MuddyPuddles

Have you ever heard about the dog and the tractor?  Or maybe I should say the dog the farmer the tractor and the cotton.  My father was a farmer but not “the” farmer.  “The” farmer was his dad, my grandfather.  He had come from a long line of farmers dating back to the 1600’s when they first immigrated to America.  When I was interviewing some “Oldtimers” last week, Leonard and Rita, Leonard told me about a farm related event that took place between him and my grandfather (“Papa”) many years ago. 

The family farm was about a mile from the cotton gin at Petty, Texas, near Lubbock .  The way things generally worked was that the farmer would bring in a trailer load of cotton (usually containing about a bale) and park it on the lot next to the other full trailers.  The two men working the suction hose of the gin would alternate getting the next trailer from the line while the other one was sucking the cotton out of the previous trailer.  Once a man had sucked all the cotton out then he would take the trailer back to the lot so the farmer could pick it up and take it home to fill again. 

Leonard happened to be one of the ginners in the rotation at the time of my story.  He said that my “Papa” drove his little Allis Chalmers tractor up to the gin lot with the trailer in tow and parked it to be ginned.  He then got off and walked home.  When Papa’s trailer was next in line it turned out to be Leonard’s time to get it.  He started walking toward the little tractor when out from underneath it came a growling noise which stopped him in his tracks.  Then Papa’s big red husky dog stepped out from under the tractor and bristled at Leonard and wouldn’t let him get near it.  Enjoying the current placement of his skin and bones, Leonard decided to skip Papa’s trailer that day. 

The next day when Papa came to get his trailer he noticed it was still full of cotton so he asked Leonard, “Why didn’t you gin my cotton?”
Leonard said, “Well Bob if you’ll take your dog home when you bring the next load I’ll gin your cotton.”
Papa laughed and said, “That dog wouldn’t let you get on that tractor, would he?”
Leonard said, “No, he sure wouldn’t.” 
So Papa took the husky home and Leonard ginned the cotton and all was well once again.  And now you know the story about the dog and the tractor.  

God Bless, Dennis

We didn’t have permanent fences on the farm because we didn’t raise cattle year round and the fences would have cut out a lot of good farm land because of the need to turn the tractor around at the end of the rows, etc.  But we did use electric fences that we could put around a field of stubble or of wheat when it was young and green.  This allowed us to maximize the use of the land by running 50 or so calves on it for a few months and then taking them to auction to sell.  Then we would take down the fence to prepare for next years crop.

The electric fence was a single strand of wire that was connected from post to post (one half inch diameter metal posts about two or three feet long) which were driven into the ground.  A spring mounted insulator was connected to each post so that the wire could be connected to the posts without shorting out. 

The fence would have to start out at a power source and go out around the field(s) and then return to the source so that it would make a complete electrical circuit.  At the power source was a small box that was the “fence charger” which was plugged in to a 110 volt wall outlet.  The current that came out of the box was significantly smaller (and could even be adjusted on some boxes) so that nothing would be electrocuted.  It came out in pulses of about one pulse per second.  It was powerful enough to get your attention (and that of a 2000 pound animal). 

Since it was a single strand of bare wire, sometimes things could short out the electricity so that it failed to shock.  If one of the posts got twisted around so that the wire was touching it, it would short out.  If a big old tumbleweed came rolling up against the fence it would short out.  Or, if the wire broke from a calf running through it or because of a kink in the wire, it would break the circuit and therefore it would not create a shock.  Therefore, from time to time we had to “walk out” the fence to fix the problem.  Before you walked the fence you would need to unplug the charger because if the wire was broken you would have to grab the two ends and make a loop on one, stick the other wire through the loop and make a connecting loop to connect them back together again.  Then you would walk back and plug in the charger again.

One day dad noticed that the fence wasn’t working.  So, he unplugged the charger and started walking.  He finally found the problem about a half mile from the house. 

While he was busy out walking the fence, mom was busy with the household chores.  While she was taking the trash out to the burn barrel, she noticed that the fence charger had accidentally come unplugged.  So, being the helpful wife that she was, she plugged it back in at just about the same time that dad had grabbed both ends of the broken wire. 
Dad made really good time in getting back to the house.  He let mom know, in no uncertain terms, that he had unplugged the charger ON PURPOSE and needed it to STAY UNPLUGGED because he was FIXING THE BREAK.

Through the years I’ve probably seem mom laugh about that incident at least 100 times or more.  For some reason, however, dad never did laugh all that much.  I wonder why. 

I get a charge out of this memory every time I think about it.  Now, you can too.  God Bless.  Dennis

Garage U-turn

We moved in to our new house when I was in the third grade.  My youngest brother, Josh, was about to be born and our original little house on the farm was already overcrowded.  We just had plywood floors for most of a year, until the next crop came in when we were able to put in carpet.  On the south end of the west facing house was a two car garage.  It had two individual garage doors with a divider in between.  Since our house was pier and beam, the level of the house floor was about 16 or 18 inches above the level of the garage floor.  Therefore there was one step that was about half the difference in the two levels.  The door into the house was in the middle of the north side of the garage. 
One time, when I was in high school, I had the job of hauling off a refrigerator or some other large appliance from the house.  We had an old (full sized) clunker pickup that did not have power steering.  We always had one or two of these old trucks around to use on the farm for irrigation (moving tubes or pipes or whatever) and general farm and farm hand use.  I backed the pickup into the garage as close as I could to the house door.  Then I decided that it sure would be easier if I could come straight from the house floor level to the pickup level without having to go down to the garage floor level first.  So, I decided to see if I could turn the pickup around in the garage enough to back up directly to the side door.  The garage was pretty much the minimal size for a two car garage so this would take some doing.  After going back and forth about a hundred times I was able to be parked in a north/south direction in an east/west garage.  After loading the refrigerator into the pickup, I decided that it would be a much better story if I continued turning the pickup around instead of reversing my course.  That way, I could say that I turned the pickup completely around in the two car garage (that had a divider between two doors) without power steering.  So I did and I can.  I not only backed the pickup into the garage, I turned it around while inside the garage and backed it out, as well.  And that has been a little snapshot memory that I’ve enjoyed on several occasions through the years.  (I encourage you to go out and try it yourself on your next opportunity.  You’ll be glad you did.)  God Bless.  Dennis

One time, when I was in early high school, I had been visiting with my aunt Pat and uncle Weldon and my cousins, Bruce, Ricky and Phyllis in Idalou.  My parents were away somewhere else and wouldn’t be coming back home until late.  Weldon had this rooster that he was beginning to hate.  It would perch in his window sill and then crow at 3:00 in the morning.  So, he told me that if I could catch that rooster I could have him.  Hey, I needed a good rooster so I tried and succeeded at catching him and bringing him home.  All us kids were already in bed asleep by the time mom and dad came home so they didn’t know about the rooster. 
After they had been asleep awhile, my mom heard some kind of commotion in the garage.  She got up and looked out the garage door window and then came back to the bedroom and said “James, there’s a skunk chasing our rooster in the garage.”  Dad replied, “We don’t have a rooster.”   Mom, in her groggy state of mind said, “Oh, okay,” and got back into bed. 
Evidently the rooster got out of the garage relatively unscathed because after leaving the garage he decided to go around to the back of the house and roost on the brick ledge of their window.  And, as was his custom, at 3:00 in the morning he crowed.  I don’t know what kind of conversation took place when that happened but I’m sure it was interesting.
We had “chicken” for Sunday dinner that week.  God Bless.  Dennis       

Cotton was one of the crops my dad always raised. It didn’t seem like it was as big of a crop for him as corn got more and more popular but he never stopped raising a significant amount of it. It didn’t require near as much water as most other crops and really had a “personality” that was totally different than the sorghum crops.
One of my first memories that had to do with cotton was “chopping cotton”. This terminology wasn’t exactly right because it referred to chopping everything but the cotton—weeds and grasses and such. I remember getting paid 50 cents a round (all the way down to the opposite end and back) for chopping cotton. He could get most of the weeds with the cultivator, a plow that broke up the ground except right next to the cotton. But the rest had to be done by hand. Actually, it was done using a hoe. Most of the hoeing was done by crews that came through the country at the right time and hired out on a temporary basis. They could really move along in a day’s time. They consisted of men, women and children. Sometimes smaller children were in charge of entertaining the babies while their parents worked.
You could work a lot better and faster if your hoe was sharp. So, we always had some files on hand. If it was sharp, your movements didn’t have to be so hard to cut the roots out of the ground. If you didn’t have to chop so hard, you were less likely to damage the cotton. It was important to get the roots. If you just chopped the weeds off at ground level, they would grow right back. If you chopped them out roots and all, they were gone for good.
When it came time to harvest the cotton, that too was done by hand when I was very young. I remember watching a crew picking cotton. Each individual had a brownish white bag made of some kind of canvas or cotton. It was about eight feet long (or more) and had a strap sewn on to the end of the bag in two places forming a loop. The workers would drape that loop over their head so that the bag would automatically be pulled along down the row as they moved along using both hands to pick the cotton (which was still in the dried hulls) and putting it into the sack. Periodically they would have to stand up and jostle the cotton down toward the bottom of the sack to make room for more. They would drag the sack all the way to the end of the row and back up the next one. When they got back to the original end they took their sack over to the scales to be weighed (I think they got paid by their crew leader based upon how much cotton they picked.) The scales were of a spring type that was hooked at the top of a tall tripod. On the bottom of the scales was another hook where the weight of the sack was applied. This weight stretch the scales a certain amount which caused the arrow to point at a corresponding weight. The sack was attached to the scales by a small rope that had a loop on each end. That rope was put around the sack in the middle and then both loops were hooked onto the bottom of the scale. Someone would record the weight into a little notebook and then the worker would take his sack over to the cotton trailer. This was about 8 feet wide, 16 or 20 feet long and about 8 or 10 feet tall (inside the bed). The sidewalls were sloped down to the front so the workers would have access to the front. The bag was hoisted up to where another man would empty the sack out and throw it back down to be filled again. The man in the trailer would then tramp the cotton down so the trailer could hold more. When the trailer was full, it was hooked up to the pickup and taken to the gin to be processed. There was usually what seemed like a hundred full trailers of cotton waiting to be ginned. Therefore, to keep the process moving, each farmer had to own several trailers.
The cotton gin had a giant vacuum system with a hose that was about 10 inches in diameter. A man would get into the trailer, which had been pulled into a drive through area, and he would use the vacuum to suck out the cotton. From there it went into a process of removing the hulls and then removing the seeds from the cotton. (The cotton went through a grading process which would help determine it’s relative value. I don’t remember much about that except that if it had longer fibers it graded out better. Since it was used to make thread, the longer fibers allowed it to twist together better without pulling apart.) The pure cotton was then baled and set aside to be shipped to textile factories. Each bale weighed about 500 pounds. The seeds were used for planting next year’s crops (after they had been treated with insecticide and other chemicals and bagged). What wasn’t used for that was used for cattle feed mixtures. The hulls were basically given to any farmer that wanted them. Dad used them where he had dug irrigation ditches and where there had been “turnrows” (ends of the rows where the tractor would turn around when plowing). He said that this helped keep the dust down and it seemed to firm up the soil in those high use areas.
As I got older, instead of having the cotton hand picked, we used “cotton strippers”. These were machines that you hooked onto your tractor. You hooked the cotton trailer to the back of the tractor and as you drove through the field, the cotton stalked was pretty much stripped clean and everything was blown into the back of the trailer. You always had to have a man with a pitchfork back in the trailer to spread the cotton around. It was a dirty nasty job because you often had all that cotton plus a lot of dirt blowing right in your face. I always wore a bandana over my nose and mouth when I did that part. I didn’t really mind it because it was kind of fun pushing that cotton around with a pitchfork and also trying to keep your balance in a bouncy trailer full of cotton. It was kind of a thrill ride in some ways. But you ate a lot of dust in the process and you looked like some weird wild man when you were finished (and your eyes were bloodshot) and your whole body was the color of dirt.
(Now, as I drive through cotton country, I see they’ve developed a process where you don’t even use the old style trailers. The cotton just goes into some kind of container that compresses it and then it leaves a large rectangular block of cotton in the field. Sometimes these are covered with tarps or plastic for protection I suppose. Then, when the farmer tells them too, men in large trucks come out to pick up these giant bales with some kind of built in conveyer system.)
I’m thankful that I got to experience some of the old ways in the cotton fields. It was hard but it was good. It leaves me with some memories that I will always treasure about living on the farm. I thought for awhile that cotton might be a dying crop because of all the new fabrics and materials that were coming out—nylon and polyester, etc. But now I believe that cotton is here to stay. There is just nothing like it for comfort and feel. It’s just natural. I’m thankful for that. And that’s just about all I know about cotton.
And nothing makes a man look sharper than a 100% cotton starched white shirt! And that’s a fact! God Bless. Dennis

After I moved on to college my dad built some barns and bins to store corn.  When I was younger he had raised maize which was a grain that was used primarily for cattle feed.  Corn just wasn’t raised in our area at the time for some reason.  The grains of maize were about the size of beebee’s and were reddish brown in color.  The stalks and leaves and stubble were used for cattle feed as well.  When maise was processed and smashed flat and sacked up in 50 lb sacks as cattle feed it was called “milo” or “rolled milo”.  I never knew why it wasn’t just called maize but that just the way it was.  It looked a little bit like the “Old Fashion” oatmeal you see on the store shelves today.  (I wonder how it would have tasted if cooked like oatmeal.)  As I got a little older, more and more farmers in the panhandle started raising field corn and dad was no exception.  It could be white corn or yellow corn.  This made a much bigger stalk than maize and therefore not only provided the corn crop itself but also provided a lot more feed for the cattle in the form of stalks and leaves and stubble.  This was often ground up into silage and either stored in tall silage bins or pits were dug and then filled with silage and then covered.   It was then scooped up with a tractor when needed for feed.  (Dad usually just left his in the field and put up electric fences and bought heifers (young female “cows”) or steers (incapacitated male (former) bulls) and let them graze on it and then sold them a few months later.  Or, he would plow it under as it was good fertilizer for next year’s crop.)  
I was always amazed at how fast the corn would grow.  You almost thought you could see it growing.  And it was incredible how tall it got.  One day I took a tape measure into the field just to see how tall a stalk of corn was.  An average stalk in our field was about 11 feet tall from top to bottom.  I found one stalk that topped out at 13 feet.  That is incredible.  Most corn was raised for cattle feed but for several years dad had a contract with Frito Lay for raising white corn.  They would use it to make their chips.  Farmers sometimes had the option of going into contract to sell their corn even before they planted it.  It was contracted out by the bushel.  You never knew what the corn prices were going to be at harvest time so you could just take your chances or you could enter into contract.  Sometimes it wound up being a good deal and other times not.  If, for some reason they had bad crops in Nebraska and Ohio the prices would be higher due to shortages (supply and demand).  Or, if they had bumper crops the prices could be lower.  For some reason I remember dad entering into the contract with Frito Lay for $5.00 per bushel for all the white corn he could produce.  I’ve never been good about remembering crop prices but that one locked in for some reason.
When it came time to harvest the corn, if you didn’t have it contracted out, you didn’t have to sell it immediately.  You could store it in these huge grain elevators for a monthly fee.  If you thought the price might go up, you could hang on and sell your grain later.  Or you could take the going rate.  The elevators did more than just have the grain piled up inside.  The corn had to be dried to a certain moisture content (20 to 22 percent I think) to keep it from overheating in the elevator.  The elevator could do that with their giant corn dryers (for a fee).  They had these giant fans that would blow heated air on the corn as they circulated it from one shaft to another.  There was a long cable that ran down the center of each of the giant elevator shafts.  It had thermometers every few feet that could relay the grain temperature to the elevator operators on a regular basis.  If he saw a hot spot developing he had to circulate the corn before it expanded to much and caused the elevator to burst.  I remember one time at Lariat when one of those giant shafts did just that.  It burst about halfway up and corn spilled out and made a giant mountain of corn which covered the railroad tracks along side the elevator.  It was quite a sight.  I imagine someone lost a job over that careless mistake.

As I stated earlier, after I went off to college, Dad had a storage barn and a corn drier built on our home place (next to the old elm tree I used to swing in).  I guess he decided it was more economical to dry and store some of his own grain than to pay someone else to do it. 
And that’s pretty much all I know about corn except for the fact that I loved to eat it.  (When it was very young you could go and pick the cobs when they were about a fourth of full grown size.  When it was like that you could eat the cob and all.  I often ate it and many other crops raw.  It was great.)  We ate corn just about every day when the crops came in.  And, dad often had the planting times staggered a little bit so that we had corn for quite a stretch of time.  It was so good with that hot melted butter dripping off and a little salt.  I could go for some right now.  It was awesome.  And the taste of fresh out of the field corn was incredible.  I used to hate picking it and shucking it however.  Walking around in a corn field caused a great deal of itching.  I did kind of like whacking off the ends, however.  How often does a young boy get to go around with a long knife whacking things off.  But then, I had to shuck it and get all the corn hairs off.  I didn’t care for that part.  If you whacked it cleanly and grabbed the edges of the husk just right, you could get 90% of the corn hair off as you peeled back the husks.  If not, you were just in for a lot of hair removal time.  When I get back home, I’m going to have to go find me some fresh corn on the cob.  All this talk has made my mouth water for that great buttery taste.  I thank God for the blessing of experiencing this part of my life.  It truly was a blessing that I will treasure always.  Dennis

After I had gone off to college, my dad had a barn built to store harvested corn until he could get a price he liked.  A side effect of storing your own corn was the increase in rodents.  Rats loved corn and it was hard to keep them out when you had such a great food supply for them.  And, rats liked barns because they could dig little holes, that went under the foundation of the barn, to live in.  Rats, however, were not the only animals that would use those accommodations.  One time my brother, Josh, saw some kittens near the barn.  He watched with great interest as they went into one of those holes.  He decided that he would catch one of them to take home so he crouched down and looked in and saw their eyes.  He reached in to grab one when he got quite a shock.  All of a sudden a big rat ran out and onto his hand and up his arm, on to his back and off the other side.  It was not, needless to say, what he had in mind.  After that, he just decided to let the kittens stay where they were.  They seemed to like their little home.  And that was good enough for him.     

God Bless, Dennis

Growing up in a Christian home in the panhandle of Texas on an irrigated farm in the 60’s meant that every Saturday night around 11:00 or midnight, someone had to go shut down the irrigation wells (so we could go to church on Sunday and have a day of rest).  We had six wells that each pumped a 7 or 8 inch stream of water 24 hours a day.  Therefore, we shut them down on Saturday night and cranked them up again on Monday morning.  These times were usually pretty uneventful.  I said usually because there was one particular time that stands out as the exception to the rule.  I drove up to one of the wells and had the pickup lights shining on the motor so that I could see to shut it down properly.  When I got out of the pickup, I noticed a pair of eyes reflecting in the lights about 15 or 20 yards on the other side of the well.  As my eyes adjusted I could make out a huge rat out there walking over the rows.  I hate rats.  They give me the heebeejeebees.  They are one of the grossest animals I can think of and I just can’t stand them.  So, I picked up about 5 clods with the intent to rid the earth of this vermin.  If I missed him with the first clod I would have some extra ammunition to take him down.  I rared back and threw the first one with enough intensity to take him out if it connected.  I barely missed.  I knew the second opportunity would be more difficult because I expected him to run so I quickly grabbed my next clod and prepared to throw it.  What I didn’t expect was for him to turn and run straight at me.  My heart jumped into my throat and my adrenalin surged.  I quickly unloaded the second clod and missed.  He was undeterred.  He was coming straight at me with fire in his eyes.  I threw the third and fourth and fifth clods in rapid succession and narrowly missed on all accounts.   Now I was totally unarmed and he was rapidly bearing down on me.  I started jumping and hopping around like a chicken with his head cut off, not knowing if he was going to jump on me or just tear into my leg or what.  It was horrifying as the point of impact was imminent.  Time stood still as I watched him pass between my legs and continued his quest toward the concrete well head and into the hole beside it.  He was going home.  He wasn’t attacking me.  He didn’t have rabies.  He was just going home—to be safe.  It took me a few moments to regain my composure and look around to make sure there were no witnesses lurking out there in the dark.  When I decided I was safe, I shut the well down (keeping a wary eye on that rat hole) and went on my way to the next well.  I offered a prayer of thanksgiving for sparing my life as I wiped the sweat off my brow.  And now, I offer a prayer of thanksgiving for an awesome memory of life one dark scary night on the farm in the panhandle of Texas .  God Bless.  Dennis          

Coyote

I had a slightly older cousin named Leon .  He passed away a few years ago due to health issues but he provided me with a little memory—a little “growing up on the farm” snapshot— that just embodies the Huckleberry Finn spirit of life in America .  It takes me back to a more innocent time and it just brings me peace to think about it.  It’s a simple little memory I treasure.
It all took place in a wheat field out behind our house.  It all started when we somehow got onto a conversation about coyotes.  We would occasionally see coyotes on our place and evidently we had recently spotted one near this patch of wheat.  This wheat was nearing harvest time so it was a golden brown. On a breezy day it truly embodied that beautiful “amber waves of grain” image we patriotically sing about. 
Now about Leon —let’s just say that he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the socket (but hey, night lights are good, right).  He was a good kid as far as I could tell and he was always nice to me, but we weren’t real close.  He was a couple of years older than me and I was about 10, which meant my sisters were about 11 and 6 and my brother was about 5.  The five of us plus another cousin or two, decided that we would go on a coyote hunt in the wheat field where the coyote had most recently been spotted.  We also had a dog which was about the size of a coyote and he wouldn’t think of missing a good outing with a bunch of kids on foot. 
Since we were a little young for conventional weapons, I grabbed a hoe and everyone else grabbed some kind of shovel or rake or stick or baseball bat to take along so that we could whack that coyote to death once we snuck up on him.  Leon didn’t need any of those inferior weapons because he had an authentic super hero hunting knife.  It was about six or seven inches long and was made of some kind of stamped out metal (tin, I think) and even the handle was made of that stamped out metal that had been shaped around a mold so that the handle was hollowed out.  You had to be careful if you gripped the handle too tight because you might pinch yourself when it squeezed the two edges together.  Also, the handle was painted in bright, dynamic, cartoon colors and had pictures on it of some super hero or something like that.  He carried it in his authentic fake leather knife sheath which he had attached to his belt.  It had been made in Japan , which, when I was young, meant that it was a glorified piece of junk (and sometimes not so glorified).  But, it was colorful and I never let on that I thought it was anything but a finely honed piece of hunting and self defense equipment like Davy Crockett (or Daniel Boone)himself might have used.
So off we marched in search of our four legged victim which was probably lying down, unaware of the impending danger which was fast approaching.  We had to walk about a quarter of a mile before we actually started sneaking through the field (we were a stealthy crew).  Our highly trained hunting dog was trotting around all over the place, in front of us, behind us, beside us, around us as he was keenly focused on the task at hand.  He was covering all the ground we couldn’t cover in our stealth.  You couldn’t see him but you could see the wheat ripple as he moved about.  A couple of times Leon heard a noise that he thought might have been made by the coyote.  He even thought he might have gotten a glimpse of the coyote once or twice.  Then it happened. 
All of a sudden, Leon twirled around and let his knife fly.  I’m sure it was a magnificent throw.  None of us saw it, however, because we were looking the other way when the coyote evidently decided to attempt his escape from behind us.  I’m not sure how he got behind us but you know how wily these coyotes can be.  Leon was pretty sure that what he saw, however, was the coyote.  He was also pretty sure that his knife hit the coyote in the back leg.  We searched for what seemed like an hour (5 minutes max) and couldn’t find his weapon, which served as further proof that he got the coyote in the leg and that the coyote had run off with it sticking out from his leg.  After considering our options, we decided that the coyote was not likely to come back to this spot any time soon and we didn’t feel like going after him so we called off the expedition and walked back home and settled for a coke float to finish off the adventure.  And, as bad as Leon hated to lose his knife, at least he still had his sheath and a great story to tell his friends.

Looking back, it was probably one of my more dangerous hunting trips I’ve been on.  It’s a wonder that someone didn’t get whacked on the head by our hair trigger reactions to sudden noises or movements—or by someone swinging a shovel, that was resting on their shoulder, when they turned around to look at something or to talk.  In spite of the danger (or maybe because of it) however, it’s a great little snapshot in my mind and I truly do enjoy re-living it from time to time—just for old time’s sake.  I hope you enjoyed it too.  God Bless you as you reflect back on some of your special snapshots. 

A few weeks ago Bonnie and I had the opportunity to go up in a 14 passenger plane and take a 10 minute flight around the small city of Clovis , NM.  We were visiting my sister, Sandra, and my brother-in-law, Albin for a couple of days.  From about 500 feet up, I got to look down on the farms outside the city and I saw many of the giant circles which were caused by the circle sprinkler systems which have taken over as the predominant method of irrigation in that country.  I also saw fields that had been freshly plowed.  One field stood out to me because it reminded me of my younger, tractor driving, days on the farm.  It was a field in which the person who was pulling the plow had, either accidentally or on purpose, “drawn” an unusual shape on the field.  It reminded me of pulling the disking plow when I was a boy. 

The disking plow was used to plow up the weeds or the stubble left over after the crops had been harvested.  It consisted of large discs (shaped like contact lenses) which dug about 4 to 6 inches into the soil and tossed it to the side a few inches.  Then, another row of discs tossed it back to the original position.  This dug up or chopped up the weeds or stubble.  This was one of my favorite assignments because of the “fringe benefits” that came with the job. 

Since you were not disking up and down the rows, you could plow in any direction you wanted.  In fact it did a better job if you went at an angle to the former rows.  What the field I had seen from the plane reminded me of was of the times that I would write notes to the airplanes in the sky.  While my dad thought that I was busily plowing the field in the most orderly fashion, I was sometimes writing giant letters on the ground with the disk.  I wrote things like “HI” or “WAVE” with a big circle around it, just in case a plane might fly by sometime and look down.  You’ve heard of “sky writers”.  I was a “ground writer”.  I don’t know if a plane ever saw it, but sometimes things are just worth doing for their own sake.  So, I’m proud of the fact that I was a friendly “ground writer” even before that became a famous (it is famous isn’t it?).  Maybe I inspired some aliens to do crop circles.  You never know.

Another reason I liked disking was because I was plowing where the most wildlife was located.  Many times there were birds and rabbits and skunks and mice and all kinds of creatures and varmints living in the fields where I was plowing.  Therefore, if the field was just weeds and had not been a crop, I would usually plow around the circumference of the field first and then just gradually spiral inward until I got to the center.  This way, if there were animals, they would just keep moving more and more toward the center of the field.  When I would see mice I would stop the tractor and try to hit them with clods.  When I would see young birds that couldn’t fly very well yet, I would stop the tractor and go out and try to chase them down so that I could keep them for pets.  Sometimes I would find a nest on the ground with eggs in it.  Many a time did I gather eggs in the field.  I stored them in the tool box in a rag until I could take them home at the end of the day.  At home I would set them in a shallow box at the base of the refrigerator so that the warm air would cause them to hatch.   

My favorite animal to catch was rabbits.  Sometimes I spent about as much time chasing baby rabbits as I did plowing.  I remember one day when I was wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans and I was plowing (or should I say I was hunting with the tractor).  I started seeing baby rabbits.  So, each time I saw one, I stopped the tractor and started chasing it.  When I caught one, I didn’t have a good place to keep it where it wouldn’t get away so I just tucked in my T-shirt and put the rabbit down the hole in my shirt where my neck was so the rabbit would be trapped inside my shirt (just like me).  I kept seeing these baby rabbits and I kept catching them and putting them inside my shirt.  Once inside they would just go round and round just above my waist.  By the time I was finished, I had nine rabbits in my shirt.  I had to catch that last one with eight rabbits in my shirt.  Have you ever tried to run to catch a fast rabbit with eight other rabbits in your shirt?  They were flopping around like crazy.  It’s not easy — I can tell you for a fact.  I had to plow for quite awhile with those rabbits circling my waist.  They were pretty warm so it was a little uncomfortable, but it was worth it.  Nine rabbits was a pretty good haul, even for me. 

So now you can see why disking was one of my favorite plowing jobs.  And, it did a lot of good for my dad as well.  It was just hard to find good help, like me, in those days.  He was really lucky to have me.  Seriously, I Thank God for letting me have those wonderful and memorable experiences on the farm.  There is nothing quite like them.  Sincerely, Dennis