I met George Whitaker at the county fair in 1964.
He was showing a Hereford steer. I was showing a rhubarb pie.
His steer got reserve champion. My pie got blue ribbon. He came over to the pie tent afterward with his ribbon pinned to his shirt and said, “I hear yours beat mine.”
“Pies and steers aren’t in the same category,” I said.
“Everything’s in the same category if you look at it right,” he said.
I didn’t know what that meant. I still don’t, entirely. But I married him two years later.
George’s family farmed too. Two hundred acres of corn and beans west of town. But George had been to Korea, and then to college on the GI Bill. He came home with a degree in economics from Iowa State and a head full of ideas.
He got a job at First National, the big bank in the county seat. Twenty miles away. He wore a suit every day and drove a used Ford.
