She knew,for example,more about baseball and its history than my father did and was always ready to argue the merits of Pee Wee Reese(her favorite shortstop)against Chico Carrasquel(mine).The one Mrs.Knapp incident that will always remain engraved in my memory didn’t happen at school,however.It happened on a deserted country road that divided corn-fields on the afternoon of the last day of that,my first fullfledged school year.To celebrate the beautiful weather,she’d taken us on a field trip,literally,through the bright yellow and green of corn and wheat stalks that were taller than I was（and than she was,too）but still two or three months shy of their harvest.
We wandered,as large groups of children are wont to do,our eyes catching with fascination on every bug and bird and leaf,every one of which,unfailingly,Mrs.Knapp had explanations for.We trekked along utterly untrafficked gravel and dirt roads that had been bulldozed just wide enough for tractors or a single car to travel.There were no trees:The Ilinois prairie land was flat,and we could see only the blue of the horizon and an occasional farmhouse rooftop beyond the fields of grain.We ate our lunch sandwiches along a roadside,listening to the rustle of the wind through the gently waving crops,the cries of the crows,the chirrs of the crickets and beetles.After lunch we walked more.Now,though,the trip had become repetitious—more fields,more crops,more birdcalls—and I,certainly among others,was becoming impatient.Then,it happened:There,in the absolute middle of nowhere（straight out of what,some years later,I would think of as The Twilight Zone or a Stephen King novel）,on the side of another single-lane road hundreds of yards from anything that resembled civilization,stood an ice cream stand.Nothing fancy,just a wooden counter six or eight feet wide,five feet high,two feet deep,with poles supporting a wood sheet that served as sun cover for the grizzled,but smiling,middle-aged man who stood behind it.