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THE COUNTRY BOY
161

wife, Aunt Lou, was about the best cook in all that part of the country, and I suppose Uncle Ben had gotten used to eating her cooking and couldn’t stand for anybody else’s; in fact, it was Uncle Ben’s pride and pleasure on state occasions to invite any dignitaries of the day to eat of Aunt Lou’s lunch, and if they knew Uncle Ben’s family at all well, they always accepted, as the meal was one you would seldom forget.

On this occasion Uncle Ben drove into the barnyard, and from the wagon in the heat of the sun he removed the gorgeous lunch that his wife had been two weeks preparing and carried it into our wagon shed. There it lay quietly hid under the seat of our old buggy, which stood there year after year, seldom being used other than that the chickens roosted on the back axle. I had been downtown early and had hunted up my friend Bob Patton, the undisputed champion sprinter of the county. We searched in vain for a foot race, but every sprinter was shy, and I, as his manager, saw that the day was going and we would get no race, so I suggested that we take his saddle horse and hitch to our old buggy and drive to