I’ve wanted to go on a hayride since Annette Funicello did – in maybe "Spin and Marty" or maybe "Annette" — not sure which (these were Mickey Mouse Club stories, for those who are too young to recall.) Today I got my hayride – but it wasn’t the romantic kind with the guitars and the moonlight.
Instead, we went with two amazing children and their equally amazing parents to a pumpkin festival. There was a hayride (pulled by a tractor, not horses.) There was a petting zoo with goats and lambs and pigs. There was a simple wooden climbing thing in the shape of a train, with a tunnel and a caboose and a dining car (picnic table in a kind of box.) It was just wonderful and, nostalgic as we are for the early years of our own kids, we were ridiculously grateful to be included in this family adventure.
We also were amazed that there were no souvenirs. No muzak. No fancy, produced play apparatus. The same stuff at this orchard/pumpkin patch/pre-school heaven must have been there for 25 years. And the kids were having a blast. They didn’t need fancy stuff or animated stuff or even stuff with fresh paint — just a gorgeous fall day, parents (and their friends) who loved them and their imaginations. I know this sounds really corny but after years at Disneyland and Disneyworld and Universal City (and we had fun — we did) I was just so struck by the simplicity of this place and its impact on these very very happy kids running around in a big field, putting pumpkins into wheelbarrows to take home, eating popcorn and racing their parents up and down the paths.
No moral to this except if you have friends you like who love your kids, bring them along.