I had an inkling before I met Ben of what kinda kid I might be running into.
Turns out, my inkling was dead on.
Chellney Newhouse brought me her daughter, Katherine three years ago for senior images. A country girl in every sense of the word, Miss Newhouse expected and received a heavy dose of outdoor country images full of jeans, plaid shirts, buckles and boots.
The precedence had been set then... so while it might be presumptuous to think that brother Ben would be the male counterpart to his older sis, I discovered my hunch was dead on.
The boots, jeans and plaids were back in full force, and perhaps the biggest difference this go around was that instead of taking advantage of Montour’s country side, we made ourselves a little roadie.
After a brief soiree’ in the camera room to kick off the session, we were off to rural Rhodes to the Newhouse ranch to chronicle Mr. Ben’s country boy best.
The centerpiece to this trip was a restored Allis Chalmers tractor. Being about as non-mechanical as a dude can get... I admire guys that can take apart an entire engine, put it back together and make it work. And from what I was able to gather, that’s exactly what Ben did with his grandpa’s old machine.
It was no surprise then that Ben wanted to showcase his project that meant a lot to him and had garnered him awards at the Iowa State Fair. In a classic and fitting moment, we traveled nearly a mile down a dirt path to the east on the Newhouse farm to find the spot that Ben had scouted out in advance for his orange AC.
Once I found nearly forty ways to photograph that old tractor, we still had a rifle, a fishin pole to mix in with our hale bales and split rail fences. We tossed in a little golf hobby for our West Marshall senior before parting ways on this blustery day.
I wasn’t surprised that Mr. Newhouse was polite, conversational and truly thankful that I made the journey to Casa de Ben. It’s just how he and his sis were raised.
Country kid... country values.
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