One mornin' I stumbled out of the bedroom, half awake.

There was Hutch, sittin' at the kitchen table readin' the newspaper. The mornin' sun was streamin' in and it shone on his hair, makin' it glint like gold. It reminded me of the time Ma took me and Nicky out to visit cousin Sadie in Kansas.

Cousin Sadie was a WAVE during World War II. That's how she met Jim Murphy at a USO dance at the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia. He was a sailor about to go through submarine trainin'. It was love at first sight. She had wanted to be a mermaid as a kid, so she thought the idea of Jim livin' underwater for weeks at a time was sexy. Seems a little weird to me, but there's no explainin' love.

Anyway, Sadie and Jim got engaged before he was sent to the South Pacific. He came back safe and sound after the war and they got married. He was a farmboy from Kansas, so he took her back there and they bought a farm just up the road from his parents' place, where he grew up. So poor Sadie, who loved the ocean so much, wound up in the middle of wheat fields in the middle of the continent. She said she didn't mind, though, because wherever Jim was, was where she wanted to be. Ma said Sadie always sounded happy when they talked on the phone. I guess she was—she had six kids with Jim!

They all had red hair, just like Sadie and Jim did. Well, what would ya expect? Jim said that was good, 'cause it made it easier to find them—the red hair stood out in all that yellow wheat. 'S true. I remember playin' with our cousins when we visited them, and me and Nicky were just as easy to find, because our dark hair stood out even more than their red. We had fun runnin' between the rows of plants, tryin' to find each other.

Nicky cried when we were leavin'. I didn't cry; I was too old for that. But as Ma drove away in the old Studebaker, through miles of wheat fields, I remember thinkin' how much I loved seein' all that gold, and that someday I was goin' to have my own farm.

Well, life's funny. Ma sent me to Bay City to live with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al when I was a teenager, and there ain't no wheat fields out here! But I still got my gold—Hutch. So often when the sun shines on his hair, I think of those wheat fields. That's what happened that mornin' I was just tellin' ya about. I came out to the kitchen and saw him in the sunlight and it reminded me of that farm I wanted. Oh, I don't mind not havin' the farm. I feel like Sadie—it doesn't matter where I live, as long as my love is there.

So I walked over to my farmboy—Hutch's grandfather had a farm in Minnesota, and Hutch spent a lotta time there growin' up—and slipped my hands into that silky, light gold hair. He looked up at me with those big baby blues full of love. Well, what could I do? Even though we had been up till 2 am makin' love, I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the bedroom for another roll in the hay. Ya know I can't resist 'im when he looks like that. Guess that's why me and Hutch get it on a whole lot.