The Hay Truck With the Wrong Address
A delivery of twenty tons of alfalfa went to a wedding venue by mistake, and the groom's family thanked us for the centerpieces.
The order was simple. Twenty tons of alfalfa hay, delivered Friday afternoon, stacked in the east shed. I had made the call myself and read the address back twice. I should have read it three times.
At two o'clock I got a call from the driver. His voice was careful. He said he was parked in front of a very large white barn that had been decorated with ribbons and mason jars, and he wanted to know if this was the right place. I said no, my barn was a dull gray with a tin roof. He said, in that case, he had a problem, because the people here had already started carrying bales inside.
I drove over. Fifteen minutes later I pulled in behind a wedding venue north of town to find about forty guests in their good clothes passing hay bales hand to hand along a line, laughing, setting them against the walls as seating. The bride, a young woman in a long white dress and boots, was standing on top of a stack, directing traffic like a general. 'The caterer said it was rustic,' she told me, 'and this is the most rustic thing I have ever seen.'
I apologized. She said please do not, because the photographer wanted it for the album. I offered to pay for the cleanup and she said the groom's uncle had a skid steer and a good time. We worked out a fair split of the load, and I left them about six tons, which she used as the backdrop for the first dance. The remaining fourteen I hauled home with the driver's grudging help.
The bank that financed the load, I assume, noted nothing unusual, though I did swing by a few of the farm money pages that week to see whether a hay shortage counts as a casualty. It does not. The newlyweds sent me a thank-you card in August with a picture of the two of them sitting on a bale, and I pinned it to the shop wall. I told the whole thing to the farm.FM crowd, and they voted it the happiest delivery error in the state.