Hearts and Plowers

At the first organizational meeting, about 25 people showed up. Norris brought three friends. Nancy Hazlett, already a member, was there. Also in attendance was a man who'd been raised on a farm near Longmont but was living in Wheatland, Wyoming. "He wanted to be a part of our chapter," Norris says, "so we decided to include Wyoming and Colorado and make it the Rocky Mountain Chapter."

Like other chapters, the Rocky Mountain group planned monthly social meetings featuring dinner and an educational tour. Members visited a llama farm and a ranch, where horse-drawn wagons took them to a mountaintop for a barbecue dinner. And always, there was dancing. "We have a good time when we all get together," Hazlett says. "It's a dancing bunch, that's for sure."

When SIA members from around the country descend on Colorado's Black Forest next week, there'll be three nights of dancing over a four-day stretch. "It's all country-Western, of course," says Hazlett, who's helping handle promotions for the anniversary event. "We want to zero in on the pretty things here that tourists enjoy, the fact that America the Beautiful' was inspired by the peaks and plains of Colorado."

Members will be able to ride the cog railway up Pikes Peak or check out the Anasazi cliff dwellings in Manitou Springs or take a field trip to the state-owned Chico Basin Ranch. "All the activities have to be educational and social," Hazlett says.

"It's not a dating service," stresses Mary Boyd, a onetime Illinois farm girl who now makes her home in Littleton. "We've had members marry, but that's not the purpose. I have made a lot of lady friends. Or men make men friends. Basically, our real love is the country, that way of life."

"The biggest part of the people hope to find someone," admits Hazlett. "But some of us just aren't looking very hard."

In September 1997, however, Norris found what he'd been looking for at an SIA meeting at a VFW hall in Platteville. "I can't remember the tour we went on that day," he says. "At the end of the day, there was a big potluck and a dance. I really enjoy a polka, and it was fairly well into the dance time, and I was asking different ladies if they knew how to polka. And this lady said, I'd love to polka with you.'"

The lady's name was Almeda, but she goes by "Al." Born and raised on a farm in St. Francis, Kansas, she'd married a boy from a neighboring farm and spent the next twenty years moving from western town to western town. They eventually divorced, and she moved to Loveland to be closer to her parents and grown daughter. She'd gone to that SIA meeting with her best friend, at the urging of the same man who'd goosed Norris into starting up the Colorado chapter.

The next get-together was the Halloween meeting. "At the dance that evening, I danced more with Al than anyone else," Norris says. "I think at the end of November, I actually called and asked her for a date."

One year later, on November 6, 1998, they were married.

Their wedded state means they're no longer eligible for membership in the group that brought them together. "You can't belong to the regular part of Singles in Agriculture when you're married," Norris explains. "You can go to parties and dance, but you can't hold office."

Fortunately, the newlyweds have another choice, a growing SIA offshoot for former members: Singles No More.