It was the summer of 1996 my friends Jackie, Mary, Amber and I had just graduated from high school and I was headed to The Ohio State University in September. Around Perry County though it was just another summer like all the others since I had gotten my license, it was square baling hay all day and tractor pulls all night. I am going to be honest in the fact that the only reason I ever attended tractor pulls was because there were a lot of boys there. I am embarrassed to even say that after attending what would probably be 100’s of pulls I really don’t understand the difference between stock, super stock or pro stock and I still don’t care to learn. I do know that my brother Jason and I had a plan to make some second cutting hay as fast as we could this hot dry day in August, so we could make it to the Gun Club Pull in the southern part of the county that night. That meant if I ran this old Massy Ferguson in 3rd gear we should be finished in time to shower and make the pull before the stock trucks pulled and we did. Jason always drove separate from me. Jackie and Mary would stop and pick me up and we would stop for dinner at McGaugheys (plain cheeseburger and Mt. Dew milkshake for me) before heading to the pull. We pulled into the field of ruts and patching grass in Jackie’s white escort, one of the only cars there. Jackie and Mary headed to the track to see the pull. Because I had little interest in the pull I climbed in the back of someone’s pick-up truck. Soon after that I looked up and saw the cutest boy I had seen in a while. This boy was walking up in a pair of key bibs and a clean white t-shirt with a high and tight haircut and a pair of Justin Lacers on. I had never seen him before. But he was with another guy that Mary had told me previously in the summer she had seen at orientation at Ohio University - Lancaster. I assumed we were all the same age. The guy in bibs soon climbed into the back of the truck and soon we were sitting there for so long the sun was setting and everyone else had went to the track to see the finals of the truck pull. I learned that this guy’s name was Jake, his family had a beef farm on the other side of Lancaster in Fairfield County and there was something different about him. Somewhere near the end of the conversation the fact that I was leaving for college in a couple months and he would be starting his sophomore year in high school. What? I went to find Jackie and Mary they would want to know where I had been most of the evening and the outcome of this conversation. I didn’t see Jake for several months after that and really didn’t talk to him much for a couple years. *To Be Continued*
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