Every fall, the onion trucks would come. You could see them lumbering down the open country roads of Hooper, Utah. Their beds were piled impossibly high with enormous onions pulled fresh from the surrounding fields. They were dusty and golden, their papery skins catching the autumn sunlight as the trucks rolled past farms and pastures and eventually made their way through the one four-way stop in our little farm town. And then they would come to Pig Corner.
Pig Corner was exactly the kind of place you would expect to find in a small farming community—a sharp bend in the road known by a name that probably made very little sense to anyone who hadn’t lived there. The turn was tight enough that when those big onion trucks came around it, something wonderful occasionally happened. They lost their onions. Not all of them, of course. Just a few. One would tumble over the side of the truck. Then another. Sometimes several. They would hit the pavement with a thud, bounce once or twice, and then go rolling wildly toward the shoulder of the road, finally disappearing into the tall grasses and weeds. And I thought it was absolutely wonderful.
For the ten years we lived in Hooper, there was something about autumn that made me want to drive Pig Corner just to look for onions. Sometimes there were only one or two resting along the side of the road, enormous and beautiful, waiting to be discovered. Other times we would hit the
jackpot. But the very best days—the ones that felt almost magical—were when we found ourselves driving directly behind an onion truck as it approached Pig Corner. We knew what might be coming. Around the bend it would go, and then suddenly, there they were. Onions! Toppling over the side, bouncing across the road, rolling into the grass.
I would pull over. I had too. The doors would fly open, and out we would go. My children and I would scramble along the roadside, laughing as we chased those enormous rolling onions through the weeds. I am sure people driving past wondered what in the world we were doing. We didn’t care. We had onions to catch. I can still hear my children’s laughter. I can still see them bending down in the grass and proudly lifting some gigantic onion they had discovered as though they had just uncovered buried treasure. And to us, maybe they had.
Those onions became part of us. Part of our life in Hooper. Part of our family’s story. They didn’t stay on Pig Corner for long. We carried them home in our arms and piled them into our kitchen, where somehow those funny roadside treasures began weaving themselves into the ordinary rhythms of our family. They were chopped and stirred into dinners eaten around a table filled with conversation and laughter. They disappeared into freezer meals tucked away for rainy days. They were diced and blended into homemade spaghetti sauce and canned salsa, filling the kitchen with that deep, unmistakable smell of fresh onion. They simmered slowly in winter soups while snow fell outside our windows, adding a rich, earthy flavor that always seemed like our secret ingredient. Some even became gifts. We filled jars with the things we had made, tied
bows around their rims, and carried them to friends and neighbors at Christmastime. And somewhere inside those jars was the joy from those Pig Corner onions.
It amazes me now that something so simple could become so deeply woven into a family. An onion. An ordinary onion that fell from the back of a farm truck onto the side of a country road. But joy has a funny way of hiding in ordinary places. Sometimes it is not waiting for us in the grand moments we plan for. Sometimes it is rolling through the weeds on the side of the road.
We don’t live in Hooper anymore. I haven’t followed an onion truck around Pig Corner in many, many years. My children have grown, and life has carried us down roads far beyond that little four-way stop. But I can still see those onions fall. I can still hear the laughter. I can still picture my children jumping from the car and running through the grass while I followed behind them, all of us completely delighted by something that probably looked ridiculous to everyone driving past. I can almost smell them still—that sharp, crisp, earthy smell of something freshly pulled from the soil. God’s little gifts from the earth, grown beneath wide Utah skies and carried from a farmer’s field to the back of a truck, to the side of Pig Corner, and somehow into the story of our family.
Sometimes I wonder about those onion truck drivers. Did they see us in their rearview mirrors? Did they smile as they watched that mother and her children pull over and chase after the onions they had lost? Maybe, every once in a while, one of them took Pig Corner just a little sharper than necessary. I’d like to think so. I’d like to imagine a farmer looking into his mirror, seeing a few onions tumble from his truck, and smiling because he knew exactly what was about to happen behind him. Maybe he knew something I am still learning all these years later: life is meant for moments like this.
For country roads and farmers’ fields. For Pig Corners and rolling onions. For children’s laughter and car doors flying open. For pulling over when everyone else keeps driving. We spend so much of our lives trying to get somewhere. We hurry through our days, focused on the destination ahead of us, while some of the sweetest moments God places in our path are quietly rolling toward the side of the road.
Slow down. Take a deep breath when you drive past the farmers’ fields. Roll down your window and breathe in the earth. Wave to the produce trucks. Laugh when something unexpected tumbles into your path. And when joy comes rolling your way, don’t worry too much about what the people driving past might think. Pull over. Open the doors. Gather the people you love most. And always, always chase the onion.
still becoming,
Juli
