MOONGLOW BY JOE

In South Dakota you can drive in nearly a straight line across I-90 for ten hours enveloped in standing corn and well kept farms yielding, if not essentially financial wealth, a wealth of purity wrung from hard work and an abiding faith in the Almighty. As a young man I worked briefly on a ranch, where the nearest town, of 500 people, was 14 miles. I remember going to the high school football game there, Saturday night 6 boys on a team. People in pick ups came from all over. The place put me in mind of the play/movie Picnic, where I felt like Hal Carter, except he was a college dropout, passing through a Kansas town, and I was a high school drop out,  passing through a Dakota town. But, the theme was the same, a girl, a one-room school teacher,   a family, who whispered mightily in her ear–don’t go off with this guy. She didn’t. I hitched a ride 300 miles south. But, the song I heard driving back from town that Saturday night, stuck. Here is how I remember it: