I watched the woman steal three dozen eggs and a sack of potatoes while my shotgun sat loaded behind the door, untouched. It wasn’t the theft that froze me; it was the way she wiped her eyes before she ran.

I watched the woman steal three dozen eggs and a sack of potatoes while my shotgun sat loaded behind the door, untouched. It wasn’t the theft that froze me; it was the way she wiped her eyes before she ran.

My father built this farm stand in 1958. It’s nothing more than a weathered oak lean-to with a tin roof, sitting at the end of a gravel driveway that used to be surrounded by cornfields. Now, it’s surrounded by subdivisions with names like « Oak Creek » and « Willow Run, » where the only oaks and willows were cut down to pour the concrete foundations.