Old Settlers’ Picnic II

     “C’mon!” Larry hissed, grabbing my arm and jerking me along.

     We ran, but not very far, just around the corner of the grandstand building.  Larry adopted an air of nonchalance and I did my best to imitate him.

       We stood there, leaning against the building, feigning innocence.  We waited.

     Earlier, Larry recruited me.  He must have worked his way through a bunch of other guys and been turned down.  Being three years younger than he was, I was quite a ways down the social totem pole.

     That thought didn’t occur to me then.  I was flattered to be asked to assist.  Why not help Larry?  Because he was doing something stupid?  That thought didn’t occur to me then, either.  Thoughts of consequences never entered my mind—until the time came to face them.

     We watched a man serving homemade ice cream from the crank style ice cream maker.  The scene was another Old Settlers’ Day at Walks Camp Park.  On the backside of the covered grandstand, beneath the higher bleacher seats were booths where vendors could set up and serve a crowd.  The doors to the booths were hinged on top.  When opened, the doors, propped up with rods or sticks, provided a shade for those standing in front of the booth.

     Beneath the lower benches of the grandstand were two crawl spaces, separated by the hallway that ran from the back of the grandstand to the small stage at the very front.  Once in a while, someone would crawl into one of the crawl spaces to retrieve an object that managed to get dropped through the bleacher seats.

     Sheets of corrugated metal ran from top to bottom underneath the bleachers.  The metal served to protect the booths below the dirt from people’s shoes as well as whatever might blow into the mostly open structure.  The metal also channeled water from wind-blown rain or melted snow to the crawl space.

      “Pop!” went the firecracker.  Ladies sitting in the grandstand screamed.  The master of ceremonies was irritated.  This wasn’t the first firecracker set off in the crawl space.  Measures had been taken to prevent such a thing from happening.  Dire punishments had been promised.

     “Let’s have the boys who did that,” the announcer bellowed.  “Let’s get them up here.”

     Larry sauntered off and I followed him as best I could.  The emcee’s appeals to apprehend the miscreants faded, and we reached the safety of the Arikaree Riverbed beneath the cottonwood trees.  There Larry celebrated his mischief.  My own joy was that we got out of there without getting caught.

      Larry needed an accomplice for his naughty deed because the crawl spaces to the grandstand had doors hinged on top, like the booth doors.  Sometimes the trap doors were held open by a hook and eye to provide a little ventilation beneath the seats.  This day, the doors were closed to prevent miscreants from igniting firecrackers in the crawl space. 

     The crawl spaces were attractive nuisances.  They made dandy sound chambers for an explosion.  The explosion never failed to elicit screams from ladies sitting in the stands.  So the doors were closed.

     My job was to hold the door open long enough for Larry to strike a match, light the firecracker fuse, and throw the lit cracker under the grandstand.  I was dumb enough to do it.

     Surely someone saw us do it.  There were people all around.  Why hadn’t someone collared us and taken us up in front of everybody to be disciplined?

           After about thirty minutes or so, we left the shade of the cottonwoods wandered back up to see what was going on.  Things had settled back to normal.  Someone was entertaining the crowd with music of some kind.  The firecracker was history.

      I separated myself from Larry.  I wanted nothing more to do with any of his projects for a while.  I could only imagine what would happen to me if my parents discovered I had been part of that firecracker business.              

       I counted myself lucky that no one “told on us.”  It would take some time for me to figure it out.

     Larry’s father was the Master of Ceremonies that day.  

Old Settler’s Day

     Labor Day was the saddest of all the holidays, when I was a kid.  Leading the charge of morosity was the fact that that holiday marked the end of summer, the end of freedom, the beginning of school.

     Ignore the fact that with the start of school, friends would be reunited, and we would have much more time on the sports fields with three recesses a day than we ever had during the summer.  Freedom is a state of mind.  We were unable to discover that idea as prisoners in the classroom.

     The other thing that happened on Labor Day was the Old Settler’s picnic.  As the name suggested. it was for the folks who had homesteaded in the area during the first decade of the 20^th Century.  In the 1950’s there were still a few of those left, but mostly it was for the descendants of the real settlers. 

      Our Grandfather survived until the end of the sixties.  He certainly qualified to attend the annual celebration, though I don’t remember him ever attending one.  We went to a few of them.

    In my memory, a lady named Lena Martin kept the day alive and spearheaded the event.  When she grew too old to do the job, the tradition quietly passed into history.  No one wanted the job.

      The day was filled with contests of various kinds for every age.  I remember some of the men standing at stations, shotgun at the ready, yelling “Pull!”  A blue rock, or blue rocks, if it were a double, would come flying out of a berm a few yards in front of the shooter.  “Boom!” went the shotgun. The crowd would ooh and ah if the explosion resulted in the blue rock turning into smithereens.  It was sort of an “Oh?” if a chip or two went flying from the rock.  If the blue rock fell and crashed ignominiously to earth where it broke into pieces on the hard old prairie, the crowd groaned.  The shooter had a dead miss.

      It seems the first prize for the shooter who hit the most blue rocks was a turkey, thus the name “turkey shoot”.  I may be confusing this with some other event, however.

      Another contest for men was the nail driving contest.  The contestant got a hammer, and a two-inch board with a big nail, 16 or 20 penny, started in the board.  The object was to set the nail with the least number of hammer blows.

      A couple of guys tried to set the nail with one blow.  The nail always went flying away somewhere.  The contestant was disqualified.  We tried to get Dad to enter this contest, but I don’t think he ever did.     

      There were plenty of contests for kids, sack races, three-legged races, foot races.  I probably tried some of those once or twice, but I soon gave up.  There were two Huffman kids who ran like greased lightning.  If they were entered, there was no sense for me to try.

     I did win a contest at Old Settlers’ Day once, hands down, no questions asked, and it was a source of burning embarrassment.  The picnic was held at Walks Camp Park.  There was a covered grandstand with a softball diamond in front of it.  In the center of the lower level of the grandstand was a stage even with the second row of bleacher seats where a speaker could stand and speak up to the crowd.

      For some reason, I was standing down below the stage.   I think I might have been set up.  The emcee announced the next contest.  Apparently, I didn’t hear what the contest was.  Had I heard, I would have beat feet out of there as fast as I could go.

         Before I could go, a set of great long spidery arms grabbed me, hoisted me over the side rails of the stage and deposited me smack dab in front of the crowd, God and everybody.  The crowd was laughing, applauding, cheering.  I suspect I turned the reddest of reds.

      I looked daggers at Jimmy Lundy.  I always considered him my friend.  Now, he betrayed me.  He was laughing, too.

      The contest?  Who has the most freckles?  There was no need to count spots, no need to look at the competition.  I was awarded first prize by judges, the crowd, everybody.

      I always hated those freckles.  Once I took a washcloth and scrubbed my cheeks until they were quite chapped.  I think there was some Lava soap involved, but the freckles remained.

      We had this Warner Brothers record, Porky Pig on a Safari.  “Ebeelubeelabookala!”  One of the animals he called on more than once was a leopard who was trying to rub away his spots.  I knew what the leopard knew.  On the third visit, there was no leopard.  Only spots on the ground and the washcloth.  The leopard had scrubbed himself away.

      I didn’t go that far.  Dad tried to comfort me.  He said he had two nicknames when he was a kid, “Spots” and “Goose egg.”  He pointed out he no longer had freckles; they would disappear.  No help.  How could anyone like a kid with freckles?  They were ugly!

     It would be many years later when both of my daughters were swooning over a fellow teacher’s son who had a spattering of freckles under his eyes and running across his nose.  Somebody actually liked a person who had freckles?  My own daughters?  Unbelievable!

      There was a reward that infamous Labor Day.  The first prize for the freckles contest was a shoeshine kit.  Some sixty years later, I have lost most of my freckles.  A few light ones mark my hands and arms. 

     But I still have the shoeshine kit.  It was packaged in cardboard with a cellophane window so you could see two dusting/polishing brushes, a black one, a clear one, two applicator brushes, a black one and a brown one, a shining cloth and two cans of Kiwi shoe polish, black and brown.  It all fits into a fake leather case.  The polish cans have been replaced a few times over the years.  The polishing cloth has been replaced.  The original brushes are all still there.  They still polish my leather shoes.

        Looking back, I sense the whole thing was a set up.  I never heard of a freckles contest.  I think Jimmy Lundy made it up, knowing who would win, and picking an appropriate prize.  With friends like that. . . .  Well, it was the right prize,  I guess.

UFO

    Some stories can’t be told.  They haven’t crawled out of the vault containing those stories too painful to share into the realm of amusing.

     On the flip side are the stories that spend little or no time in the painful category.  One such story began on a Friday evening.

     Friday evenings highlight the working person’s week.  With retirement, Friday evening joy has disappeared.  That is partially compensated by Monday morning’s disappearance.

      This particular Friday evening was a late fall evening.  Maybe football season was finished, or it was an out-of-town game.  My presence to either take tickets or run the concession stand was not required.

      I was helping to get supper on the table when the phone rang.  “Let’s go to the movie,” the voice on the phone said.

      “OK!” the Goodwife said.

     “Oh no, please no,” I muttered.  Movie-watching is not my long suit.  Many movies are trite, hackneyed, predictable.   Many times, I pay the price of admission in order to take a nap.

      A lot of Friday evenings, I wanted to get away from everything, to have a little private time away from the noise and bustle.  We had the perfect place for that, on the hill two miles out of town, the nearest neighbor a mile away.  The last thing I wanted to do was go sit in a theater filled with my students and former students.  Not that I disliked them.   I loved them all right.  I just needed a break.

     As the Goodwife hurried about to get supper on the table so we could get to the movie on time, I prevailed upon her to make my excuses to our friends and spare me an unenjoyable evening. Her enthusiasm diminished a little, she hurried through supper, primped a little, threw on her jacket, grabbed purse and keys and headed out the door.

      I earned my reprieve by gathering up soiled dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, scrubbing skillet, pots, and pans, wiping table and counters.  I had already decided that a shower and a book were next on the docket. 

     One of the advantages of living on a hilltop in the country, plains country, was the ability to see everywhere.  Bathrobe and clean underwear in hand, I idled by the south window in the dusk.  It was misty, almost foggy.  Visibility was limited.  But wait, what was that red light in the distance?  I had never seen that before.  Probably an airplane or something.

     Returning from the shower, this time wearing the bathrobe, I checked out the south window again.  The solid, unblinking red light was still there.  It didn’t go away all evening.  I got out the binoculars.  They brought the light closer, but no more details appeared in the cloudy mist.

     A couple of things lurking in the back of my mind came to the forefront.  Late summer, early fall, a family a few miles south, a respected family, the county sheriff’s family reported a UFO sighting in their territory.  Ironically, the other thing that came to mind was a movie I liked, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  “Dah dah dah dah dum.”  The five theme notes flicked through my head.

      I studied the light again.  It appeared to move, but it didn’t go anywhere. 

      I was under standing orders to call Bill any time day or night if I saw either of two events, a tornado, or a UFO.  He wanted to see those things for himself, not just movies or videos of them.

     This was before cell phones, so I couldn’t call him immediately.  When the Goodwife’s headlights flahed on the wall, I knew the movie was over.  I picked up the phone and punched the button on the speed dial labeled “Uncle Bill.”

      “Hey Bill, listen, there’s this weird red light up here.”

      “Red lght?”

      “Yes a red light in the sky south of us.”   Click.  He was on his way.  I had exchanged bathrobe for jeans and shirt.  I pointed the phenomenon out to the Goodwife.  She agreed the light had never been there before.  She agreed it was weird hanging there in the midst.

     Bill arrived.  He had seen the light as he came up the road.  We consulted.  He called his wife and ordered her to bring the van pronto.  The other movie-going couple was notified.  Soon six of us were standing in the yard eyeing the red light that none of us had seen before. 

     We all piled in Bill’s van and headed south.  Belonging to the van’s six occupants were eight bachelor’s degrees and four master’s degrees. 

     We didn’t have far to go, four or five miles.  The closer we got, the less the mist and haze interfered with our view. 

     Somewhere about a half mile away from the UFO, we could all see:  the legs and cross braces of the tower.  What had been obscured in the mist, even to the binocular’s scrutiny, was now easily visible in the light’s red glow.

     Bill pulled the van onto the fill that bridged the highway ditch and granted access to the pasture.  We got out and looked.  One doubting Thomas among us slipped the chain on the swinging gate and hurried up the trail for the hundred yards or so to the tower site.  She laid hands on the metal tower rungs and returned to where the other five sat waiting in the van.

    “Yup.  It’s a tower all right.”

     What to do?  There was no question that this adventure would get out. We would be the laughing stock.  It couldn’t be covered up.  It would do no good to swear each other to secrecy.  “Three may keep a secret, if two are dead,” Poor Richard wrote.  Somebody would blab.

      Besides, as the van headed back north, we began to laugh.  The absurdity of it all caught up with us.  It crossed my mind that the blame fell mostly on me.  I sounded the alarm.  But one of the ladies who drove that road twice a day to and from work in Colby confessed that she had not noticed that tower going up.

     Far from covering up our adventure, we all told somebody.  They laughed, we laughed.

     Another acquaintance, when they heard our story, related theirs.  They had gone to Colby in the afternoon, had spent the evening there, dined, shopped, visited friends and headed home in the dark.  They saw the light.  The driver far exceeded the speed limit in the attempt to get there before the UFO departed.  They too saw the tower as they got close enough to clear the mist.  They laughed, too.

     Since that night, we have traveled down that road in the company of our friends several times, going to this meeting or that concert.  It doesn’t happen every time, but every once in a while, somebody will say, “Look, there’s our UFO.”  We laugh.   

      

Thanksgiving 2016

      “Go home, take the cow into your house to live with you,” said the elder.  It was the next-to-last piece advice the elder would give the Chinese peasant.

      In preceding sessions, the elder advised the peasant to take in the dog, the cat, the goat, and the pig, into his house with his wife and three children.  This was a Chinese fable we read in our “reading” book in second grade (I think second grade).  We might have called the peasant a “Chinaman”, but that’s probably politically incorrect, so “peasant” will do for now.

      The fable started with the peasant calling on the wise old elder to ask his advice.  His wife had just brought another child into the world and she was complaining vociferously about the crowded conditions in which they lived.  The peasant didn’t have the wherewithal to build a new house (or maybe he was just “thrifty”).

      Thus the advice to take the animals into the house, starting with the dog.  Each time the peasant returned to seek advice and to explain that the addition of the animal only made his wife complain more, the elder suggested adding another animal, the cat, the goat, etc.     

     When adding the cow to the household made living conditions intolerable, the peasant returned to the elder.  The elder advised him to go home and turn all the animals out of his house, put them back in the barn, sty, etc.

    With the animals gone, the wife set to giving the house a good cleaning.  She did so merrily, exulting in all the room she now had to care for her family.  The peasant returned to the elder once more to report on the change in his wife’s attitude and to praise him for his wisdom.

     I had occasion to think of that fable in the days approaching Thanksgiving.  We hadn’t hosted either the Thanksgiving or the Christmas family gathering for years.  It was about our turn.  I sent out the email inviting family members to our place for Thanksgiving.

      Our family now numbers in the 50’s.  We thought maybe twenty-some or even thirty-some might accept our offer.

     We had 44 positive replies.  With us two hosts, we would have 46 people in our house on Thanksgiving afternoon.

     We debated the logistics.  Two or three turkeys?  Two hams?  Tables and chairs?  Roaster ovens?  Silverware or plastic?

     We decided two turkeys would be plenty, and they were.  Two hams left us with a whole ham left over.  We managed to borrow everything we needed, including our neighbor’s refrigerator.  (He was gone to Pennsylvania.)

     The next challenge was where to put the borrowed tables and chairs.  The answer was to move chairs from the family and living rooms into the bedrooms.  Then there was ample room for tables with 48 chairs.

     The food, all but ham and turkey supplied by the guests, was abundant.

    

     The weather cooperated with temperature in the 50’s.  The kids could play outside, or inside.  The favorite place seemed to be the storeroom in the basement, however.

      For as many people as we had, it did not seem that crowded.  Everybody seemed to be happy.  We even had time for a short jam session at the day’s end.

     Just like in the fable, when everybody left, we were in a big house with lots of room, echoing room.  That’s not to compare any of our guests to the Chinese peasant’s livestock, of course!

     Once the tables and chairs were removed, we took advantage of the empty space to spruce up the floors.

      The furniture back in place, there remains the borrowed items to return.  Then our job will be done.  

Thrift

 Thrift, thrift, Horatio.  The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

      Good ol’ Hamlet cynically excuses his mother for her marrying his uncle in a month after his father’s death.  Her quick marriage was all in the name of economy.  The left over roasts served at the funeral dinner made for good cold cuts at the wedding reception.

     Thus an early reference (by Shakespeare, no less) to the Scandinavian reputation for being tight.  However, I think my own “economy” came more from the non-Scandinavian side of my heritage, from my maternal grandfather. 

     I remember him sitting in the chair by the south doorway, where a disabling stroke landed him.  Within his reach were ashtray, matches, blanket, and a rope-and-pulley device he was supposed to use to rehabilitate his arm that was paralyzed by the stroke. 

     Mostly, he tended his cigar.  One cigar lasted him a long time.  When it went out, he would relight it.  When I visited, he would ask me to reposition his ashtray.  When I got it where he wanted it, he would say, “That’s the stuff, son.”  (That same ashtray still stands in the farmhouse basement.)    

     He would relight and smoke his cigar until it was too short to hold between finger and thumb.  Then, he would stick a toothpick into the butt and smoke it down to a nub.  If you don’t consider the number of matches he used, there wasn’t much waste there.

     I seem to have inherited his thrifty habits.  Someone near and dear to me usually says I am “cheap”, sometimes changing that to “thrifty” when are among lesser-known acquaintances, when she is trying to put a good face on things.

     In my singing hobby, we sometimes are required to download and print copies of music.  (Supposedly, we have paid the fee to make the copies, thus staying within the bounds of copyright laws.)  I always print front and back of the page.  Many other fellows simply print one side, avoiding the hassle of printing front and back, but using twice as many pages.

     Once while rehearsing with my quartet, I shared my copy of the music with a fellow singer.  He turned the page, searched for the continuation from the first page, and realized page two was on the back of page one.  He remarked about the use of both sides of the page.

     In reply, I was tempted to say something about saving a tree for tomorrow.  Instead, I shared with him Grandad’s using a toothpick to get the most out of his cigar.  I explained I was by nature, thrifty.

      At the time, I was still driving the old Dakota pickup with its six feet of glass pack muffler that didn’t do a lot of muffling.  The boys said they always knew when I was coming because they could hear me a mile off.  They gently suggested I should look for a new pickup.

     I protested that the old gal still ran great, even if it was a little loud and looked pretty sad.  Ted said, “Yeah, you have a lot of toothpicks left in your box, don’t you?”

      I laughed heartily.  When you tell someone something, you never know if they are truly listening.  I knew Ted heard my Grandad story and had taken it to heart.

     Yes, I still have a lot of toothpicks in my box. 

     Once, a nun’s siblings noticed how sincerely she had taken her vows of poverty, as her robes were threadbare and patched.  They decided to go together and buy her new clothes.  They were surprised some time later when they found her wearing the same old clothes while the new outfit hung in her closet.  By way of explanation, the sister told her siblings, “Old habits are hard to change.”

      I concur.

      

It Once Was Green

      It once was green.  Now it is peach. 

 

     And egg shell.

      Some of it was green, then peach, and then egg shell.

 

     One of the Munsters (was it Lurch?) showed up above the stairwell.

 

     That is as close as I’ll ever come to drawing a portrait.  It happened because I had to stand the ladder on a stair step and lean it against the wall to get to the peak high above the bottom of the stairway.  I painted a bit below the ladder top on either side.  The Munster revealed himself when I took the ladder away.

      When we were first looking at this house, both girls looked at the green walls in the kitchen-family room and said,” Mom isn’t going to like that.”  Of course, they were right.

     The color change has been under consideration for some time.  A year ago, we were putting on a new roof.  This year’s project was covering up the green monster.  No more will our northwest wall be confused with Fenway’s left field wall.

      The project wasn’t without travail.  The first attempt proved too light, almost white.  Can’t have that.  Back to Home Depot, where the lady darkened it to peach color.  That worked for a while, until we ran out.

     The second gallon turned out a little lighter than the first.  By the end of the first gallon, I had both west walls done and most of the stairwell.  You could see a line between the two gallons.  I repainted a few square feet when the word came down, “Since we have to repaint it. . . .”  Time for a color change.

     This time “we” tried to match the southern kitchen walls.  The Goodwife took a switch plate cover from the south wall and went through the color samples for thirty or forty minutes trying to match colors, without success.  Finally, one of the paint people told her they had this machine which would tell her everything she wanted to know about the paint on that switch plate cover. 

      It turned out to be eggshell.  At my suggestion, she got a small one-cup sample to try on our still-green wall.  At first, it looked too light.  After agonizing in the afternoon sunlight, she finally decided it was a close enough match, in the artificial light.

     Back to Home Depot for a gallon of the stuff.  Soon the last green wall was covered and the now-peach stairwell turned to eggshell.  There remains the touchup to do.  That means putting up the “scaffold”, a 2 X 12 between a stepladder on the landing and a ladder standing on a stair step and leaning against the wall, again.

     Touchup, replace switch plate and outlet covers, reinstall stair handrail and this project will be done.  Well, there is the green curtain for the kitchen window, now no longer usable.

 

CDL

CANCELLATION EFFECTIVE DATE  11/07/2016

“If you fail to regain medically CERTIFIED status the Department will cancel your Commercial Driver License (‘CDL’) on the CANCELLATION EFFECTIVE DATE shown above . . . and it will be unlawful for you to operate any motor vehicle.”

      There were three or four other paragraphs, citing various and sundry laws, but the meat of the letter was in the forgoing sentence.  It certainly caught me by surprise.  My license doesn’t expire until my birthdate 2018.  I have to have a physical every two years to maintain my CDL.

      I have held a CDL ever since the federal law that unified all 50 states’ commercial driver’s license requirements.  Before that, I held a chauffeur’s license. 

      When the federal law went into effect, two things led me to pursue a CDL.  At first, “they” said farmers had to have a CDL to transport anhydrous ammonia and other such hazardous materials, including some pesticides. 

      Second, all those holding a chauffer’s license had only to pass the written portion of the CDL test.  We didn’t have to go through the pre-trip inspection and driving test.  IF we took the written test by the deadline.

      As the deadline approached, farmers flooded their local driver examiners’ offices.  “They” then said that farmers were exempt from the CDL requirements as long as they didn’t transport hazardous materials outside of a hundred mile radius from the farm.

     It was too late.  Many farmers had studied the book and were ready to take the written test.  They probably reasoned the same way I did:  what if requirements changed and down the line, you had to have a CDL?  Then you would have to take the driving test which included the dreaded pre-trip inspection.

      The driving test was dreaded because you had to supply the rig.  There were horror stories of guys taking their trucks in to take the driving test and not getting past the pre-trip inspection because their truck had too many safety violations.  It cost thousands of dollars to get the truck up to par before the applicant even got to demonstrate his driving skill.

      In Kansas, you can renew your license at the county court house.  If you had to take a test, you have to go to a bona fide driver examiner.  The closest to us was in Colby.

     So I joined twenty or thirty other folks standing in line waiting to take the CDL written test before the “grandfathered” deadline for us chauffer’s license holders passed.  In a few hours, I walked out with a little piece of paper that said I now possessed a CDL.  The actual license came in the mail in two or three weeks.

      I renewed that license a few times by taking written tests.  I never had to take a physical exam.  Until I exchanged my Kansas license for a Colorado CDL.   I didn’t have to take a written test.  But I had to pass the “CDOT physical”.

      The physical exam went pretty well until it came to the vision check.  I had to identify three colored dots.  I missed the first one.  It was red and I said green, or maybe vice versa.

     To pass the physical, I had to call on an optometrist who would verify that my vision, in spite of my color blindness, was good enough to qualify for a CDL.  The local optometrist would probably do that for $50.

     I had within the preceding month had my eyes examined at a place in Denver.  I had to revisit that clinic, but the optometrist lady agreed to write a letter for me once she understood what was needed.  Since I was there within sixty days of my original examination, the service was free.

     She wrote and faxed the letter to the clinic where I had taken the physical.  I had to go back to the clinic to get the rest of the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed.  The official papers had to go back to the driver's license examiner.  Finally, I was good to go, until 2018, at least so I thought.

     Then in October came this letter.  Somebody probably told me I had to renew the physical in two years, but it didn’t make a very deep impression.

      This time, I knew I would have problems with the eye exam, with myasthenia gravis and all.  I took an eye exam in Ft. Collins.  This time, the optometrist lady would not agree to write my letter.  She said I needed to get that from the ophthalmologist.

       I contacted the ophthalmologist to ask her opinion, is my eyesight good enough to keep my  CDL?  She replied in the affirmative and agreed to write the necessary letter.  She gave me a phone number to call when I got the specific requirements.

     I made the appointment with the clinic in Hugo.  I should have done some investigating.  I later found some places where they only do CDOT physicals, charging less than $100.  Mine cost $250.

      Armed with my ophthalmologic phone number, I entered the clinic and completed the paperwork.  Then came the actual exam.  We started with the eye exam.  I was able to read the rows of letters adequately with either eye and with both eyes, though truthfully, I was using only the left eye when I was supposed to be using both eyes.

     Then came the color test.  “What color is this dot?” asked the examiner as she pointed to the dot in the upper left hand corner of the eye chart.

     “Red.”  She didn’t miss a beat.  She moved her pointer to the upper right corner.

      “This one?”

     “Yellow.”  Of that I was sure.  She moved her pointer to the lower right corner of the chart.

      “This one?”

      “Green.”  The eye exam was done.  I passed the color test!

      It wasn’t until she looked at my medical history that the examiner brought up my eye problem.  When she expressed reservations about passing me because of the myasthenia gravis I whipped out the phone number from my pocket and asked her to contact the ophthalmologist, who was willing to vouch for the accuracy of my eyesight.

       She left the exam room, to contact the ophthalmologist, at least so I thought.  She never came back.  Instead, her understudy came in about ten minutes later and rechecked my blood pressure.  It was too high, 150 / 80, she said.

      Instead of a two-year extension, I got a three-month extension.  I have to go back in January to see if my pressure has receded.  No mention of myasthenia gravis or eyesight, or anything like that  

      Off to the courthouse where the driver examiner practices.  I removed belt, suspenders, cell phone and passed through the metal detector.  In a matter of minutes, my medical certificate was copied and registered.  It was only good till January, the examiner cautioned me.

      This week, the ophthalmologist’s nurse called me to let me know my recent blood tests had all returned with normal readings.  So I asked about the blood pressure.  Could it be caused by the Prednisone?  She didn’t know.  Consult your family physician.

     Rather than go  off on the problem with modern medicine being all the specialists who only know one thing about the body, whose advise and prescriptions may conflict rashly with the advice and prescriptions of other specialists treating that same body, I wondered if she had heard from the CDOT examiners.  I don’t think they had been in communication with each other.

      Suspicion reared its ugly head that the medical bureaucracy, like the government bureaucrats, don’t think they have done their job properly unless they have required you to come back at least twice.

     I thought I had outsmarted them by having the ophthalmologist ready to testify.  But they found another reason to cause a second visit.  I can’t help but wonder if they had been able to “get” me with the vision issue, if they would have brought up the blood pressure issue at all.  I shouldn’t be so cynical.

       Between now and January, I will have to call on the family physician to address the blood pressure issue.  I will return to the clinic and apply for an extension of my CDOT physical.  Whether that is granted or not, I will have to return to the driver license examiner to either register the extension or to convert the CDL to a regular license.  Red tape wins again.

     I should be grateful that someone is making me address the blood pressure problem.  I have been to the ophthalmologist and the endocrinologist in October.  Both took my blood pressure.  Neither mentioned it.  I guess I’ll have to ask why.

      In the meantime, my CDL is still valid--until January.

           

Aurora’s End

     “The car won’t start.”

     “What?  What does it do?  Will it go er-er-er?”

    “No, it won’t do anything.  The dash won’t light up.”

     “Do the headlights work?”   I knew the answer to that before Number 2 Daughter could reply.  I heard the alarm bell going off to let you know you left your lights on.

      “Yeah, they work.”

      “Probably not a battery connection.”  Our conversation was interrupted by a Good Samaritan in the gas station where she had stopped to fuel before heading up into the hills for a job interview.

      Daughter Number 2, living in Florida, had flown in and was looking for a job.  She needed a car to get where she needed to go.  We had recently added the Concorde to our fleet, so the Aurora was available.

      Jumping the battery wasn’t the answer.  After a few minutes of troubleshooting, I heard over the telephone the dinging of the seat belt alarm.  The thing had suddenly come alive.  This time, turning the ignition switch forward activated the starter and the engine started right up.

     The phone conversation ended abruptly as Daughter was on a late start to her interview.  The problem with the Aurora wasn’t done.  Faith in the car was vastly diminished, too.  From here on out, when you shut the car off, you wondered if it would start again.

     Sure enough, while DN2 was visiting friends in town, the Aurora played dead again.  She had to make other arrangements to get to the airport for her flight back to Florida.  At my earliest convenience, I visited the Aurora where it sat curbside in town.

     Removing the back seat, I opened the battery box and cleaned the cables.  They really didn’t need it, and just as I suspected, that didn’t solve the problem.  Turning the switch on produced no fruit.  The car would have to sit there another month.

      One Sunday morning, I towed a borrowed car dolly from Kansas and pulled up in front of the dusty Oldsmobile.  With a winch and some help from the property owner, I managed to get the heavy machine’s front wheels in place and strapped to the dolly.

     The Dakota strained pretty hard tugging the Aurora away from the curb.  Crossing the dips at the intersections was adventurous, but eventually I reached the highway, and soon I had the Aurora in front of the garage on the farm.

      I found out that backing a car dolly with a car on it was quite different from backing an empty dolly up to the front of a car.  My attempts to back the Aurora into the farm garage soon ended.  I decided I would try starting the car one more time.  If it failed to start, the car would have to sit outdoors for another while.

      This time, when I inserted the ignition key and turned the switch, all the bells and whistles came to life.  The car started.  It was as if the little trip into the country was the prince’s kiss that brought the princess back to life.

     The car was soon off the dolly and into the farm garage, and the Dakota, the car dolly and I were on the road back to Kansas.  Some weeks later, on a visit to check out the farm, on a lark I decided to try starting the Aurora.  It fired right up, so I left the pickup in the farm garage and drove the Aurora back to Kansas where I could work on it in my spare time.

      I decided to change the starter.  As I look back on it, that didn’t make much sense, since the starter worked whenever the ignition worked.  On the internet, I found a handful of instructions on how to change he starter. 

     On the Aurora, the starter was on top of the crankshaft, beneath the intake manifold, nestled in the V between the two banks of cylinders.  A lot of stuff had to come off, including the fuel rails, throttle body, and the intake manifold.

       As usual with me, getting started was the biggest hurdle.  Removing the big plastic cover revealed all the things that had to come off.  The fuel rails had flexible connections to the fuel line.  Once the rails were unfastened, you can swing them aside out of the way without having to break into the line.  No fuss, no muss, no spilled gasoline.

      The intake manifold was plastic.  Remove the bolts and lift it off.  Pretty simple.  And there was the starter, in plain sight and easy reach.  The wires were easily disconnected, two or three bolts quickly removed, and the old starter was out.

      Installing the new starter was equally simple.  The job was quickly done.  The new starter was in place, and I didn’t have to block the car up, crawl under it, struggle with getting wrenches on bolts, lift a heavy starter motor out and back in over my head, all the while keeping the greasy dirt out of my eyes and mouth, the usual starter-replacement protocol.

      Everything back in place and buttoned up, I tried the ignition.  Nothing.  I knew which wire activated the starter.  I bared a bit of the wire where it crawled out from under the intake manifold.  I ran a small jumper to the jumper terminal for the battery.

      The starter whirred perfectly.  The motor turned over and over, but wouldn’t start.  No ignition.  I went to the last step on every DIYer’s list.  I called the mechanic and told him to come get it.

     A day or two later, about an hour before the towing crew was to arrive, I tried once more to start the car.  It fired right up!  I called the mechanic and cancelled the tow.  I drove down to his garage.  I shut the car off.  He said to pull it into the bay.  The car started right up.

     In the bay, we shut it off three or four times.  Every time it started right up.  Adam explained to me that the problem was likely in the ignition key.  He pointed out the microchip in the key shaft.  He said it sent a mini-volt to the switch which allowed everything to work, an anti-theft device, I guess.

     Possible fixes, buy a new key, which didn’t always work.  He said they fixed the GM cars with that problem by installing a chip into the wire that went to the switch.  That way, it was always ready to go, whether the key’s microchip was functional or not.  In the meantime, he said a lot of times, if you turn the switch backwards to the accessory position and let it sit for a short time when it doesn’t work, it will come to life.  I wished I had talked to him a long time ago.

       Installing the chip would be about $180.  I opted to turn the switch backward.  We were a three-car family.  Taxes, license, and insurance added up.  It was time for the Aurora to go.  After about a year, we eventually did sell it.  The air conditioner wasn’t working properly and a myriad other small problems finally determined its fate.

     The Goodwife loved the Aurora.  It was comfortable.  You could drive for hours without fatigue.  It was quiet, very little road noise.  The instrument cluster was like the panel in an airplane, in a slight concave all focused towards the driver.  Everything was electric, seats, mirrors, windows.  It was a pleasure to drive.

     But there was the other side of it, the side in front of the dashboard.  It was a maintenance nightmare.  It took eight quarts of oil.  It had a leak in the seal between engine and transmission.  I consulted the friendly dealer.  His book said nine hours to change the seal.  Nine hours?

     You had to take the transmission down to get the exhaust pipe down to get the oil pan off.  I lived with the leak, adding oil all the time. 

      It had four ignition coils, one for every two cylinders.  They had to be changed two or three times while we owned it.  Changing them wasn’t hard, after we figured out that was the problem.

       Anyway, when all was said and done, I wasn’t sorry to see the Aurora go.  Its maintenance problems didn’t make it a very good spare car.

       

Quilt Retreat

     “The keys are locked in the car.”

     “What!? How did that happen?”  Bad news, good news, bad news all in a 10-minute period.

     First, a snowdrift blocked the road, and the Dakota wasn’t running properly.  Then a snowplow came along, before 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning.  He was headed for the highway that surely would be cleared by now.

     Then the call on the cell phone.  The keys were locked in the car.

     “Is the car running?”

     “Yes.” 

     “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”  Which wasn’t too quick because the Dakota was running poorly when I shut it off to use the snow blower and now it wouldn’t start.

     I set off afoot across the neighbor’s field as the quickest way back to the farm.

     It all started months before, perhaps years ago.  The Goodwife always thought the farm would be a great place to hold a quilt retreat.  For those of you who are ignorant (blissfully ignorant) of quilts, quilting, and quilt retreats, a quilt retreat is like a camp where quilters go to spend a day or up to several days with like-minded folks working on quilts.  It requires room and board, so a big place with room to spread out quilts and room for dining and sleeping is necessary.

     She got the idea of having her sister and her sister’s friend come to the farm to try things out.  They were quilting novices, so they would be learning a thing or two as well as the would-be quilt retreat hostess.

     Their airplane touched down at DIA on a Thursday, early in the afternoon.   The Goodwife was there to meet them.  I was in Kansas at the time.  Plans were for me to meet them at the farm on Friday.

    I had been keeping an eye on the weather as it was still February and still winter storm season.  Spell that blizzard.  Sure enough, the weather folks were calling for a blizzard to hit the area on Saturday following some very nice warm spring type weather on Thursday and Friday.  Not at all unusual behavior for the high plains.

     I had been in phone contact with the girls.  I lobbied to have them follow plan B.  In light of the weather forecast, number one daughter offered to let them use her Denver residence for their activities instead of going to the farm.  They would have no trouble getting to the airport for their return flight on Sunday.  Both ladies had important things to do scheduled for the following Monday.

     “It’s going to blizzard.  I can’t guarantee them we can get them to the airport on Sunday,” I explained.

     “I’ll see what they say,” responded my better half.  When my phone rang hours later, she said cheerily, “We’re at the farm!”  I exercised my self-control and didn’t say what I was thinking, something about the futility of talking to a brick wall, coupled with some barnyard vulgarities.

     “Okay,” I sighed.  “See you tomorrow.”

     As if recognizing my disappointment, she added, “It is so nice and warm, how can it blizzard?  The girls really wanted to go to the farm.”

    Yeah, yeah, I know.  I checked out the snow blower, started it up, and ran it up into the back of the Dakota using a couple of eight-foot 2x 6’s for a ramp.   I snubbed it down and got ready for the next day.

     Friday was a beautiful day.  The trip from Kansas was warm and full of the hope of spring.  When I reached the farm, I laid in enough firewood for two days. I checked the water jugs in the basement.  If the power went out under duress from wind and snow and shut down the pumps necessary for the farm water supply, there would be enough water to get us through a couple of days.  But how could it blizzard?  It was so nice that Friday evening.

      Sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning, the wind ramped up out of the north and made the trees moan and the power lines wail mournfully.  When I got up at six a.m. Saturday, the snow had just begun.  Soon the wind-driven flakes turned to horizontal sheets of powder racing across the yard. 

      By noon, the drifts were getting fair sized.  The power stayed on and the wood stove helped keep the place warm.

     Then Murphy’s law stepped through the ropes into the ring and elbowed the referee aside.  The sewer system backed up.  Three girls in the house and a backed up sewer.  It drained ever so slowly.  It was miserable.  I thought I had prepared for every contingency.  Of course I hadn’t.

     By evening, the snow had stopped, the wind abated a little.  I ventured out and started the snow blower.  I blew snow for thirty or forty minutes, enough to make a path around the house.  I reloaded the plow onto the Dakota and resolved to rise early on Sunday morn and dig a path through any drifts blocking our way to the state highway.  Those girls had to get to the airport on time.

      At four a.m., as I was staring out the west window, the Goodwife admonished me that it was too early, go back to bed.  At five a.m., I could wait no longer.  By the time I had dressed, built a fire and downed a cup of tea, it was six o’clock. 

     The Dakota fired right up, but when I drove a little over a half mile and ran into my first drift, it started running rough while I got out to inspect the depth of the drift east of the trees of the abandoned farm stead just west and south of the farm.  When I backed up to get enough room to turn around and unload the blower, it died.  It restarted, but wouldn’t run unless I held the throttle down a ways.  So I shut it off and started up the snow blower, which ran a lot better than the Dakota.

      I had made one laborious 30-yard pass pass through a two-foot drift when something caught my eye on the south horizon in the early morning sunlight.  It looked like a snowplow.  It couldn’t be, a snowplow on a county road before 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning?

      I pulled the snow blower back towards the pickup and looked again.  Slowly the shape came up from the bed of the Lickdab and climbed the incline into my view.  Sure enough, it was a county snowplow.  He was headed my way.  I tried to start the Dakota to get it out of his way.

     It wouldn’t start.  I got out of the pickup to be out of the way and to watch the drift-buster. The plow driver ripped through the drift and pulled up beside the pickup. Then he backed up to where I stood.  He asked if I was going to get through that drift with my little blower.  I said that was originally the plan, no longer necessary thanks to him.  He was amused.

     I asked him if he was going on north.  No, he would back up and go west on 3N to Highway 71.  That would be great.  I explained to him my predicament, of needing to get to the airport.  He assured me that if I could get this far, he would have the five miles to 71 cleared.  He turned his plow around and went south to 3N where he turned and went west on that road.

     I called the girls.  Get going.  The snowplow has cleared your way.

      I reloaded the snow blower and was struggling to get the Dakota started when the phone rang.  “How on earth did the keys get locked in the car?”  My set of keys was still in Kansas.                           One of the girls left the right back window down a couple of inches when they arrived Thursday.  Jenny had gone out to start the car to let it warm up.  She grabbed the scraper with the brush on one end to brush some of the snow out of the back seat.  Fortunately, the open window was to the south, so not a lot of snow got inside.

     When she got out and shut the driver’s door, out of habit she hit the door lock, and all the doors locked.  When she got around to the right rear door and tried to open it, she realized what she had done.  She felt terrible.

     When I arrived after my ten-minute walk across the wheat field, they had tried but failed to get a door open.  The sister-in-law could get her bony arm part way through the partially open window.  She could get a stick on the right front window switch, but she couldn’t grip and push hard enough to activate it.   

     I allowed that if she could get the stick on the switch, I could get my fingers through the window and onto the end of the stick and provide enough power to operate the window switch.  She did and I did.  The right front window opened and we were once again into the locked Aurora with the engine running.

     The girls loaded up their stuff and got ready to take off.  I bummed a ride with them back to the Dakota.  It eventually decided to start and I limped back to the farm.  I loaded up and followed the girls about 45 minutes behind them.  After three miles or so, the Dakota straightened out and ran right. 

       When I told the Dodge mechanic about the Dakota’s strange behavior, he explained I hadn’t let the engine run long for the computer to adjust to its new environment.  It last started in sunny warm Kansas, 2000 feet lower in altitude.  The colder higher altitude threw it for a loop when I didn’t give it time to adjust.    After the three miles, it got things set right.

      For the two girls, the ordeal wasn’t over.  They got to the airport, got on their airplane, and then security came and got Jenny.  She was randomly selected for extra security checks, but the security people failed to do the checks before she boarded the plane.  So they took her off the plane to do the check.  Sister-in-law couldn’t abandon Jenny, so she got off, too.  Their seats went to someone else.

      They got on a later flight.  With the snowstorm, the sewer problems, the car key episode, and the security fiasco, Jenny thought maybe she wasn’t supposed to make that trip.  They did get home safely and made their Monday appointments.

      As for me, I had a new key made for the Aurora, and I stowed it between bumper and license plate.  Twice burned, I finally learned.

     

          

Georgetown Train Trip

       “Where are the keys?”

     “I don’t have them.  You were driving.”  And so she was.  It was a nice summer day.  The Goodwife decided upon an outing to get me away from the farm.  Following our visit to the mine train ride near Georgetown, we would take in a meal at one of the Blackhawk casinos.

      We had “won” that meal at a charity auction in our rural Kansas community.  Someone donated the two meals, which were then auctioned off, either by silent auction, or by traditional auction with an auctioneer.  The proceeds went to the sponsoring organization, probably Rotary club in this case.

      I don’t remember what we paid for the two “free” meals, but we had the certificate with us, and it wasn’t out of date.  It was in the car trunk.  Which was now locked.  The keys were where?

     The search through purse and pockets gradually grew more frantic.  I stood at the trunk of the Oldsmobile Aurora, waiting for the lid to pop so I could deposit my jacket, which I didn’t think I would need for a while on this nice summer day, even in the mountains.  “Are you sure you don’t have the keys?”

     Yes, I was sure.  Then a rather disturbing impression hit me.  The car was vibrating a bit, not the kind of vibration that neither the train nor the passing traffic would cause.  I bent down towards the tailpipe.  Yes, there was exhaust exiting the pipe.

     Then I could hear it.  The engine was still running, had been running for the past hour and a half while we bought a ticket, stood in line, boarded a train car and went on the run to the inactive mine that the old railroad had originally served, and back to the parking lot.

     In shock and disbelief, I rounded the left rear corner of the car, pushed between the Goodwife and the Aurora and peered through the driver’s side window.  Sure enough.

     The keys were in the ignition, the dash was lit, the car was indeed running.  “There are your keys,” I said pointing accusingly at the car window, through which we could see the key fob and the orange tube that contained a small screwdriver, chained to the ignition key. 

     For an instant, dismay was replaced by anger and accusation.  How many times had I told her, “Never lock the door with anything but the key.  If you do that, you will never lock your keys in the car”?  Well.

      I had tried to apply that practice with my mother’s S—15 GMC pickup.  It had the annoying habit of locking the doors when you closed one, as when getting out to let it warm up while you scraped ice off the windshield, or to get something you forgot.  Since it locked itself when you least expected it, following my rule didn’t work.  Maybe that’s why we didn’t practice the rule as well as we should have.

       Now was not the time to start an argument or reinforce a lesson not learned, in the parking lot with the Aurora’s engine running, our only keys in the ignition of the locked car.  Back to dismay.  How would we get into the car?  All the while, the car sat there idling.  Was it overheated?  No, it didn’t smell like it, no sign of steam or excess heat escaping from under the hood. 

     I headed across the parking lot towards a creek.  “Where are you going? asked the Goodwife. 

     “To find a big rock.”

     “What for?”

     “To break through the window.”

     “Oh, don’t do that.” 

     I stopped.  On my way back to the car, I asked, “You have a better idea?”

      “Maybe there’s a locksmith somewhere.”  Back down to the gift shop—ticket office.  The man commiserated, said the closest locksmith was in Evergreen, an hour or two away.  We would have to pay mileage as well as time to and from.

     I weighed the cost of the locksmith with the cost of replacing the driver’s side window.  The rock idea sounded better, especially when I considered the amount of time involved, instant gratification versus waiting for the locksmith to arrive.

     Then the ticket agent—sales clerk said, jokingly, “What you need is a kid with a clothes hanger.  He’d get in there for you.”

     Hmmm.  The Aurora was a hard top, so there was this big gasket between the front and rear windows.  A stiff wire would go in there easily.  Maybe I could hook the door lock with the clothes hanger.

     “I don’t have a kid, but do you have a clothes hanger you could lend us?” I asked.  He looked around a while and finally did find a wire clothes hanger he said we could have.

     On the way back across the parking lot, I straightened out the hanger.  It was no task at all to get the wire between the two windows.  The car had theft-proof door locks.  After several attempts to hook the lock, I realized I’d never get a good enough hold on either the individual door lock, or the switch that controlled all four door locks. 

      Finally, I eyed the window control switches.  That required a push to make a window go down, not a pull like the door lock needed.  After a few attempts, I finally had just the right bend to get the wire through the gasket between the two windows and to hit the panel of four window switches that were on a horizontal panel on the left door armrest.

     It occurred to me as I fished that it was a good thing the ignition switch was on, because the windows wouldn’t work if the switch were off.  Eventually, I managed to hit the left front window switch enough to make the window jump before my wire slipped off the little arm of the window control.  I still couldn’t get a hand or arm through the opening, but I had a lot more room to maneuver the clothes hanger.

     Success breeds success.  It was comparatively quick work to hit the window switch a couple more times.  Then I could get my arm in and grab the door lock.  We were in!

      I checked the gauges.  No sign of overheating from the extended idling period.  I popped the hood.  Nothing amiss under there.  Soon we were on our way.  Our 45-minute delay seemed a small price to pay for our error, when I considered the cost of a locksmith or replacing the left window.  The car seemed none the worse for the wear.

     We hadn’t quite learned our lesson.  There would be another event before we followed the advice of our local friendly used car dealer.  He advised us to have a spare key made and stow it between license plate and bumper, held fast out of sight by a license plate screw.  A coin can be used to remove the license plate screw to retrieve the spare key in an emergency.

     We didn’t do that, even after our experience.  It would take another event to convince me to go to the trouble of having the key made and to take the time to remove a license plate screw and stow the key.

Bill’s New Carpet

     Finally.  He heard the car drive into the driveway, then the footsteps coming up the sidewalk.  She was late.

      It was noon.   Bill didn’t have much time.  He had to get back to school.  She would be in for a double surprise.

     But wait!  There were voices.  She was talking to someone.  She wasn’t alone.  She had brought a guest home for lunch.  Bill made a lunge for his pants.

     It all began with the decision to replace the living room carpet.  The decision went through all the stages, finding the right fabric, the right texture, the right color, prices compared, the decision made.  Then the furniture, shelves, everything had to be moved out of the room.

      It had been a lot of work.  Bill came home at noon as usual for his short noon break from school.  Normally, he had enough time to go through the mail, maybe grab a snack and head back to the brain factory.

      When he opened the door this time, the smell of new carpet greeted him.  The carpet layers had finished the job and had gone by the time Bill got home.  Three steps brought him to the living room entrance, and there it was, the new carpet.  Finally.  It had been a long haul. 

      There was still the work of replacing all the furniture, entertainment center, bookcase, all the things that had been removed.  Probably the room would have to be painted before any of that happened.  But for right now, there it was, the empty room with new carpet.

     Bill decided the moment called for a celebration.  He didn’t have much time.  The missus would be home soon.

      Jean was the head of the nurses at the local hospital.  In those days, the hospital was run by nuns.  The hospital had started as a Catholic enterprise, and the nuns still controlled things.

     Occasionally, a bigwig nun would visit to see that things were going right.  On this day, the bigwig lady had called and was checking out the nurses.  Her visit ran into the noon hour.  Jean thought it would be a nice touch to take the sister home for lunch.

     They were visiting as they walked up the sidewalk.  Jean warned that the house was in a bit of chaos with the furniture displaced for the carpet laying.  As she opened the door, she heard Bill scrambling inside.

     Bill managed to get his underwear on, but he stumbled getting his trousers on.  He only had one leg in place when the ladies walked in.  There he stood, pants half on as his wife and her sister-guest-supervisor walked through.

     Jean didn’t miss a beat.  “Well, get your pants on,” she said as she led her guest through the clutter to the kitchen.  What her guest thought remained unspoken.  Maybe she thought he was part of the displaced furniture.  She too gave Bill a glance and followed her hostess to the kitchen.

     Bill completed dressing.  It must be time to go back to school, he thought.  He made his excuses for leaving and headed back to school.

      Flowers rather than a nude model might have been a better means of celebrating the new carpet, Bill decided.  But one thing for sure, it was one piece of carpet that neither of them would forget.        

Wet Spring, Dry Fall

     The best wheat crop I have ever raised resulted from 5.75 inches of rain in April and May.  A heavy wet snow on May 1 isn’t included in that total, since the rain gauge really couldn’t record the snow.

     Since May, things have slowed.  June provided not quite 2 inches.  July recorded less than one half inch.  It was nice to have a dry harvest.

    Now it is time to plant wheat and a little moisture would certainly be appreciated.  The last good rain was August 3, one and one fourth inches.  Since then, Mother Nature has bestowed only a half inch.

     September came and went with a big fat zero for precipitation.  That doesn’t bode well for wheat planting.  It has been too warm for September as well.

     I made a test run with the drills on September 8, but judged it too dry.  Some wheat did come up, but a lot didn’t sprout, thus confirming my judgment.

    

      I resumed planting on the 28^th, figuring it will take some moisture to get the crop up.  I’m gambling that the moisture will do as well on the already-planted seeds as it will for those planted after it rains.

      The danger for seeds planted before it rains is too hard of a rain will either silt in the rows or crust over.  A rain that comes too hard and fast will wash the top of the rows down into the furrows.  The silt may bury the seed so deep the blade can’t emerge.  Hot weather following a hard rain can create a crust on top of the soil that the seedlings can’t penetrate.  Replanting will be a necessity in either case.

    The third possibility is continued drought.  In that case, I have done the best thing I can, roughed up the surface with the drill rows, which will help prevent wind erosion, dust bowl conditions.

      A few other factors influenced the decision to plant in the dry soil.  First, I have never planted so late.  In 1984 or 85, I replanted a few acres in November. 

      That was another dry fall like this one.  When I was about a day or two from being done, there came a shower of rain, about a quarter of an inch.  Everything I had planted up to that point came up.  Something like thirty acres planted after that shower didn’t do so well.

      We got some rain and snow in late October.  In November, it had melted and dried enough to get the tractor and drills into the field.  So I replanted that thirty acres in November.

      It never emerged.  The seed sprouted and tried to come up, but it died when a cold snap froze the ground, and the seedling, too.  I plowed that thirty acres and planted Prozo millet in May of the next year.  November wheat planting didn’t work very well.   

     What did I learn from that experience?  In October, it can snow.  Snow and cooler weather keep the soil moist, perhaps too moist for tractor and drill.  By the time the ground dries enough to plant, it could be too late to plant.  It would be better to have the seed in the ground if it’s going to snow and stay wet.

      Then there is superstition, maybe.  Tradition says you plant aboveground crops from the new moon to the full moon.  I need to be done planting wheat before the middle of October when the full moon occurs.

      The factors have been weighed and the decision made.  I mounted the old tractor and put the wheat seeds fairly deep into some pretty dry ground.  Time will tell if I made the right decision.

     Consolation comes in two old sayings.  Many of the old neighbors say, after agonizing over a decision, “It won’t matter fifty years from now.” It won’t.

     The other is an old rhyme:  “Plant in the dust and your bins will bust”.  Watch out old granary.

      (For more on the old tractor and drills, see http://50farm.blogspot.com/2012/09/planting-wheat.html.)