FIELD OF DREAMS

  Hard times in Montana-
  that seemed to be the norm.
  At least that’s all I ever knew
  from the moment I was born.
  But that all changed with World II;
  the country needed beef-
  beef and beans and sugar beets,
  and tons of winter wheat.

  All across Montana, ranchers like
           John  Mohr
   planted crops on pasture land
   they’d never cropped before.
   John Mohr’s lower forty
   was planted with seed beans.
   Eventually, this bean field
   became my “field of dreams”.

    Hard times in Montana
   Were harder, far, for some…
   some on the dole, or WPA
   and some were on the bum.
   A thirteen year old hopeful,
   I searched the town around.
   10 cents an hour for tending kids;
   that’s all I ever found.

   But that all changed with John Mohr’s
                beans.  
  Mohr was hiring local teens.
  50 cents an hour he paid…
  and ten hours every day.
   I hoed the beans in John Mohr’s field-
   a dreaming all the way.

   Ten hours a day of bending down,
    And hoeing through a row;
    attacking weeds at every step,
    and brandishing my hoe.
    But I was busy dreaming
    about the dough I’d make;
    too full of dreams to care if my
    poor aching back would break.

     I hoed a million weedy rows.
    With every ache I swore,
    “No more will I wear worn out
           clothes…
     I’m sick of being poor.
    This year I’ll wear a rich girls clothes
     for all the school to see…..
     for when I get my pay from Mohr,
     that rich girl will be me.”

      I’ve climbed a long way since those
            days,
     but memory sees me poor.
     And no check’s ever meant as much
     as what I got from  Mohr.
     The rancher made a profit.
     The soldiers got some beans.
     And that year, I was duded up
     Just like the high school queens.

 Bette Wolf Duncan
 copyright2000

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