The Show across the Street

 “Did you see the show?”

     “Oh, I hardly ever go to the movies.”

     “No!  I’m talking about the show across the street!”

     “No, what show?”  I had backed the old blue ’55 Chev half way out of the driveway when Georgette* accosted me and came around to the left side where I could not get out of the car.  So I rolled down the window.

     Bill, as usual, was at the base of the situation.  Some time ago he had decided he needed to build a “four-place” hangar, a building big enough to house four airplanes.  He had lined up a sponsor, another Bill, a bank president who agreed to provide financing for materials.  Bill was to arrange for the labor and necessary equipment.  They each would own half of the building.

     Our Bill had made several purchases including several used REA poles, some of which were milled into two-inch lumber by a local miller who was trying to get a start, a bunch of used bridge planks from the local county road shop, and brand new roof trusses and tin for the roof and walls.  Somehow, he lined up a local Electrical Company employee to use the company posthole digger to dig the holes for the used REA poles. 

    Bill had researched pole buildings through the Kansas State Extension Service.  Of course, he had bettered the plans some.  The plans called for ringing the perimeter with healthy poles spaced 10 or 12 feet apart.  Of course the doorways had to exceed 30 feet to accommodate an airplane’s wing span.  So Bill decided that he should put a few poles on the inside of the building to support the roof trusses.

    I spent one Saturday running an old Farmhand that used pipes and cables and encaged the old Minneapolis Moline tractor to raise and drop the REA poles into the newly drilled holes.  I was appointed the tractor man because I knew how to handle the Farmhand.  The “ground crew” fastened a chain from the Farmhand “stinger” to the pole just a little above its mid length.

      When I raised it, the pole would be nearly vertical.  I would maneuver the tractor to the appointed hole, dodging the other posts and holes.  If I got it right, I could slowly lower the pole into the hole and the ground crew would only have to remove the chain so I could back away and they could level the pole and dump in enough dirt to hold it in place.  If I didn’t get it just right, the crew used bars to fit the pole into the hole.

   Anyone who has ever run the old Farmhand is scoffing right now at “slowly lower the pole.”  To let the old Farmhand arms down, you jerk out on the control lever and things come down right now.  To stop the descent, shove the handle in to the neutral position and the arms come to a tractor-jarring halt.  Some inventive genius had plumbed a shut off valve such as found in any water supply system into the hydraulic line on this Farmhand.  I could simply crack that valve open by turning the valve’s wheel and control the speed of descent.  It was such a good idea, I modified my old Farmhand similarly.

     As the building progressed, many of the extra interior poles we had installed had to be removed by chainsaw because they were in the way of roof trusses or some other structural component. 

    I missed the installation of the roof trusses, but the Minnie-with-Farmhand came in very handy for that operation.  I also missed one of the two dramatic incidents that happened during hangar construction.  Keith, the shop teacher, was running the tractor (I think), raising trusses into position.  Gary, the music teacher, was one of the monkeys helping position and nail the trusses in place. 

     Keith and Gary mis-communicated and a truss came down while Gary was still checking out the alignment.  The truss hit Gary on the head.  It stunned him, but he had the presence of mind to grab a pole and hang on.  The blood came pouring down.  Crew members raced to get Gary safely to the ground.  Keith had trained as a volunteer EMT.  He administered first aid and Bill rushed Gary to the emergency room where his scalp was stitched back together.  Gary didn’t take part in further hangar construction activities.  A person could still find the indelible proof of Gary’s contribution to the project if he knew where to look in the hangar.

     Once the roof trusses were in place there remained the task of putting on the “skin”, long sheets of galvanized corrugated tin.  It took more than one weekend to get all the roof sheets in place and nailed down with ring shank nails.  Once the roof was done, the walls had to be covered with the same material.

    So it was that we were still hanging tin on the walls in the afternoons after school.  We were in a little bit of a hurry, as Daylight Savings was coming to an end.  Under standard time, we would spend more time getting tools and materials ready, then cleaning them up and putting away, than we would nailing up tin in the shortened evenings.

      This particular afternoon, I had returned home for supper, had eaten and was backing out of the drive to use the last hour of daylight to work on the hangar.  The Goodwife reminds me that she, too, was present.  Was she taking me up to the airport and taking the old Chev somewhere, or was she just out in the pleasant evening seeing me off?  Neither of us can remember, but she was present as Georette approached us with the question, “Did you see the show?”          

       “What show?”  Across the street, a rather dysfunctional family of four had replaced the folks who had lived there for a long time.  When we moved in, Tim had lost a leg to some kind of infection.  Mandy pushed him around in a wheel chair.  Mandy made an impression on me when she mowed the lawn wearing blue-striped coveralls tucked into shin-high rubber boots, hairnet, and an old cap in the August heat.  Tim died not long after we moved in.  The widow moved soon thereafter and I never really got acquainted with them (a rarity as the Goodwife said I knew all the old ladies, and some of the men, up and down the block as well as across the alley). 

     “What show?”

     “Why, that ******* girl and that ##### boy came running around the garage and they proceeded to have intercourse right there on the lawn!”  

       The ######’s moved in with teenaged son and first grade girl.  They were new to town.  Neither child had many friends.  I had the son in English class, and the girl would come over to visit whenever I was working in the yard.  Neither child did well in school.  I remember trying to teach “Suzie” numbers while we were playing catch one afternoon.  “How many can you catch?  One for one. . . one for two. . . .”

    “Suzie” reciprocated by trying to teach me how to ride a skate board.  I was the poor student in this case.  In another interesting incident “Suzie” took a classmate at school to task for calling her own mother “Gay.”  “Don’t you call your mother gay!  That’s not nice!”  “But that’s her name!  Her name is ‘Gay’!”

      The ******* girl had given birth to an illegitimate daughter only weeks before this day.  The courts handed the infant to the foster system and friends of ours were caring for her.  Of course they fell in love with the baby and sought to adopt her, but the court, in its blind wisdom returned custody of the child to the biological grandparents.  The foster family was heartbroken and suffered some trauma as a result.  God only knows what became of the infant who would now be in her 40’s.

      Somehow “Jerold ####” and “Gladys *****” struck up a friendship, I’m not sure how, because “Gladys” was not in school, but their relationship grew beyond friendship, apparently.

      So the show across the street had upset the Octogenarians who lined the block on that side of the street.  But Georgette lived on our side of the street, and three doors further west.  How had she found out about the show?

      Well, next-door neighbor Trudy apparently saw the initial rush around the front of the ##### garage to the west side adjacent to Trudy’s driveway.  When things went so far as to involve removing some clothing, she had alerted Erna on the far west corner of her side of the street.  Erna communicated with Georgette.  Apparently, the three ladies (with or without Erna’s husband I’m not sure) gathered in Trudy’s window and watched the act to completion.

     And we, poor souls, came out upon the scene a short time after the culprits restored themselves to full dress and removed themselves from the scene of the crime.  Georgette was apparently on her way home from being an eye witness to a crime when we appeared and she reported to us.

     The rest of that day has faded from memory.  I know I went to the airport and related my experience to Bill and whoever else might have been there as we worked.  The story wasn’t over, however.

     Georgette worked at the courthouse.  After further consultation with the other witnesses, she decided that in order to uphold the oath of office she had taken, she must register a complaint with the magistrate, which she did.  The county sheriff investigated.  Why not the city police force, I’m not sure.  The sheriff interviewed all the witnesses.  Were they sure that an act of sexual intercourse in public had taken place, or was it just an injudicious display of affection?

      One witness, Erna, took umbrage at the sheriff’s questioning her judgment, so the story goes.  Erna had been a widow most of her life and had remarried rather late in life.  She had had to work to support her family, and she was a very strong person. 

     After she grew tired of the sheriff’s attempt to get her to say she wasn’t totally sure of what she had seen, she is reported to have exclaimed, “Young man (the sheriff was in his 40’s), I am eighty years old and I know a prick when I see one!”

      And that was the end of the story for the community.  The young couple refrained from further public display.  Both their families left the community in a year or two.  Since both criminals were juveniles, the court record was sealed.

     The public’s interest in prurient affairs is transient, soon replaced by a new scandal. The witnesses to this crime of passion have all gone to the next world where I hope they all are blessed.  I have disinterred the story here for entertainment purposes only.  I can only hope that this disclaimer will free me from any charge of calumny.

     *Many names have been changed to protect the blogger.

       

    

    

         

     

     

       

Murray Edwards Part 2

After the success Cathy, Murray and I had playing for the grade school and the local elite that formed the music club, we were in some demand.  We provided entertainment for the annual Farm Bureau meeting one year.  We played for thirty minutes while folks gathered and socialized.  We were the “front” for the speaker who did a “power point” (a slide show in those olden days) on boot posts.  He travelled Western states in his line of work and had taken hundreds of photos of old boots decorating fence posts and outbuildings around the country.  He had developed a humorous monologue to accompany his photos and was really quite entertaining.

      The featured speaker got off on the wrong foot with Murray.  We were about fifteen minutes into our thirty minutes when the guy decided he needed to get his screen and projector coordinated.  He put up his screen front and center stage, about five or six feet in front of Murray.  We finished the number we were working on.  Murray shifted his bow to his left hand, holding both bow and violin.  Instead of launching into our next number, Cathy and I watched as Murray pushed the screen away stage right.

    The poor boot fellow knew he had got the boot.  He waited till we were done to finish his prep.  He didn’t endear himself to Murray when he said at the beginning of his program that he wished he could play the piano like that fellow (me!).   Maybe it was payback for Murray who was the star. (Murray always referred to the rhythm folks in the band as his “seconds.”)

      Murray was a great favorite with little kids.  He played a game where he would take a small toy and toss it across the room.  The child would retrieve it for him.  After a few tosses, Murray would fake the toss and quickly hide the toy in his lap beneath his left hand.  The kid would look and look until Murray would find the toy in midair.  Magic! 

     Once Murray had about worn the game out, but Tisha wasn’t ready to quit.  She brought the toy to him and begged him, “Dissappear it!”  Murray got quite kick out of that phrase.  Rarely was he too busy to “disappear” something for Tisha.               

       Murray was an artist as well as a musician.  He took up painting in his sixties. (Check out Lawrence World Herald article for a fuller story of Murray’s art career. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19700706&id=RUsxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OOYFAAAAIBAJ&pg=7130,614186) He did leather work all his life.  During the thirties, with a wife and young family, he trekked to the west coast.  Besides the hard times, their young son was diagnosed with dust pneumonia, a result of the “dust bowl”.  He did not follow the Joad family in trying to make a living fruit picking or other ag-based labor.  Instead, he hired out to a saddle-maker.  He was quite good at tooling leather.  He made many of his leatherworking tools himself.  When a son-in-law dentist discarded dental tools, Murray used them to make specialized leather working tools.  He had quite a few of the “tooth picks”.  I still have three that he shared with me.

     An interesting story from the West Coast days came from son Clifford who was an English professor at Fort Hays University.  He taught three or four classes I took while getting my master’s degree, which is where I heard the story.

     One day the Edwards family visited an Indian Reservation.  They were invited to eat with the natives.  Maude, who was part Delaware Indian and knew a little bit about the conditions on the reservation, politely declined on her and the children’s behalf, but Murray accepted a plate and ate.  After he had finished eating, they came upon the dishwashing crew—squaws holding the plates while dogs licked them clean, followed by a quick wipe with the squaws’ skirts.

      In the early forties, Murray and family returned to Kansas, where with help from his parents, he started a cattle herd.  They managed to make a living, raise three kids, and buy their own farm home and still have time to fiddle, rodeo, and do leather work.

     One thing Murray wasn’t good at, something he didn’t like, was mechanic work.  He used horses to do the farm work whenever he could instead of a tractor.  Maude once commented that they spent long summer evenings sitting on the back porch in the shade of the cottonwoods.  The horses could only work so long before needing the rest, so there was leisure time in the evenings.  That went away with the tireless tractor.

      Maude also commented once that all Murray’s gates and barn doors had leather hinges and latches.  Murray didn’t want to mess with metal ones. Leather was for him.

   He was also good with a rope.  Late in his career he was invited to St. Louis to participate in a week-long festival of folk artists.  He took his paintings, his leather works, his fiddle, and his lasso.  A picture in an art magazine caught him with the lasso loop spinning over his cowboy-hatted head, the famous arch in the background.

     One fall when we returned to Kansas after the summer break, we saw Murray on the street.  The girls raced to him and hugged his legs.  He was quite pleased that the girls were attracted to him, but he didn’t know who they were.  When I asked him something about his fiddle playing, he asked me who I played with.  The sad truth dawned on us.

     Murray had been diagnosed with rectal cancer and had had surgery.  The operation saved his life, but he never fully recovered his mental faculties after he came out of the anesthesia. His care became too much for Maude.  For her well-being, the family had Murray moved to the Good Samaritan Home, where he spent the last years of his life. 

     Eventually, Murray knew no one, not even Maude.  Once he asked her, “Do I know you?” 

    “I think you do,” she said.

     “I think you are someone I love,” he said.

     Occasionally, a fellow fiddler would call on Murray in the home.  He could hand Murray a fiddle and get him started on a tune, and Murray would take off and play the tune.  The other fiddler would duet with Murray or switch to guitar and accompany him.  Murray could do that for as long as he was physically able.  

      Murray, Maude and Clifford are all interred in Chardon Cemetery in southern Rawlins County Kansas.  All three are an important part of my life.

     I had four Murray Edwards leather works, gifts of the Goodwife at various times, two belts, a plier pouch (long since worn out) and my guitar strap.  We also have a 6” X 8” leather “picture” of a horse, a gift from Murray or a purchase.

Murray Edwards

     Trenton dam, Trenton, NE, circa 1971.  A Friday or Saturday afternoon, probably September.  Most of those gathered in the sand in the shade of the cottonwoods were teachers.  There was an exception.

    Maude and Murray Edwards were there, invited by the social studies teacher.  The social studies teacher came to us from California where he had worked at LA International while finishing his degree in social studies and getting his teaching credentials.  He took his position as history teacher in December after his predecessor had been forced to resign in a student-teacher romance scandal.  (The predecessor, when confronted with the evidence of his inappropriate behavior, replied that he loved all of his students.)

     Gerry, the California transplant, was a bit different, too.  He resembled a Las Vegas gambler with flashy clothes and an open hand, especially when it came to buying rounds of drinks, with money he could ill afford to spend, as we learned later.  As he revealed his background working at LA International, the question always arose, why would he give up that well paid job to take up teaching, especially in Kansas?  His reply drew guffaws from his new colleagues:  “I wanted a job where I would be respected.”

     Gerry was outgoing and ignorant of small town social mores, so he could and would talk to anyone from bank president to pariah sex offender-child abuser.  He would take his “planning period” when he was supposed to be preparing lesson plans, grading, working individually with students and such like to go down town to the local coffee shop and schmooze with the locals.  When the school secretary told him he shouldn’t be leaving school except for school business or an occasional personal errand, he told her it wasn’t his wont to take orders from a secretary.  So much for respect.

      Gerry was a bit of a musician, owning a small piano that was two octaves short of a full 88, upon which he could hammer out a few tunes.  (I had a lot of trouble getting anything meaningful out of that piano.  I kept falling off either ends of the earth on that keyboard.)  He also had an old guitar and would belt out his favorite song, “Aw Hell, Play Anything.”  Somewhere, he had run into Maude and Murray and had had a jam session with them.  He had unknowingly defied the unwritten social rules and invited them to the beach party with the teachers.  They were not teachers (though Maude had been a teacher in her youth) and they were several years older than most of us, being grandparents many times over when most of us had either no children or very young ones.

      Gerry broke out his old guitar and prevailed upon Murray to get out his fiddle, which he was reluctant to do, being that close to the water.  But he did.  Whereupon Gerry broke another rule:  he suggested I play Murray’s guitar, also safely stowed inside Murray’s car.

     There I was, a young, probably irresponsible kid, lounging in a cheap lawn chair in the sand, drinking a beer.  Would you want to place your guitar in such hands?   Murray had Maude hold his violin while he returned to the car, dug out and tuned the guitar, and telling me to be careful, reluctantly placed the old guitar in my hands.  So we played.

      That was my introduction to old time fiddling.  I had of course accompanied Dad on his fiddle at various Lions functions when, as entertainment chairman, he couldn’t line up any other entertainment, he filled the gap himself.  But Murray’s fiddling was different.  I was unfamiliar with most of the tunes, but many of them were three-changers, so I got along.  Murray was unimpressed.  He suggested I should be playing A and D chords on the first three frets like normal people instead of up the neck four or five frets where I was much more comfortable.

     The sun dropped out of sight, the evening cooled off and grew dank. Murray announced the humidity was making it impossible to keep his fiddle tuned and he feared the effect the moisture would have on his instruments.  He cased the fiddle and the guitar, said his goodbyes and departed the scene.  I would have no further interaction with Maude or Murray for nearly a decade.

      In 1980, I gave up teaching.  I foresaw that I would be required to teach junior high school, a position I didn’t want, and I was uncomfortable with someone else raising my daughter.  So I quit and became a house husband.  As such, I had some leisure time.

      A neighbor’s daughter fancied herself a guitar player.  She knew four chords, C, F, G, and D.  Sometimes she could fetch an E.  She loved Murray and loved playing guitar to his fiddling.  Many fiddle tunes are played in E, and Caty couldn’t get B7.  Thus she applied to me to teach her a few things.

     I was quite uncomfortable with having her come to my house during the day, as she was quite an attractive woman with two young boys and a little bit of a reputation.  Gerry may have been ignorant of small-town ways, but I certainly was not.  I knew the gossip that would be generated if Cathy called on me more than once or twice.  The lurid imagination of my octogenarian neighbors would assume the beautiful music was from the bedroom.

     The solution to the problem arrived in a timely and natural manner.  Cathy suggested she might make more progress in guitar playing if we involved Maude and Murray.  She arranged it all.  Tisha and I would pack up and meet Cathy at Maude and Murray’s, or sometimes they would pack their instruments to our house.  Cathy lived 12 miles out in the country.  I don’t think we ever went out there.

     I had to borrow an acoustic guitar, but I did use the old Gretsch some.  One of the things I did for Cathy was mount two or three electric pickups onto her guitar and try to get them to work.  In the process, I connected with Gary, former band teacher at the high school, who also had given up teaching and went to work for a music store in Norton.  He provided the pickups on a trial basis until we found the right one.  Then Cathy could plug into the amplifier and make as much noise as I could.

     I can’t remember what acoustic guitar I borrowed, but Gary provided me a new one from the music store for a good while, with the provision that I would show it to folks and make sure everyone knew it was for sale.  I did, but I had the usual success I have whenever I try to sell something.  My conscience got the best of me.  On a single income, I had no hope of buying that guitar.  Back to Gary it went. 

     I don’t remember the particulars, but somehow folks became aware we had formed a group and we began making public appearances.  Ruth, the local historian, solicited our help in staging a program on Revolutionary War songs.  She wrote and read the narrative and we supplied the music. 

      We were able to do a few “Yankee Doodle” type numbers that Murray knew and could play.  We had to learn a few songs that none of us had ever heard before.  The one I remember was “In Good Old Colony Times”.  Ruth had music, but I was the only one that could read, so I became the default piano player.  Cathy was the vocalist and guitar player.  The program was a great success when we performed it for the local music club. We were invited to repeat it for the grade school. Playing for the music club AND the grade school:  We had arrived.  (To be continued)

The Chinese Guitar

     I entered the motel room carrying my just-purchased brand new $300 guitar in its brand new case.  There were three or four people in the motel room.  For a second or two all eyes scrutinized me and the guitar case in my hand.

      The eyes filled with amusement and wonder, disbelief even.  Impulse-buying was not, and is not, a characteristic that people associate with me.  Yet here I was, gone less than 30 minutes with guitar in hand.

     The beginning of the story probably goes back to my college days when I bought an electric Gretsch guitar in a pawn shop.  It was never a great guitar.  The strings were too far from the fret board on its neck.  Plus, you had to drag an amplifier wherever you went.

      Dad called the first electric-only guitar he saw a “plank”, an assertion we got a lot of mileage out of when we were kids. In later years a history of Les Paul’s first electric guitar provided some justification for Dad’s pronouncement.  Les mounted a tail piece and a bridge on a 4X4 along with the electronic pickups.  Then he connected a neck from another guitar to the 4X4.  After some time, Les took the body of an old acoustic guitar and fixed it loosely to the 4X4 because folks complained that his contraption didn’t look like a guitar.

      My plank came to a-near end when the neck strap I was using gave away when I was talking on the phone and didn’t have either hand on the guitar.  Of course it landed right on the tuning knobs.  The neck got knocked loose.  It was no longer possible to tighten the strings.

    I couldn’t figure out how to get the neck off.  Bill, a furniture refinisher in Greeley, took out his pocket knife, dug out a soft plug, and removed an old wood screw.  The neck was off in less than a minute.  The condition of the screw (rusty) and the type of screw (flat head wood screw) suggested this wasn’t the first time the neck had been removed from this Gretsch.

    Bill glued the neck back on, but the angle wasn’t correct.  When tuned correctly, the strings were too far from the neck.  It wore out your fingers to play it very much.  A subsequent removal and replacement of the neck ameliorated that problem somewhat, but then there were electrical problems with the pickups and the adjustment knobs.  Besides, you still had to tote an amplifier and cords.

     So buying a guitar wasn’t exactly an impulse buy.  I had been thinking about replacing the plank with an acoustical model for about 30 years.

     A contributing factor was Ralph coming into my life.  That happened when he married a life-long neighbor who had been widowed.  Ralph played fiddle and being new to the community was always looking for someone to jam with.    

      We got together the first time because he needed a rhythm guitar to accompany him in a fiddle contest in Kiowa.  We had some trouble meshing at first.  I had some experience with hoe-down fiddling, having played with an old time fiddler in Kansas.  But I didn’t know much about bluegrass. I assumed Ralph was a full-blown bluegrasser.

      Somehow, we both came to realize that our real love was ‘30 through ‘50’s tunes.  Then we hit it off.  We got together two or three times a week during the summers before Ralph moved to Colorado Springs.  I used Mom’s acoustic guitar during those years.

     One year, Ralph suggested we meet at the midwinter bluegrass festival held in Denver in February.  I had never been to a bluegrass gathering.  I didn’t know it was an excuse to get together and jam with everybody you could.  I didn’t bring a guitar.

     We all went to Ralph’s motel room and he broke out his fiddle.  Brother John was there with his twelve string guitar.  I was there with my teeth in my mouth.  John suggested we could share his guitar.  We played a few tunes, but John or I was always on the sideline.  I wasn’t too adept with a twelve string guitar. 

     After a not-so-successful attempt on my part to keep up with Ralph playing the twelve string, I said with a mix of frustration and bravado, “I’m going to go buy a guitar!” 

     Audible laughter followed me as I handed John his guitar and headed for the motel room door.  “I’ll go with you, just to see what there is,” said the Goodwife, the inveterate shopper.

     The festival was held at a Ramada Inn off of I25 on120th Avenue.  On the main floor was a huge lobby, a theatre, a couple of big meeting rooms and several smaller meeting rooms around the perimeter.  One of the larger meeting rooms was filled with vendors selling all kinds of stuff including instruments.

     In those days, a person could go anywhere without buying a “bracelet” except to the theatre or the big meeting room where the show stars performed.  (The last time I was there, I couldn’t go anywhere, including the vendor’s room, without the bracelet.)  I walked into the vendor venue and started looking at guitars.  I passed by the Martin guitars selling for $2K or more.  I located the low-cost seller who was displaying guitars listed for $800 and up.

     Hmm.  Maybe I wasn’t going to buy a guitar after all.  “Have anything in a lower-cost range?” I asked.  (I may have said “cheaper”, maybe.)

     The guy rummaged around beneath his table.  He pulled out a guitar and said, “This one is $300.”  He probably had $500 to $600 models, too, but he accurately took my measure, especially if I said “cheaper”.   He handed me the guitar.  I checked it for fret accuracy.  I played a few chords.  The neck was narrow enough for my short fingers.  The strings were fairly easy to hold against the frets without cutting slots in my fingers.  It had a good sound, as near as I could tell with all the noise in the place.

     “Will you take an out-of-state check?”            

     He laughed.  “Every check I take here is out-of-state!  I’m from Idaho!”  (Or was it Montana or Wyoming?  Anyway, he was not a Coloradan.)  I found the Goodwife, secured the checkbook, promised to pay her the $300 with cash I had saved for the day, returned and wrote the guy a check.  As I wrote, he pulled a guitar case from somewhere and carefully placed my guitar in it.

    “Gee, I get a case, too?”

     “All my guitars come with cases.”  I dropped the checkbook off with the Goodwife as I headed for the motel room. 

      “I’m going to look around for a while,” she said.  I stepped into the motel room with new guitar case proudly fronting for me.

      Ralph stood there with fiddle in left hand, bow in his right.  Nobody said anything for a second or two.  Then Ralph asked, “Where’s Patti?  Did you have to trade her for that guitar?”  Everyone laughed at that.

     The new guitar came out of the case and underwent an inspection.  “Hmm.  Made in China,” Ralph said.  Sure enough, that’s what it said right there on the interior body.  Well, it was only $300.  I’ve never been able to coax it into a proper rendition of “Chopsticks”.  It plays all kinds of intervals, not just open 4ths and 5ths.  It has forgotten its heritage, maybe.

    The guitar was properly tuned and a proper jam session ensued.  Eventually, the wayward shopper returned to the room and my denials of a barter deal were confirmed.

     To this day Ralph still asks about the guitar that I traded my wife for.

    

John Deere Psychology

Or, getting into my head.

     The 830 started pushing oil out of the left exhaust port sometime in August.  It got to where it wasted a quart of oil about every five hours.  I have friends who would have kept a quart of oil handy and let the dirt accumulate where the oil seeped out between head and exhaust manifold and would have lived happily ever after.

    There are two cardinal sins an engine can commit in my book.  The first is to be hard to start.  Nothing is more frustrating than a struggle to get an engine going when I’m ready to go.

     The second is to use oil.  So when the wheat was up suitably and the tractoring season was over, I “tore down” the engine to do a “top” overhaul.  Everything in the middle of the picture comes off.  (Exclude the radiator on the left and everything in the lower right corner behind the exhaust pipe.)

    The head weighs about 150 pounds, a bit much for an old guy.  Come-along to the rescue.

    This all happened early in October.  The head went to Burlington, the gaskets got ordered.  I was hoping to get everything back in time to work on it before the big move.  The mechanic shop rang my cell phone as we neared Loveland with a load of “stuff”.

    All things happen for a reason.  I needed a break from the clutter of stacked cardboard boxes, from trying to find things in that cluttered stack, from finding the best place to put “stuff”.  About a week or so after receiving the call, I trekked to Burlington and picked up the head and the gaskets.

    The head overhaul cost nearly $600.  Here is what a revamped head looks like.  Note the shiny new valves (the round things) and the nice green paint.

    

Here is what a $250 gasket set from John Deere looks like:  (a cardboard separator hides the main gasket from the rest of the assortment.  In the second picture the main gasket is mounted on the block waiting to seal the head to the block.)

 

    

    Speaking of sticker shock, here is what a $123 oil pressure gauge from John Deere looks like:

     The head is now buttoned up to the block.  It is waiting for an accurate torque wrench to bring it up to the required 275 foot pounds of torque.  I didn’t have a lot of faith in the Rube Goldberg device which extended the wrench’s lever by 26 inches.  I couldn’t do the math to figure out how much torque I had to show on the torque wrench when its reach was extended by 2 feet.  Plus, it was a chore to keep the torque wrench from turning on the socket handle and at the same time getting an accurate reading on it.

     There is quite a bit of work left to be done, but the covers are on and the openings closed well enough to keep out the vermin and the weather. Besides, I will need another break from the clutter of modern existence.  I will escape into the simplicity of the past where 270 foot pounds of torque are on the tractor’s head bolts, not my molars.

     Here is a World War Two joke.  A Native American joined the Navy.  During his enlistment he was trained as an electrician.  Unfortunately, he also contracted a chronic case of dysentery.  When he mustered out, he returned to his home on the reservation.  He brought with him both his electrician skills and his health problems.  Now his home was a bit behind the times as far as modern conveniences, so he set out to help bring light through electricity to his people.  One dark moonless night, his chronic health problem surfaced and he raced for the outhouse.  Because the outhouse was unlit, he failed to find it in time and the result was an unfortunate accident.  Resolved never to be embarrassed by that sort of thing again, the young man set about the very next day installing a light fixture in the outhouse and connecting to the recently-completed power supply.  He flipped the switch and on came the light.

     The completion of the project entitled him to a place in the record book as the first Indian to wire a head for a reservation.  (Thanks to that great jokester, Uncle Pete)