When I was a boy, I joined a 4-H Club. Our local chapter was small. A half-dozen rowdy boys gathered once a month for an after-school meeting led by a local farmer who volunteered his time to sponsor us. We chose club officers, and one year I was elected president of this auspicious group. The major accomplishment of my presidential administration was adopting a resolution that our 4-H Club’s official refreshments would be potato chips and Mountain Dew. (The Pepsi-Cola Company began marketing Mountain Dew nationwide in 1964, and the 4-H Club was the first place I tasted it.) 4-H Clubs have been around for more than a century, thanks in part to an innovative schoolteacher named Jessie Field Shambaugh (the “mother of 4-H”). Jessie was born in 1881 near Shenandoah, Iowa, to a farm family with the appropriate last name of “Field.” Both of her parents were teachers as well as farmers. Eventually “Miss Jessie” became a school superintendent, earning $33.50 a month. She had a special place in her heart for rural children, so she created after-school programs featuring agricultural competitions like soil testing and corn judging. Students who excelled were awarded green four-leaf-clover pins bearing the letter H on each of the leaves, representing Head, Hands, Heart, and Health. At our meetings, we recited the 4-H Pledge: