Coming up the gravel drive, with the horse barn at his back, Cort saw the boy with the oar. He was a skinny kid but tall, loose-limbed and gangly, the way teenage boys often are, and he walked with the oar slung over his shoulder like a hobo’s knapsack or a fishing rod. The boy followed the dirt lane, skirting Cort’s property, heading south toward the wood line, and Cort’s mind automatically went to The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry and Opie and all that countrified crapola, though they probably didn’t show that program on television anymore, he suspected. The oar bobbed up and down on the kid’s shoulder with each step. Where the other oar was, Cort didn’t know. It might as well have been strung between the boy’s shoulders like a curtain rod, that’s how lanky and broad-shouldered he looked in the slanted light of the Ohio morning.

Something bothered him about the boy—something not quite right, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. . . .  

                                                                                                                                                 -- from Under the Harvest Moon

In a twist suited to the final quarter of the NFL season, this week's tailgate coincides with the potluck event I am hosting for this semester's Community Writing Workshops novel class.  For the past 15 weeks, Mina and I, along with five other intrepid writers have been working hard to draft a complete novel, tentatively titled Under the Harvest Moon.  So, it's only fitting that we should create some dishes around this theme to celebrate the product of our hard work . . . .