The Land

This is another response to the "objects that tell the story of your life" prompt. I think there's some wordiness or confusing stuff here, so if you have any specific examples or tips on how to fix it, that would be great. I also want to know what sentences/sections aren't particularly important- I'd like to add some more specific memories but I'm over the word count by a *lot* currently.

Sometime back when I was around the age of  9 or 10, my family purchased a new vehicle. I remember opening the shades in my living room and seeing the new Ford pickup truck in its dull golden glory for the first time. I was very excited, especially since I knew what it was for. Today, this truck represents a large part of my childhood that I look on happily.

A little before this happened, I recall seeing a bag of dirt on my dad's office room. Yeah, just a bag of dirt. Young me was completely confused, and even more confused when my dad heated up the dirt in the oven. So, naturally, I asked him what he was doing. He was actually testing the soil to see how fertile it was. This still didn't clear things up completely, but he then revealed he was considering purchasing seven acres of farmland on the outskirts of Homer, a small village not too far away from our hometown of St. Joseph. (If you don't know where Homer is, it's about 15 miles east and 5 miles south of Urbana.) 

At the time, this was very surprising. What was the land going to be used for? Were we going to become farmers? Well, not really. Instead, the seven acres would be a combination of an orchard and a garden, along with some free space. This made sense, as forestry was one of my dad's largest passions. However, my siblings and I would have to start liking it too, or else the upcoming summer was going to be quite rough. 

More parts of my dad's project began appearing soon after. We received many, many large packages in the mail with "This side up" stickers. These were hundreds of baby trees that we would have to plant very soon. Summer was right around the corner, and as soon as school ended, it was time. Every day, my brothers and I were woken up early in the morning. We then tossed on our clothes, grabbed some water bottles from the refrigerator, and hopped into the truck. Unfortunately, we usually held our dad back time wise and got going later than he wanted, meaning that by the time we got to our to-be orchard in Homer, or "The Land" as we call it, it was already searing hot. While it might have sounded all bad up until this point, it actually wasn't bad at all. My dad would do most of the hard work- digging holes, putting in trees with moss, filling in the holes, then giving the plants sufficient water every day for the next few weeks. While my brothers and I were responsible for those duties some of the time, we tried our best to get out of them. With so much space, there were so many things to do, and we made sure to make use of that. In particular, there are a few spots on this plot of land that I remember vividly. 

The plot of land wasn't a perfect rectangle- in fact, we had to buy a separate piece of land just to reach ours. This was called "Outlet A", but my brothers and I knew it better as a soccer field. Every day, we would bring our soccer gear with us and play in this space, using an ancient swing-set frame from our house as a goal. Many days, we were joined by kids in the surrounding neighborhood, and we would play 2-on-2 or 3-on-3 matches with them. However, soccer matches in the heat were very tiring, and we would have to find shade. Very conveniently, Homer has a water park (not a swimming pool, but a concrete area with various fountains) that was very close to us, and it was a great way to cool off (although having wet clothes in the heat afterwards wasn't fun at all). When we weren't going to the water park to cool off, though, we were at the corner of our land. A new house was in the process of construction for about a year (I think it was cancelled at one point) and so there was a gigantic pile of dirt that conveniently overlapped into our property. This was a whole lot of fun in itself- running up and down it, making dirt balls and throwing them, etc. However, the thing that made it unique was the roof of a truckbed, which was sitting there on the side of the dirt mound for some odd reason. It was placed at such a perfect position that my brothers and I could all fit under it, chilling in the shade and telling each other how badly we wanted to go home.

While I may have complained about the uncomfortable car rides or muggy summer heat back then, I realize that I actually enjoyed those summers very much. Whenever I look at the truck I used to dread, it brings back those good memories.