Memorial Weekend, 2019

Genoa Alumni Meeting

      Genoa has its alumni gathering on Memorial Day weekend every other year.  It's a collection of old folks who gathered.  We aren't adding any new ones.

     Laurel arranged for alumni to tour the old Tower west of Genoa.  We were among the first to arrive at the Tower.  There were all kinds of signs, "No Trespassing,"  "Keep Out", etc.  I was a bit nervous about entering, but who should walk out the door but Patty Calhoun.  

      If you have ever watched Colorado Public Television, you may have seen Patty.  She is the editor (or is publisher?) of Westword.   She is on Colorado Inside Out on Friday nights.  I relaxed.  Patty and two others bought the Tower and are trying to preserve and restore it.  

     They thought they could give it to the historical society, but the society declined, unless an endowment came with it, which it didn't.  Now, they are looking for financing to help with the expensive and labor-intensive project.  

      Many of the attendees had worked for Jerry Chubbuck.  Our two hostesses were eager to hear stories the former employees had to tell.  I was able to add my bit.  Somebody said something about holding dances there.  I said that Uncle Walter said you had to be careful or you would slide off the slanty stage.

       Patty wanted to know when that was.  I said it was probably in the thirties, but I wasn't sure.  She said that they would have to revisit one of their theories about what caused the stage to slant.  Apparently, it was built that way.

  

      Probably not six states (See Six States!), but the view is impressive.

     

     Those folks have their work cut out for them.
     We finished the day at the cemetery, doing our duty for past generations.  We had to hurry as the weather threatened.

      I'm sorry to report that the flowers were all artificial this year.  The pre-storm gale against which  we strove managed to de-blossom some of the plastic flowers.  I think the real things would not have stood much of a chance.  We will do better next year.

Gordon Leadfoot

    His name was Gordon right enough.  But not Leadfoot.  That was a moniker I bestowed upon him.  It had nothing to do with his musical abilities.

     He had one good eye, and one not so good, as in legally blind in that eye.  He wore pop bottle lenses for glasses, for both eyes, the good one included.

     He was from Oklahoma.  He eschewed being called an “Okie”.  I never saw him get angry.  But if you called him an Okie, he would hasten to correct you.  He was an Oklahoman.    

     He stood about 5’6”. He probably weighed 200 pounds.  On roller skates, he was anything but lead-footed.  Backwards, forwards, tight circles, he could do nearly anything on roller skates.

      At the local swimming pool, he could put on an exhibition on the diving board.  He had played college football.  He was that good of an athlete.

     He once ran a foot race against one of his eighth grade students, for maybe forty or fifty yards.  He won handily.  There had been a bet.  The student had to stop wearing colored glasses in the school building as a result of losing the race to a ”short, fat, old man.”

     I got to know him the summer of 1972.  I signed on to help him move alfalfa bales one June day.  We were on a county road in his pickup.  He was taking me somewhere to get a tractor with a loader.  He was driving.

     We were doing sixty miles an hour on the gravel.  Gordon decided his glasses needed cleaning.  He took them of and started in on them with his handkerchief.  We were headed north, still doing 60 mph.   In an instant, we were in the west ditch, still going 60 mph.

      “What’s goin’ on here?” Gordon asked.  He put his glasses back on.  “Oh.”  He pulled the pickup out of the ditch and back on the road.  He never let up on the gas pedal.  I had made an instantaneous grab for whatever I could get a hold of to survive the inevitable rollover.

      He looked at me and I looked at him.  He went on with our conversation, as though nothing had happened.  I made a mental note:  don’t ever get into a vehicle this guy is driving.

     The lead-foot moniker didn’t come about then.  It would be many years later when Tisha and I rode to an out-of-town football game with Uncle Bill in his hot Red Dodge.  On the way home, somewhere east of Colby, Bill managed to overtake Gordon driving his big old Ford.

      The race was on.  Bill knew a shortcut through Colby.  When we pulled up to the stop sign at the highway that would be the final 30-mile stretch home, Gordon’s Ford blew past us.  We tailed him for several miles, both cars doing 80 to 90 miles per hour.

     Finally, we reached a flat stretch with no traffic coming our way.  Bill floor boarded the Dodge, the turbo kicked in, and we soared past the 100 mile per hour mark.  As we went past Gordon, I could hear the Ford’s exhaust pipe shrieking and I knew Gordon had his foot “in the carburetor” as thy used to say in those olden days.  The big old Ford just didn’t have any more to give. 

     (Someday there will be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Old Automobiles and Bill and Gordon will both be enshrined in the Hall of Infamy.)

     The Dodge won the race, but we all won in that nobody got killed that night on the way home from a football game.  Then it was I named Gordon, Gordon Leadfoot.

      Gordon was always a farmer at heart.  He quit teaching to try farming full time.   But the 1980’s were a huge disaster for farmers, many who had mortgaged heavily to buy land after the explosion of grain prices following Nixon’s grain deal with the Russians in the 1970’s.  Gordon had to return to teaching.

      He returned to, or took up, school bus driving when he went back to teaching.  I advised my girls, “Don’t get on any bus Mr. C. is driving, if you can help it.”   Of course, they couldn’t help it.  They were on a bus or two that lost a little paint as a result of Gordon’s driving.  Gordon’s driving was a bit of a joke among the students riding his bus. 

     But I am happy to report that nobody ever suffered an injury as a result of Gordon’s driving.  I am sorry to report that Gordon is gone now.  Oklahoma’s loss was Kansas’s gain.  I am glad I got to know Gordon, leadfoot and all.  Adieu, friend.

          

       

The Siding Project

     About a year ago now, it hailed.  

    Then began the lengthy process of notifying the insurance company, scheduling with the adjuster, waiting to see how much the company would pay, if anything.

      The roof was okay.  The metal roof suffered a bit of “cosmetic damage” the adjuster said.  Before the company would pay anything, the roof had to suffer damage so severe that it would leak.  That was okay.  After all, hail--proofing the roof was one reason to put the metal roof up in the first place. 

     The poor old vinyl siding took in the shorts yet again.  It would be the fourth application for the north and west sides of the house since the vinyl first covered the old cedar in the 1980’s.

In July, a check for some $30K arrived. 

      I was somewhat taken aback at the size of the check.  Until I started looking for a siding contractor.  It was also time to hail—proof the siding.  Vinyl wasn’t going to do it.  I also decided that this project, though not as daunting as the roof project, was one I wouldn’t try to do myself.

      Then began the task of finding a contractor that would do the job.  The first one I contacted would not send a crew out so far in the boonies to do a siding job.  They would, however, send out a crew to replace the rain gutter system. 

      Finally, one company sent out a salesman from Colorado Springs.  He measured and took photos.  His estimate, arriving a couple of days later, was over $50K.  A bit much, I thought.  We dickered for a while. 

     They offered a vinyl product that was supposed to be more hail—tolerant, but the price was very little less than the James Hardie product.  I wasn’t willing to pay that amount, so I kept on looking.

     The rain gutter guy was local.  When he came to measure for that job, he recommended a local contractor.  By the time the local siding guy came out, looked, estimated, we were into Fall.  He said he could get started in December, and he did get started.

      I made a down payment in December to cover the cost of materials.  But the job wasn’t done until January.  Still, all right, except for income tax purposes.  I had the insurance check in July, but I didn’t spend it all in 2018, so I had an augmented income without the expenses.  Oh well, the accountant said.  You will show a loss next year.

      The project went over estimate, too.  That was because the contractor didn’t plan to remove the old cedar siding, just the vinyl.  When he got to the cedar, he decided it needed to come off, too.  I concurred. 

      Then there were the south windows upstairs that Paul replaced 30 years ago.  Why he put in the undersized windows I’ll never know, but the time to change them was now, if ever we were going to do it.

      More shopping, this time window—shopping.  I tried a Loveland outfit, but after our initial conversation via telephone, I could never get a hold of the guy again.  They didn’t answer the office phone, nor the cell phone number he gave me.

     On impulse, I stopped at Lowe’s.  They had Pella windows on sale.  I ordered.  They arrived while we were tripping to Denmark, Ireland, and Iceland.  I took on the old south porch window by myself.

      I enlisted help for the upstairs ones.  The big job happened on a couple of nice days in November.

      It would be several months later before the inside work would be done.

     The siding job got mostly done in January.  The crew dodged a couple of stormy patches.  They have a few details to complete.  Spring weather and their schedule haven’t coincided yet.

      We’re good, until it hails again.

Spring 2019

 March:

  

 Watering the asparagus patch

April:  

May:  

         Two steps forward, one step back.  March brought needed moisture.  It also brought mud—inside.   

      April saw the picket pile go down a little, the hedge get trimmed.

     May got off to a rough start.  The first step backward happened when a used oil filter in the back of the pickup fell over and leaked oil.  I cleaned that mess up on arrival at the farm.  Then I took a little tour of the premises.

    The plastic tabs holding the storm window broke and a wind gust took the storm window down.  One pane of glass survived.  The other two had to be picked up a piece at a time.

    Two trips to Hugo got the glass replaced in the frames, but not on the house.  Can’t put the storm window up until the windows get washed, for heaven’s sake. 

      Meanwhile the wheat got off to a good start with March and April moisture.

    And the summer fallow got a good going over, with a little help from the neighbors.

           The sea of purple that doubles as the farm yard awaits the mower and warmer weather. 

     Up next, the window and siding update.

Uncle's 21 Massey

      My memory reminds me of a big plastic bag filled with water.  At first, there’s just a little drippy leak.  Then it develops into a stream, and then a gush as the pin hole spreads into a fissure.  First, the memories come slowly, and then the rupture brings them out in a gush.

    So it was with the old Massey.  As I explored that story, another one came forth.  http://50farm.blogspot.com/2014/03/21-massey.html; http://50farm.blogspot.com/2014/03/21-massey-part-2.html

    Sometime in the early fifties, Dad borrowed Uncle Walter’s 21 Massey.  It was about a fifty mile trip between our farm and Uncle’s place.  As harvest time approached, Dad hired neighbor Gene to haul the Massey on his GMC truck. 

    I vaguely remember Dad going with Gene to fetch the combine.  He was gone most of the day.  I have a more specific memory of their arrival and unloading the combine.

     In those olden days, the lane from what is now County Road 26 ran straight west from the house to the county road.  That road left a ten-acre patch south of the lane and bordering the quarter section next to our “home quarter.”  In 1960, I believe it was, the folks decided to reroute the lane to run along the half mile line between our property and what then belonged to Baughman Corporation.  

     Somehow, the county crew did the road building.  It may have been a deal allowing the county to haul gravel out of our pasture, but I’m not sure.  The county boys dug two ditches with their machines, using the removed dirt to elevate the roadway to its present level a foot or two above the bordering fields.  They also hauled gravel and bladed it smooth.  For a few months, until spring and time to plow the field, we had two lanes running from CR26 to the house.  Hardly anyone ever used the new road.  Willie Suchanek referred to the new road as the “Interstate” and the old road as a “service road.”  Like everybody else, he took the service road.

      It wouldn’t be until the spring of 1960 when the old road was subjected to first the chisel, then the oneway disk that we started using the new road.  The mailbox had to be relocated to the new junction, and from there on out, the old road was history, fading gradually, but not completely, into the adjacent field.  Standing west of the farm house, a good eye can still detect the old road’s route by the slight rise running due west.

     The extreme southwest corner of the ten-acre patch, also the southwest corner of the farm, stood four or five feet above the road level due to natural terrain and somewhat to the road builders having shaved a bit off a natural rise to smooth out the road.  Instead of a ditch, the removal of dirt to elevate the road left a “cliff” (at least it seemed a cliff to us plains children used to the flat terrain) from the field’s edge down to the “ditch”. 

     As a kid riding on combine or tractor with Dad, making that first round which, passed by the cliff, was scary.  If tractor or combine wheel slipped over the edge, we would surely roll!  The new road took away that danger.  Now, when you turn off the county road, you climb a gentle incline of eight or ten feet, at which point you are at the apex of the hill, and it is gently downhill all the way to the farm yard.  No more cliff.

          Before the road revamp, the cliff did provide a platform to load and unload equipment.  Custom combine crews always used that corner of the farm to load and unload their combines.  They used scoop shovels to dig and pile so that the truck’s rear dual wheels were level.

     I remember Gene backing up carefully to the cliff.  It was a bit of a chore to get a truck crossways on the county road in order to have the truck’s bed square to the field edge.  Gene was in and out of the truck as he checked his progress and made adjustments to get the truck situated properly.  The combine got unloaded.

     After harvest, it was time to return the combine to Uncle Walter.  There was something about riding with Gene, or something else, that made Dad decide that the combine wouldn’t go back the same way it came.   Dad said something about Gene being a nervous wreck during the whole trip.

     So bright and early one late July morning, Dad and Uncle Ricky mounted the combine and took off for Yoder at about eight or ten miles per hour, the combine’s top speed in road gear.  The rest of the family followed in the car a few hours later.

       I don’t remember a lot about the trip.  Our combine drivers took country roads to avoid the highway traffic.  We tried to follow in their wake. One thing I do remember was meeting a combine on the country road headed in the opposite direction.  The driver flagged us down and asked for directions to Karval.

      I couldn’t hear much of the conversation sitting in the back seat.  What I remember was seeing and hearing the whine of the two big drive belts on the side of the combine, just outside the car window where I was sitting.  It certainly wasn’t an earth-hugging Massey, as it towered over our old Chevy.  In later years, I would recall that machine and speculate that it was a John Deere 55, a fairly recent addition to the self-propelled combine inventory.

       I seem to recall that we eventually caught up with Dad and Ricky.  Their trip had been interrupted by a thunderstorm that sent them to the rear of the combine where they took refuge under the bonnet covering the straw walkers to keep from getting soaked.

       I remember very little of the rest of that trip.  I think we went on ahead to “Aunty and Uncle’s”.  I don’t remember the combine finishing the trip.  I was probably distracted by playing with Cousin James.  We probably had supper and headed for home, all seven of us in the ’50 Chev, as we did occasionally in those olden days.

     My guess is that Dad decided that neither hauling nor roading a combine fifty miles was to his liking.  He would buy a well-used 21 Massey of his own and even go on to repair the old John Deere number 3 pull type.

      I’m not sure what happened to Uncle’s 21 Massey.  I’m guessing it was sold at his sale when they left the farm and moved to Kansas.