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About Magic Beans
When I was little, my dad would take the time while stacking bales of straw in the barn to build steps and pathways, arranging some of the bales to make tables and benches. Mom would lend us tablecloths, and the barn was the site of many a tea party for my sister and me. I grew up in a time and place where blue-ribbon imaginations could grow faster than any magic beans. This is not the barn of my childhood. It's the Wickfield Pavilion, an historic sale barn in southeastern Iowa, near another piece of land that is dear to my heart. But even now, when it's been many years since I lived on a farm, I can see myself hosting a tea party in that round barn. The guest list would include all the people pictured in this piece: The younger selves of my sister and me, Mom and Grandma, and a boy in overalls and a straw hat who looks like my father but might once have climbed a beanstalk.
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