, and now it could rain, rain, rain.

Nancy Vogel also has a harvest story about Governor Alf Landon visiting the Schaake farm.