Gerald Foltz is up in his combine, harvesting his family’s land in Greeley, Nebraska – as he’s done for decades now – when his phone rings. It’s a chilly Tuesday evening in November and the sun is already down.
“Is this Gerald?” the voice on the other end of the phone asks.
“Could be,” Gerald replies, in a non-committal-yet-still-congenial manner, almost with a laugh.
And so begins a 15-minute conversation that wanders all over the place, from the mundane to the poignant and back again.
Gerald has already harvested his family’s soy beans. Right now, he’s doing the corn.