Birthday celebrations are best in the field

link Audra Brown

There once was a kid, who turned a year older.

Friends and family congregated and waved down the combine to stop at the edge of the field. They brought food and presents and a pinata to pummel.

The field was flat, no trees around, so they hung the paper mache box from the unloading auger. The big sister got in the cab and made the pinata dance by flipping some switches and swinging the auger around a bit.

The younger kids whacked away with a shovel or some other lever suitable for pinata destruction and eventually candy was collected and dug out of the sand.

I wasn’t born last night, but I may have indeed fallen off a truckload of hard red winter wheat. The combine stops for nothing but parts when it’s time to get the wheat out of the field and I’m one of the lucky souls who pretty much always has my birthday in the middle of it.

Many of my birthdays happened on a combine, in the field, and that’s OK. Some years, along with supper, there might be a plate of cake (or hopefully, pie) with a candle or two stuck somewhere. Being careful about where you light ’em and where you blow ’em out, so as not to set anything on fire unintentionally, it’s not a bad way to celebrate.

Some of the best birthday parties are the ones that weren’t really planned at all, and that tends to be the way it goes in the field.

A few years back, I got flagged down and pulled over at the end of the field, climbed down from the combine, and found a significant collection of family and friends gathered to sing me the classic song.

Siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends made for a fun and unexpected crowd and a darn good way to remember a birthday.

Audra Brown doesn’t always get a birthday party, but when she does, it’s probably in the field. Contact her at: [email protected]