The Muddy Mo

I'm sorry to say I haven't posted anything as of late,  but I've been a bit busy. Most of you know we live on the banks of the Missouri River and it is an ugly river at this point in time.  It is flooding and many folks are affected all the way from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico after it joins the Mississippi River by St Louis. We are fortunate and reports are that it's supposed to not quite reach our house.  It is however dealing us fits with the loss of crop land.  Below is  a pic taken a few weeks ago when the river was about to begin it's big surge that is to last most of the summer. The second photo is of the same field taken yesterday.  This is about 320 acres under water. The last pic is of another 140 that will be under water by tomorrow night. Here the water is beginning to back in on it.  We have another 80 that is under and another 80 that is scheduled to succumb.

The bright side is I've always secretly wanted to live in a house by a stream but just not in a stream. I'm looking forward to being able to say, "Marilyn, I'll be on the porch fishing if you need me."

Also I've never had time to play golf in the fall because  harvest concerns have kept me busy before.

As a precaution I've purchased a 53 foot dry van trailer and parked it behind the house. Yesterday, with the help of family, we pretty well emptied the basement in preparation for high water. Now if we need to scatter quickly, we'll simply need to get a lot of help, fill the trailer with our top two floors and head for higher ground which for us will be about any direction.

We're Not Raising Grass

My grandson recently ordered and received a shipment of chickens to raise. Watching them learn to survive less than 24 hours after kicking their way out of the egg is pretty amazing. We improve their chances for success by making feed and water available but they have the intuition necessary to find it and begin to eat and drink. They are aggressive right out of the box, and have an instinct that makes their success almost guaranteed. Humans aren't that way. We need help.
This point between Mother's Day and Father's Day is a good time to remember those present and past who have helped to mold us into the people we are today. In our sometimes convoluted world of the modern family, the parenting roles being played can be peculiar at best but the results seem to work out okay, as long as every kid has a fully engaged family of some kind.
If you fly at passenger jet altitude for a couple of hours across our heartland and gaze upon the farmland below, you are soon filled with awe of the vastness of this country and the fact that for every little city and town and village below, there are families trying very hard to do the right thing by their kids and to carry on the tradition that their parents and grandparents started before them.
The fact that kids don't come with an operators manual (Marilyn would tell me that men wouldn't read it if they did), together with the reality that Mom and Dad come from different family histories, cements my theory that the family is the very fabric that holds this country and more especially rural America and rural communities together.
That's why most of the strong families stay strong. It was the way they were brought up. Mom and Dad or a parent and an aunt or uncle or grandparent became very involved in a child's life to ensure that the "instincts" of God, and family, and hard work were implanted into the next generation.
Chances are you had someone involved in your welfare as a child or you couldn't be reading this. You were educated. You were the most important thing going on in someone's life at one time. I recall the remembrance of Harmon Killebrew, Hall of Fame slugger for the Minnesota Twins, when he explained that his dad had taken him and his brother into their yard to play baseball and his mom came to the door to scold his dad, "You guys are tearing up the yard by playing baseball out there all the time." Killebrew's dad replied, "We're not raising grass, we're raising boys."
It's exactly that kind of thinking that has made rural America great. Every community has their share of solid families, setting an example for all to follow. The example is being set by the moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and schools and youth program coaches, and scouting programs and pastors and servicemen past and present and the list goes on forever.
That's why this time of year is so important when we honor mothers and fathers on their special days and sometimes on Memorial Day if they've already left us. We also take the time to hold up our fallen soldiers who are responsible for our freedom. They for sure understood community as it relates to family. They served, some died, but all of them longed to return home to add to the family and community and to continue to set an example.
Our fabric needs continual care, everyone's experiences need to be intertwined to make the fabric strong. It's appropriate that we should pause and celebrate and honor our parents, our soldiers, our graduates and get the family together for an occasional picnic. It keeps the threads of our fabric tightly woven. We're not raising grass

You Must Visit Nora's Blog

Nora has done a masterful job with some old photos. Her love for family and friends is really touching and should be a good example for all of us to try to emulate.  You'll need to click on 'older posts' at the bottom of the first page to see the complete series. Good Job Nora! 

The Creature in the Wall

In the spring of 1971 I was attending what is now the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture in Curtis. I'd like to say I spent all of my time on education but that wouldn't be entirely true. I had met a pretty brunette from Denver who was taking the Veterinary Technician curriculum at the same school and found her to be different from every other girl I had met: She would go out with me.

We dated and attended college classes, seemingly carefree while back at home spring was nearly ready to break out once again with all of its challenges. I'm sure my parents were probably alternately worrying about the mud here on the Missouri River bottom and how they were going to fit their youngest son into the farming operation when he graduated in a couple of months.
Dad was 66 years old at that time, 5 years older than I am now, and I can imagine that both joy and apprehension welled up in both of my parents' minds. Joy thinking that someone young enough to do the more physical tasks about the farm would soon be here to start life with that girl from Colorado, and apprehension that the farm would now need to support their son and that girl from Colorado.
I bring this up because this morning I got to thinking about the night of the "creature in the wall" that took place in our bedroom some 40 years ago. Today our bed is in the exact location it was in on that night back in 1971, when Mom sat straight up in bed, grabbed my sleeping father by the arm and yelled in a kind of whisper, (yes, you know what I mean) "Art! There's something in the wall."
Dad was a sound sleeper but this type of stuff will unsettle anyone. "What do you mean there's something in the wall?" Mom shook him again, "I can hear it." Dad shrugged it off and fell back asleep while Mom lay there for about an hour when something else caught her attention.
Another shake and then "Art … wake up, there's something in the wall and I can hear it breathing." The reply for her came in a rebuttal, "It's probably a mouse but I know you can't possibly hear a mouse breath. Just close your eyes and wake up in the morning." And morning was fast approaching. The scene repeated itself several times during the night.
Mom repeatedly said she could definitely hear heavy breathing coming from the wall and Dad dismissed it each time, with "You're just hearing things."
The day finally dawned for my poor mother and she got out of bed glad to be alive but very tired none the less. She went to the front door which is on the same side of the house that their bedroom was on, and looked out to see if any of the standing water from the spring thaw had sunk away.
I should interject right here that when our house was built they dug the basement and used that dirt for fill around the house so the house is elevated in relation to the rest of our farmstead. It is that high spot around the house that Mom saw that morning when she opened the door to find about 150 head of fat Hereford steers bedded down on the only dry spot for miles around: Mom's lawn.
Dad had left the gate unlatched when doing chores the day before and the cattle found the exit in the middle of the night. The high and dry lawn was a piece of Hereford Heaven if you will. As her head scanned to the left, there lay a gloriously large steer, physically leaning against the wall of the house right beneath my folks' bedroom window and yes, she could hear its labored breathing.
"ART! Come look at this."
I'm sure there was an "I told you so" or two that followed, but the result was a completely torn up yard and new Mercury that had been used as a scratching post by some pretty muddy cattle. They had left some of their winter coat tucked under the chrome strips on the edges of the car as a reminder to latch the gate.
I came home soon after that to begin life on the farm with that girl from Colorado. The first thing we had to do was start a new lawn for the folks.

A Spoiled Brat For A President

"The Republicans are trying to balance the budget on the backs of the Poor." ....can be translated to mean "I'm doing very well giving money away to everyone so they'll support me with their votes." AND "If I don't get my money to give away to voters, I'm going to lay on the floor and kick and scream and stomp my feet until I get it, I don't care if we don't have it, I don't care if it brings the country down because by golly I like this great big house we live in."
Next time lets elect someone with just a tiny bit of business acumen. Somewhere in their background a President needs to have had several years of their personal banker looking grimely over the reading glasses and saying, "Cliff, If you don't get this turned around by this time next year, we may need to part company." OR put another way..."You're fired."
If we confiscated all of the income from all of the business men in our country, we still couldn't balance the budget. (and we'd run out of employers quickly) We must stop spending. Across the board cuts are the only answer.

We're Back

We've been gone. All over the mid section of our great land. We stayed on Padre Island a bit with my Brother Ed and Shirley pictured below with my bride on the left. We've also been to Denver and back.

This is the view of the Gulf from their guest bedroom. Life is rough. We did have to leave here to play golf every day. There are no spring break kids in this pic but they were there. I told Marilyn she could take one of my shirts and make about 10 swim suits with it. Not to worry. I didn't stare.

much

We toured the USS Lexington that has been decommisioned in port in Corpus. I'll not go into her history as it is readily available online.  The picture below this one shows the list of her actions and battles.  She would have been a major target at Pearl Harbor but had left port a short time before the attack. We've read several stories and one book on her crew and aviators and I can tell you that the bravest men in world served America on her deck.  Some were launched into eternity from her short runway. I recall one pilot who later related that he was dismayed at having left the ship  in such a hurry on the way to battle that he only had 2 cigarettes with him. He decided to smoke them both on the way to the Japanese carrier group they were heading for, because he was sure this was going to be a one way trip. It turned out that he returned to the Lexington.  Their target was so far away that several of the planes ran out of gas and  fell in the water that night while circling our carriers waiting their turn to land.  I urge you to look up the ship on line and see how she got her nickname the "The Gray Ghost."

I've Had To Have A Talk With My Wife

I've had to have a serious talk with Marilyn. After a morning of writing and printing checks for cash rents for farm ground, repair bills, diesel fuel bills, grain bin electricity bills and  basically half of our annual outflows for the farm in just one day... I was in no mood for her choice of stamps to put on said bills. It's just not right.

Corned Beef and A Fairlane

The year 1991 was the 20th year reunion for our graduation from the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture. When I say "our", I mean Marilyn and I graduated from that school in Curtis, Neb., and so we attended the 20th year reunion held in Kearney, Neb., that year.
We were traveling home with our family in the back seat, down old Highway 30. We had agreed to do that instead of speeding down Interstate 80 as a result of a deal I had made with our 14-year-old son, Dan. He wanted to find a classic car to fix up and we were both pretty sure that Highway 30 would be the place to look.
We hadn't traveled many miles when I spotted something that changed the direction of our family forever. Right in the middle of Gibbon, Neb., sitting in all of its faded out glory, was a black 1957 Ford Fairlane. I slowed quickly, circled the block and stopped to examine the old car with a 'For Sale' sign in the left driver's window. The car was mostly intact, had a little rust along the bottom edges but we deemed it to be perfect.
We went home, discussed the purchase amongst the family, also with some local experts as well as a body shop, and I decided that the deal was going to be too expensive to bring to a conclusion. Dan had 4-H calf money and was going forward with or without me. I decided that 'with me' was better so we contacted the owner, reached an agreement on price, hooked on to a flatbed and on March 17, St. Patrick's Day, we brought the old Ford home.
The Corned Beef and Cabbage was ready on our arrival at the farm, but what to do with the old Ford weighed heavy on our minds. We had much to try to learn in the next few years.
We learned that black was the color of choice for old car enthusiasts. Their body lines are straighter because the factories in the '50s would search for the cars on the assembly line with the most correct lines to paint black. Black paint, we found out, will show the slightest imperfections in detail.
Dan and I started on the project. We farmed out the body work and we took the Y block 292 V-8 out and had it rebuilt. Slowly but surely it came together. We did the interior work ourselves as well as the trunk and mechanical.
By June, two years later, he was ready to drive his Fairlane. It turned out very well and looked great but more than that it was one of the biggest influences to have ever hit that young boy. It took a lad who wasn't terribly interested in farming and who was pretty clumsy around an end wrench to someone who found they had real talent and a burning desire to be in the collision repair business. During high school, he began working for the body shop that had worked on his car. He graduated and attended auto collision repair school.
Now, 20 years later, it has led to marriage, building his own collision repair business in Lincoln, Neb., and hiring his brother as the shop manager. The place supports those families plus two others and, most importantly, helps support six of our grandchildren the boys are raising for us.
Spotting an old car back in 1991, in the middle of a small town, led to quite an adventure.
I often find myself listening to some parent talk about their son or daughter and the wild off the wall thing their offspring is involved with. It might be a part-time job, paid or volunteer, or a hobby that has them completely enthralled, or a group performing a song or a play or a speech they've been working on for weeks. I usually say, "That's good because, well, you never know."
I seldom can think about St. Patty's Day without corned beef and cabbage crossing my mind as well as a '57 Fairlane rolling off a flatbed into our shed.
I now know that when children ask questions or permission to do something that is out of the ordinary, "No," shouldn't automatically roll off your tongue because, "Well, you never know."

Dan's Fairlane left--On the right his award winning Probe he built and painted in his College years. The Dupont Paint Company featured it in their company publication.The paint process took 27 hours of non-stop work before he could stop.

I Had A Great Blog Planned...

and it was going to include a movie from my sons' phone. But I couldn't get it sent to me so I'll tell you all about it.
The new Grandson pictured below, Boston, rolled over on his 13th day of life. Dad was sure he'd placed him face down on a blanket in the living room and went to the end of the hall and when he returned, Boston was on his back.
"Wait a minute" went through Tom's mind and  some doubted the story until Mom yelled two days later, "Tom, come here, he did it again." Tom rolled the baby to his stomach again and immediately the baby rolled to his back so Tom got his phone out and sure enough, filmed him rolling over for the third time that day, on his 15th day of life. He's been doing it regularly since.
A bit early for this I'd say.
But on the other hand, he still isn't talking yet. cm

Yesterday In A Grocery Store Far From Home...

Well it was 70 miles from home anyway, I saw a senior citizen coming down the aisle toward me.  She was pretty ordinary looking and she shuffle slowly along the aisle as though her plan was to make this shopping trip last all afternoon.
The message on her T- shirt caught my attention:

             I USED TO CARE.
           ....But now I take a pill for that.

I have either a finely honed sense of humor or it's 'sick' humor, but I laughed on and off all afternoon about the shirt. To me, the funny thing isn't what is said but it has more to do with who said it.