Articles

Survival

From: "R. B. Crowninshield" <mutha@capeonramp.com>

Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest Lion or it will be killed...

Every morning a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn't matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle... when the sun comes up, you'd better be Running.

* Forwarded by Jack Yates (1:3613/1275)
* Area : OLD_ENGINE (OLD_ENGINE)
* From : Jack Yates, 1:3613/1275 (21 Feb 01 21:13)
* To : Y'all
* Subj : Rites of spring

I took the antique John Deere over to our friend's estate today; I call it an "estate" because he has about 2 and one-half acres and three shotgun shacks, that's high livin' in Rural, Gawga. The purpose of my sojourn was to turn up our communal garden patch with the disc harrow, a feat at which I'm rather adept albeit it's a large tractor in a small space, though a daffodill or two may have suffered. At least, the houses and all the trees are still in place and I failed to cut up the garden hose.

It's a singular, unexplainable thrill to be sitting on high, looking backward at the green vegetation and brown earth curling off the concave discs as their sharp edges slice through the sod, second only to the vision of the turf rolling off the moldboard of the plough; truly indescribable to anyone but another son or daughter of the soil. Whilst so engaged, I was reminded of two bachelor farmers of my acquaintance, back in my youth, and of the story I wrote of them several years ago. It has become a yearly ritual for me to post it in one of these echoes; this year, it's your turn....

LAAAADIEEEEES AND GENNNNNNULMENNNNNNNNN......:

Every once in a while, each of us sees or hears something that he or she will remember as long as he or she lives. Such is the following tale which I transcribed in another echo (which a few of us here are known to frequent) and though it has yet to evoke any response in the original posting, the subject being a dunghill, many have probably turned up their noses when they see the subject line and gone on to the next post. Nonetheless, it is indeed a part of Americana and proof that humor can be found at all levels of humanity. What's more, it proves my life-long belief that life, itself is funny enough that one does not have to make up a good story.... The following is a true tale, I was there, I saw it unfold:

Joe and Jimmy, the Conway brothers owned a dairy farm in L***, New York; 200 acres, 50 or so cows, a livestock barn, a separate hayshed as the old two-story barn had burned a few years back due to the spontaneous combustion of some bales of green hay in the mow, two tractors, a Farmall "Super M" and a Farmall "H", all the neccessary implements for fitting ground, cultivating and harvesting beans, corn, silage, and wheat, a feed grinder-mixer, and a manure spreader. The Conway Brothers were bachelors in their late forties or early fifties, Joe was the older, the leader; they lived in the kitchen of their ten-room house.

Each day, Joe and Jimmy would arise, put on their shirts and bib overalls and go to the barn to milk, then clean the barn and the milking machine; Jimmy would go to the house to prepare his breakfast, Joe would go to town and eat his breakfast in a local restaurant as Jimmy's cooking had long ago gained a notorious reputation. Joe would then return to the farm, stop at the mailbox and retrieve the day's missals and the morning paper which he would read while sitting in his pickup.

Joe paid all the bills, usually by check; he carried the pad of checks in the top pocket of his pin-striped overalls along with a stub of pencil, he did not keep a register, however. He once received a friendly note from the local bank that he was overdrawn in the amount of about $4000, would he please make a deposit? I helped him search through the huge mound of crumpled newspapers in the cab of his truck, page by page; we found bills from the power company, phone company, his tax bill from the Town, and several month's worth of checks from the dairy totaling about $12,000 in payment for milk produced on their farm.

Morning ablutions were tended to in the milkhouse using the same soap to cleanse the body as was used to clean the pipeline milker and bulk tank; the Conway brothers sported a ruddy complexion winter and summer due to the harshness of the soap. Joe shaved with a straight razor, Jimmy had bought an electric razor; it broke, the company that made it refused to repair it under warranty, Jimmy did not shave for the next 4 years.

Joe and Jimmy were Roman Catholic, faithwise, and attended mass as often as the morning chores would allow them to, and as they would go to the church directly from the barn, the congregation needed not turn to see who entered a few minutes late provided their collective olfactory systems were functioning.

It may be derived from the above that the Conway brothers were..errrr...eccentric.

It was nearly spring-time, the weather had begun to get warmer, the snow was melting, and the time had come to spread the winter's collection of manure on the fields. Jimmy had made a great many trips from the dunghill; he had reduced it to just a small heap, it was almost gone save for a pile about a foot high and he had backed the manure spreader under the chute of the barn cleaner to receive the morning's contribution. To and fro went the drive chain, driven by the hydraulic ram, open and shut went the paddles as they pivoted on the chain, opening across the gutter on the forward stroke, folding against the chain on the return, only to open again and force the effluvium inexorably toward the target, the bed of the manure spreader which was sitting rearmost toward the barn, under the discharge chute, right next to the open double doors.

Jimmy waited patiently, sitting on the idling Farmall, he watched the pile of the aromatic substance rise higher and higher, once he pulled the spreader ahead a few feet to distribute the load more evenly; the spreader filled to overflowing, it could hold no more, the balance of the end product of bovine mastication fell to the earth around the spreader until the barn was devoid of all such substance. Joe pressed the "stop" button on the barn cleaner and waved to Jimmy to go on to the field with the load. (Jimmy rarely did anything without direction from Joe.) Jimmy stepped on the clutch pedal, snicked the shift lever on the "H" into 3rd gear and eased up on the clutch..................

Spring Thaw in New York State is a very wet time of year; the frozen ground turns to mud, red clay mud several inches deep, and fresh cow manure is slippery, very slippery. the wheels on the Farmall turned, the tractor did not move. Jimmy disengaged the clutch, moved the shift lever to 2nd gear, engaged the clutch again, and again the tractor did not move. Jimmy then opened the throttle a few notches and began to move his foot from one brake pedal to the other, as the left wheel would spin, he would apply the left brake, the right wheel would spin, right brake; left brake, right brake, left brake....Finally, in exasperation, Jimmy disengaged the clutch, moved the shift lever to neutral, slapped the throttle wide open, and as he reached his hand toward the ring on the end of the lever that engages the power take-off, I retreated hastily to the other end of the barn! He took his foot off the clutch pedal, the power take-off started spinning, the beaters on the rear of the spreader started whirring and the S**t indeed, hit the fan! The picture still remains in my mind. as I entered the milkhouse, I turned and saw clods of fresh manure flying everywhere, most of it through the open doors and into the dairy barn with Joe standing in the middle of the doorway waving his arms frantically, looking the perfect characticure of a portly windmill, and shouting to his brother:

"For God's sake, Jimmy, shut that damn thing off, we just whitewashed the barn....!"

---Frank Yates

Clem Caddlehopper of Corn County
as told me by Paul Bonner

Clem was operating his bran new Minneapolis Moline Model 5000 corn combine mechanize for the very first time on his 500 acre corn farm. The corn was tall as a mule's ears and just right for picking. He opened the throttle about half way and eased off on the clutch to slowly turn into the first row of his fine corn crop. He was chugging along at about one mile an hour 'cause he was a really slow thinking kind of guy.

After he turned around at the end of first row, heading back to the end where he started he decided after much contemplation to move the throttle up a couple of notches to two miles an hour, 'cause he figured he wasn't so dumb as to go only one mile an hour.

He arrived at the end of that row just fine, even if a little bored as the rows were half mile long. He was proud of the "thunkety thunking" of the hundreds of ears of corn the big Minneapolis Moline Model 5000 spit into the corn bin in just two rows! He thought, "Man this is a snap! I'm gonna get rich with this corn picker, it gets every ear on every stalk!" And he started his big corn picker down the third row, he also kicked up the throttle to five miles per hour. He wasn't the town dummy any more, he was a fine businessman with a fine M-M #5000 corn picker and he was going to get rich!

Well ole Clem got so confident in his operating that big corn picker that he became a might careless. The wind blew his old straw hat off into that business end of the corn picker, and quick as a cat's pounce he grabbed it with his right hand, then realized that he couldn't get it back, he stuck his left hand in to help his right hand get out of the business end of his big corn picker... lost ALL TEN fingers, both hands to that big Minnapolis Moline Model 5000 corn picker!

Well the folks at the Clinic were kind to him and got his fingerless hands bandaged and told him life was going to be rough for a dummy who plays with corn picking machines; that he may as well go on down to the library and get a book or two as he couldn't do anything more "'cept sit in his old rocker on the front porch and read".

Time went by and ole Clem kept on rockin' and readin', and the lady at the library just bragged on him something awful! She thought he was so smart to have read all the books in the library in only one year since his accident. She avowed to every one that Clem was the smartest man in town, "wye... no body in th' whole town ever read ALL of th' books" in her library before. She said, "he could hardly read first grade material when he first came to my library, and now he has read every book I have! Next year I'm going to teach Clem Caddlehopper how to WRITE!" 8^)