"Lead the way!" Lunch was very pleasant."Lead the way!" Lunch was very pleasant. By the time we got to the restaurant we had stopped our little word game and were busy getting to really know each other. By the time lunch was over I think we both felt as if we had known each other for a long time, at least I felt that way. Her name was Kerri, and she had a management position with the marketing department of a hosiery manufacturing company that was headquartered in the city in which we had met. It turned out that both of us were divorced, and while we had dated some, neither of us was really involved with anyone special at the moment. In fact, we were both rather dreading the coming Christmas holiday, wishing we had someone to share it with other than family. We made a date for the following Sunday, planning on spending most of the day putting up Christmas decorations in the old farm house I had recently purchased. The first snowfall of the year arrived Saturday evening just after dark, and continued throughout the night. By the time I got up Sunday morning the once productive farm had been turned into a scene out of a Currier and Ives painting. The white pines to the left of the old tobacco barn sagged under their burden of clinging snow, the bottom branches of the nearest one almost touching the sides of the sled which had at one time brimmed over with loads of freshly primed tobacco on its way to the barn for curing. The rusty tin roofs of the outbuildings on the other side of the winding driveway bore their caps of white proudly, the buildings themselves magicly transformed from relics of another time into decorated sentinels guarding the approach to the house. Slipping on old jeans and wrapping myself in a red and black mackinaw cruiser, I slid my feet into the rubber bottomed boots and brought in several armloads of fragrant, freshly-split hardwood for the fire we would enjoy the rest of the day. |