Farm Party!

My friend Luke has a pretty sweet setup- his parents live on a farm about an hour and a half from St. Louis. The distance means that he has to live in his own place in town, but can still go back home occasionally without too much difficulty, and the fact they live on a farm means that he can host farm parties there.

I could easily write an entire blog post just about this community. To be brief- Germans were one of the first settlers of this area of Missouri. They tended to be farmers, and they tended to keep a relatively tight cultural community and not move around too much. Suffice it say, my friend's family have been on that particular farm for the past 200 years, most of the roads out there have German names, and it seems as though many of the people's names on business signs and billboards were Germanic. Luke's father's side is totally Germanic, although his mother's side is more Alsatian. The food customs endure- the language; not as much.

Anyway, Luke invited a big group of students and friends out including Saori and I on this cold Saturday, and in the end, about thirty kids came out. He provided the hot dogs and associated paraphernalia, and also the makings for smores. He also had a huge fire pit with a bunch of logs which he attempted to light with copious amounts of lighter fluid. Unfortunately, lighter fluid will only take you so far, and so the fire died because none of the logs caught. So, Eagle Scout Badge firmly clenched in my teeth, I kindled a fire in the pit with hay, twigs, and sticks, and that burned long enough to get the smaller logs going.

To his credit, Luke did haul in a serious quantity of wood for an amazing fire. It was actually the nicest fire I've seen in awhile. Darkness fell, the stars came out, and the fire burned really hot. The guests brought beer, and we all settled into a pattern occasionally moving outside to inside, talking, dancing, consuming alcohol, trying to not light our mashmallows on fire, playing cards etc. It was a cold night, but the fire was very hot.

I ate too many marshmallows, too many hot dogs, and drank too many beers. I ended up playing Durak with Brian and Jennifer until a little after 3 am. I'd brought tents, but everyone was welcomed to find spaces inside, so we played human tetris with our sleeping bags in one of the living rooms, and slept where we could. I'm happy we were not outside- the next morning brought a freezing rain.

It was incredibly generous of Luke and his parents to open their house to all of us. Very little got broken, and Luke's mom kindly got out a largest bottle of aspirin I've ever seen and cooked us a lot of eggs and bacon for breakfast. I say "us" loosely because I was cowering in my sleeping bag feeling like I'd been hit with a truck for almost the entire morning. And I wasn't the only one. After a few hours I was able to sit up without feeling like I was going to reacquaint my lap with my dinner, and we left before ten.

The ride home was pretty miserable. It was a huge effort to focus on the road and the cars in the mist and rain, because I was pretty carsick the entire ride back. If anyone as much said "Jack Daniels" I would have lost it. At least my memory tends to keep me from making this mistake more than twice in the same year.