It’s time for the annual Krzmarzick Farms Post Harvest Update. A lot of readers look forward to that.

Anyway, 2024, what can we say about you?

A year to remember. Like how you remember banging your head on a pipe. We had a winter that wasn’t a winter. Then there was record rain from April to July. Then came the warmest, driest fall ever.

“Is it dry? No, wait, it’s wet. No, that was last week, now it’s dry.” Picture my head on a swivel.

Disappointment: Yeah, my yields sucked. In crop farming, all the labor and decisions and investment come down to one number in the end.

How many bushels did you get?

If this was baseball, I hit below the Mendoza Line this year. I joked during harvest, that if that’s the best I can do at raising corn, I should quit farming.

Too. Much. Rain. There were drowned out spots interspersed with areas where the crop was stunted and short. The high ground saw the best yield. Unfortunately, we have more low ground than high ground. The small corn ears we harvested would have been cute in table arrangements. Not so much running through the combine.

Looks like I’ll be leaning on crop insurance and the farm program. I’ve criticized those in the past as bloated programs heavily subsidized by you taxpayers and overly generous to big farmers. That doesn’t mean that this little pig isn’t going to line up at the trough when the government starts shoveling it out. Call me a hypocrite. Just don’t call me late for supper.

Jealousy: Despite everything nature threw at us, there were farmers growing 70-bushel beans and 230-bushel corn.

Better tile, missed a rain, maybe some exaggeration, who knows?

Every year, someone gets better yields than me. I’m the D1 college football program that can never crack the Top 25.

I have this image of getting to Heaven. St. Peter meets me and says, “Welcome Randy. Up here in Heaven, you’re going to grow 300-bushel corn every year.” I say, “This is great. I’m going to like it here.” Then I find out, the guy next cloud over is getting 400 bushels.

Proverbs 27:4 says, “Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service and pays the bitterest wages.” I need to find some other passions.

Perplexment: I’ve been doing this for most of fifty years, and I’m still surprised by stuff.

Why did this part of the field do better?

Why are those weeds growing there?

Why did the combine make that noise?

Being regularly confused by why things are happening keeps it interesting. I could farm for a thousand years and never figure it all out. It makes things challenging, and sometimes even fun.

I suspect working with people is at least as perplexing as working with plants. I wouldn’t be good at that.

Fatigue: I know. Fatigue is not an emotion. Work with me here.

On Sept. 16, I started inspecting soybean fields. That’s a part time job I have with the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association. That lasts up to my own harvesting of soybeans, which leads to corn. Then follows tillage. Each of those takes about two weeks.

This year, it never rained. Most years, a rainy day is a chance to catch my breath and rest a bit. This year it never rained. I worked every day for six weeks straight. I’m not that hardworking a person. I like hanging out, drinking coffee, and wasting time once in a while. Not working EVERY day.

Six weeks! Every day! You’re thinking, “Do you want a medal, or a chest to pit it on?” Yes.

Anger: I spend a lot of time on Highway 14 in the fall. We haul grain and move equipment. I’ve never liked being on the highway. When my great grandfather bought this place in 1896, there was considerably less traffic.

One dayl, I was hauling a load of corn to the elevator. I had to make a left turn from the curve onto a gravel road. Flashers and turn signals were all working on the tractor and the wagon. There is a bypass lane to my right that following traffic can use to get around me. The road is clearly marked for no passing.

I slowed to make my turn. There is no way it could have been more obvious what I was doing. I began the turn with my tractor when some guy decided he needed to pass on my left. I saw him just in time to jerk my steering wheel to the right, putting every other vehicle around me at risk. If I hadn’t seen him, he would have either hit the tractor or driven off the road.

The driver slowed when he realized what had happened. Then he drove away really fast, as if that would make it better. My bad thoughts followed him as far as they could.

When I was unloading at the elevator, I described that to Jay, who was unloading at the pit.

I said, I’m not a particularly violent person, but should I have driven that idiot off the road?

Jay suggested that a front-end loader on the tractor might have gotten the message across better.

A little sadness: Maybe you can’t tell from my complaining, but I do enjoy this. Working fields, growing crops, being outside are things I love. Despite my goal of farming forever, I know I’m in the later innings here, hopefully not the ninth inning.

My friend Gigi Portner is a poetry reader. Occasionally she sends me poems, handwritten in a letter. That is truly an amazing thing. You should all have such a friend.

During harvest she sent me one called Down to Earth, by James Crews. It’s about a farmer who opens his hand to the rain “seeping through layers to kiss the roots of every plant alive on this living, breathing planet on whose back we were granted permission to live for a limited time.”

It reminded me that this is all a gift. Thanks Gigi.

On one of the routes from here to the Cities is a unique sign. You might have seen it. It’s been there for a few years.

On a curve is a quaint country church. Out front is an admonition to “Love thy neighbor.” A quarter mile past that, on the bed of an old pickup truck is an 8 by 4 brightly painted sign that says, “TRUMP 2024 F— YOUR FEELINGS.” The “F” word is fully spelled out on the sign. It rhymes with duck.

The juxtaposition with the quaint church is jolting. That is, if we are able to be jolted anymore. We all know discourse in this country has turned darker and coarser. The man whose candidacy we’re supposed to “F” our feelings about deserves a large amount of credit for that.

Maybe that man liberated you to tell people exactly what you think, no matter how obnoxious that is. F other’s feelings anyway.

Please don’t read this if you are a supporter of Donald Trump. I long ago gave up the notion I could persuade anyone about anything. I’m not going to change your mind about Trump if the last eight years haven’t. This piece might upset you. You don’t need that. You already have to worry about illegals knifing you in your kitchen and your children forced to have sex change operations at school.

Stop reading and be on your way. Have a good day, and I’m OK with your feelings.

This is for the rest of us who just don’t get it. It is the synthesis of a thousand conversations I’ve had since 2016. Many of those were with Republican friends who also don’t get it.

Why this man? Why Donald Trump? No one in my lifetime has risen to prominence insulting and mocking people, calling them names. No one has been as disparaging and derogatory. No one has promoted violence openly like him. I’ve followed politics since Barry Goldwater. No one has used such vile words to describe others.

He’s not even clever. Trump refers to California governor Gavin Newsom as “Gavin Newscum.” If your sixth grader did that, you’d roll your eyes and hope they grew out of it.

Recently I read a Christian writer’s rule for speaking. “Always ask before saying something if it is true, if it is kind, and if it is necessary?” Listen to Trump. He certainly says a lot of things that are untrue. We used to call that lying. Kind? Necessary? Not much.

Yet, this man is the Republican nominee for president for the third time. We don’t get it.

Yes, I have Trump Derangement Syndrome. I want nothing more than to never think about Donald Trump again. No person has demanded attention so unceasingly for these many years. I’d compare him to a squalling baby in his desire for attention, but babies grow up.

In my life, I have voted for both parties. Since Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, I have become actively a Democrat to stand in opposition to that. I love our little group of Brown County Democrats, tilting against windmills and fighting the good fight.

I am not some left-wing crazy person – I voted for George Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney for president. I have deep respect for John Kerry and Barack Obama, but for various reasons voted for those Republicans. All those men are decent and honorable. It’s interesting that Bush, Romney, and McCain all ended up on the outs with Trump. Trump has ridiculed all of them, as he does anyone who won’t bow at his countenance.

I knew vaguely of Donald Trump before 2016. I knew his rich playboy image and that he was considered a buffoon by New Yorkers. He had a reputation for cheating people in business and cheating on his wives.

Trump was given a fake persona for “The Apprentice,” which I watched for about 10 minutes. He was linked to conspiracies. He promoted the death penalty for the wrongly convicted Central Park Five and pushed the stupid notion that Obama wasn’t born in America.

Trump was famous in all the worst ways. I ignored him as much as I could.

I tried to keep ignoring this unpleasant man in 2016. I thought highly of many of the fifteen Republicans seeking the nomination that year. I might have voted for Jeb Bush. I kept telling friends that Trump would go away, and that the Republicans would choose one of that highly qualified group.

Trump made fun of a disabled reporter. He mocked John McCain, saying he was a loser for being captured in Vietnam. Is there a greater American hero than John McCain? Trump told all of us that when you’re famous, you can grab women by their private parts.

At each of those, I thought, “Well, that’s the end of the Trump candidacy.” It would have been for any other person. When those slid off Trump like raindrops, I knew this man had secret powers I sure didn’t understand. We didn’t get it back then.

Speaking of private parts, Trump recently went on at length about Arnold Palmer and his, well, you know. That is two references to private parts in this column, which is two more than I have ever used before. Hopefully, two more than ever again.

On a serious note, the Republican Party historically stood strong with our free world allies and against tyranny. That was constant from Eisenhower to Reagan to Bush. The current nominee criticizes NATO and has a weird affection for unelected dictators. He is fearful of Russia in a way that Reagan never was.

The current nominee talks about deporting eleven million people, rounding them up into containment camps. He threatens to jail journalists and speaks of the “enemy within.” You don’t have to be a history major to see echoes of dark times in the past.

Again, we don’t get it.

Many Republican leaders have spoken the truth about Donald Trump, how beyond the pale he is. Dick Cheney is one of them. Dick Cheney! Has there ever been a more Republican Republican? I wish our Minnesota Congresspeople would join him. They haven’t. We’ll see how history judges that.

For years, the Republican Party said that character matters. I truly hope that Republican Party comes back.

We don’t get it. But you know what we can do with our feelings according to a sign on a truck.

We live on the edge of Congressional District 7. My congressperson is Michelle Fischbach. She really wants me to know she’ll “secure the border.”

This summer, “The Krzmarzick Household” received four 8-by-11 mailings telling me that. With grainy photos of dark-skinned people and large words like “Emergency” and “Crisis,” I’m to believe that securing the border is the greatest issue facing our household. We didn’t get any mailings about farm policy, health care, or the environment.

Congressional District 7 does include a border. That would be Canadian. I think the border that Fischbach says she’ll secure is the one 2,000 miles south of here.

I agree the border needs attention. The flow of people northward from Central America is not something we are going to exactly solve. It will be an issue for our children and grandchildren. You don’t need a crystal ball to know that human migration and climate change will be challenges into the future.

This is not only a concern for North America. Europe is facing as much pressure from their African south. As the Earth’s population grows toward nine billion, it’s foolish to think we can slam an imaginary door and live oblivious to the rest of the planet’s human beings.

Our species has a tremendous capacity for solving problems, even the most vexing ones. Right-minded, decent people working together for a larger good can find solutions. Petty, small-minded, selfish people make things worse. A reasonable, humane, and thoughtful border policy is possible.

To address any issue, we must first know and speak the truth. We must see clearly, not through clouds of lies and prejudices. Right now, nontruth impede the work we need to do on immigration.

I want to stand on a tall platform and yell this into a megaphone: The great majority of people attempting to come to the United States are not criminals! In the recent debate, the Republican nominee for President said that “millions of criminals” have come into our country illegally. That is a lie. It is a terrible lie. When a lie is so big and filthy, it can live in dark places, like mold. We need to shine light on it.

The people seeking refuge at our border are human beings. A set of politicians wants you to think of them as something less and to fear them. If you have an ounce of compassion in you, disavow that notion right now. If you’d have been born there and they’d have been born here, you could easily be the migrant trying to escape a desperate situation.

Say it with me. “There, but for the grace of God go I.” Say it anytime self-righteousness creeps in.

It is truth that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the general population. That is true for legal and illegal. Look it up. You are more likely to be raped and murdered by the guy next to you in line at the grocery store than someone crossing the Mexican border.

I follow enough Fox News and right-wing media to know they regularly overreport crimes by migrants and underreport crimes by stupid white men. If they were accurate in their reporting, there might be a movement to round up all the stupid white guys and deport them.

Our daughter Abigail has worked in the field of human rights in Guatemala and currently in Colombia. She also collaborated remotely with a team in Venezuela. She has worked in exactly the places where people are in such dire situations. Leaving the lives they know for the unknown is the only choice they have.

Sometimes they are facing malnutrition and deprivation. None of us has held an emaciated child. There is immediate hunger, but the child is also susceptible to horrible diseases. Other times there is the real threat of violence. Gangs may have killed your cousin and his family two villages over. That’s a fear we don’t know.

People leave failed states and failed economies. There is a long history leading to those. If the people of those places were responsible for their situations, one could say, “Let them figure it out.” Unfortunately, any accurate reading of history shows that Americans and Europeans advantaged themselves at the expense of the Southern Hemisphere for centuries. Slavery, colonization, and extractive economies have harmed the places immigrants flow from now.

This is not different than what your family did a few generations back. Your ancestors left everything they knew to take a dangerous ocean voyage with nothing guaranteed but opportunity in a new place.

We are a nation of immigrants. We just are. You are from a line of immigrants. You just are. Remember that next time someone is disparaging immigrants.

I remember listening to stories of families being separated at the border, a despicable strategy of the previous administration. These were from the good reporting of National Public Radio. I was brought to tears in my cab as I listened on the tractor radio.

When you hear real stories of immigrants, not the Fox News-manipulated stories, you begin to feel empathy. I am a Christian. I think the capacity to feel empathy is a requirement.

Another true thing is that migrant workers are essential to our economy. A friend had repairs done to hail-damaged barns. A crew from Iowa did the work and they were entirely Hispanic, with only a couple of them English-speaking. Another friend winters in Arizona and reports the only people working outside in that climate are Hispanic.

Packing plants are majority immigrants. Increasingly, migrants are doing the work of caring for the elderly. Migrant workers pick the produce that we buy in our grocery stores. Fifteen-hour days in the sun with minimal breaks are common. I would suggest that any of those men and women work harder in a day than JD Vance or Donald Trump ever has. They deserve our deep admiration, not our hate.

It has always been the case that first generation immigrants take jobs that no one wants. Second generation immigrants have historically been some of the most creative and innovative people we’ve had. So, our nation is rewarded for allowing people in.

No one is for open borders. Repeat, no one is for open borders. But good border policy is possible.

Leviticus 19:34 says, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

That was written three thousand years ago. I don’t think God has changed.

My Magical Mystery Nostalgia Tour has come to an end. It’s time to return to the present time. Which isn’t that great. But it’s all we got.

Pam accuses me of being a serial nostalgic. She’s right. The longer-ago memories are, the more enjoyable they are to retrieve.

One definition of nostalgia: “A wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.” Heck yeah, I’m nostalgic!

The approach of my Fiftieth Class Reunion took me back to 1974. Maybe 1974 wasn’t a lot better than 2024, but I had dark hair then.

I realized that April would be the Fiftieth Anniversary of My Homerun. I had fun with that. No bigger deal was ever made of a lesser athletic moment. Things improve with the passing of time. It’s now a 450-foot behemoth shot when I tell the story. It’ll be five hundred feet by the time I’m seventy.

A somber memory followed. I used this space to write about my brother Dean’s death the week before I graduated. Thanks to you readers for letting me use words as therapy. Grieving of that type is never over. We just move to different phases. There is the irresistible urge to imagine what Dean’s life would have been in these fifty years.

A few weeks ago, we had our actual class reunion. St. Mary’s, class of 1974, there were seventy-four of us. That was the same number who graduated from Sleepy Eye Public that year. One need only look at the smaller school sizes now to see small town demographics writ large.

Being in my hometown, I see many classmates regularly. If you see someone all the time, they never get old. If you haven’t seen someone in twenty years, it’s funny how old they got.

Our reunion was in the afternoon, which is a good thing. We all go to bed early since Johnny Carson went off the air. A winter ago, the idea of being in Sleepy Eye’s Summerfest parade was hatched at a bar in Havasu, Arizona. Enough of us thought that was a good idea to fill Lowell Heiderscheidt’s trailer.

I wanted to have a sign made that said, “Hey kids, this is what you’re going to look like in fifty years.” We decided that would be too frightening for children.

At the end of August I had another reunion, this one only the 47^th anniversary. In 1977, I spent the fall semester in Germany with students from St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict. There were ten Johnnies and seventeen Bennies under the guidance of the Sisters Margetta Nathe and Incarnata Gergen.

I can’t remember how it was that I signed up for that. In hindsight, I see it was an important part of my growing up. I had never been in a place where I didn’t know anybody. I could take chances on the person I wanted to be. All of us were nineteen or twenty. Childhood and adolescence were behind us; we were all trying out adulthood.

Our group grew close, bound together a continent away. We studied on weekdays in Konigstein, a cozy suburb of Frankfurt. On weekends, we traveled to all those countries that are amazingly close by from the center of Europe. At first, we traveled together by bus to places Sr. Margretta knew from her many times being there.

Later, we used Eurail passes to go off on adventures in small groups. It was a heady experience for a Brown County farm kid who had barely been out of Minnesota. I went from stumbling around Mankato that summer to circumventing Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin.

It was a set of experiences that came rapidly and intensely with those Bennies and Johnnies. It’s a torrent of memories when I think back on it now.

I’m not sure why, but I didn’t stay in touch with my fellow travelers when we got back to the States. I returned to the friends I had from the year before. It was as if the German experience was “a galaxy far, far away,” to quote from Star Wars which came out in 1977.

A year ago, four of us reconnected and began planning a reunion. With the help of the alumni departments at St. Ben’s and St. John’s, and some detective work, we were able to locate most of the group. On a Sunday afternoon in August, sixteen of us got together at the Bavarian Gasthaus, a German restaurant east of St. Paul.

I hadn’t seen most of those folks in a long time; name tags were helpful. As we chattered and laughed together, trying to see how our memories fit together, familiarity crept back. Can one pick up conversations that began forty-seven years ago? Yes, and it was great fun.

We went around and had everybody tell what they’d been doing since college. Basically, tell your life story in five minutes. Despite that huge reduction, it was fascinating the many and varied paths we’d taken. Triumphs, sorrows, joy, loss came through in that condensed form.

At both reunions, we took time to remember those who’d “gone before.” Nine of my classmates and three of our German group have passed away. On the internet, I found the obituary of a Johnnie friend. I gasped a little when I saw he died the day our son was born. That seemed like something coming full circle, but I’m not sure what.

In both groups, we are becoming eligible for senior discounts, all of us are around “retirement age.” There are people still working, cutting back, part-time, retired, or just tired, as they say. Everyone is scoping out this next phase of our lives, putting some things in and taking some things out. Health gets attention, since after these many times around the sun, we know having our health is a great blessing.

Reunions allow us to be with people who were part of our lives once. Some of them may have been challenging. Some of them were beautiful glows of light on our path. All are gifts from God who teach us something. We are who we are because of them.

Last December, I noticed a deposit of $3,089.80 in our checking account. What a nice Christmas gift!

It was a payment from the Farm Service Agency. I dug in my memory to recall that months ago I filled out an application for a PARP payment based on some combination of farm income, yields, price, and maybe the price of tea in China. “PARP” stands for something. You can look that up.

PARP is a leftover program from the Covid era, stupid Trump policies, and excessive weather events. Weather is something farmers are always fighting with. Covid and Trump were unique maladies.

The three grand came at a useful time when we’re paying the end of last year’s expenses and the beginning of next year’s. We’re also selling crops out of the field. A lot of money is flying in and out. We hope there’s some left over at the end.

Every time you taxpayers send us money, I tell Pam and then speculate how much “big” farmers are getting. By “big,” I don’t mean overweight. I mean big in acres. I am a “small” farmer in acres. If I got $3,000, I’m guessing big farmers got, what, $50,000, $100,000?

Which leads us to a current farm matter. Every five years, Congress is required to craft a new Farm Bill. The 2018 Farm Bill expired in 2023. We are living with a series of extensions until a new one can be passed by Congress and signed by the President.

Writing a Farm Bill is a difficult process in normal times, when thoughtful, intelligent legislators are willing to compromise and seek the larger good. Now that the two parties have sunk to acting like ill-behaved four-year-olds, it’s almost impossible.

From journalist Allison Winter: “Historically, farm bills have brought together lawmakers across party lines, uniting on regional interests. The massive bill stitches together support for agriculture producers, energy and conservation programs on farmland and food and nutrition programs for families in need.”

And from Carl-Johan Karlsson: “Gone are the days when politicians brokered deals across the aisle. Instead, polarization has transformed the democratic process, which once thrived on compromise and respectful dialogue, into a winner-takes-all battleground of dysfunction and animosity.”

We’ve had plenty of dysfunction the two years they’ve been working on the Farm Bill. The House Agriculture Committee passed a version in May that was basically a Republican wish list with more money for farmers and less money for poor people. It wasn’t a particularly useful gesture, but at least they could tell their constituents they were doing something in Washington besides taking up space.

A Farm Bill will have to be hammered out after the election, even if the parties involved would rather hammer each other on the head.

As part of the process, the major farm groups lobby for various positions. The American Farm Bureau is sort of the Republican side, and the National Farmers Union is sort of the Democratic side. I belong to both because I like going to meetings in the winter when I’m bored.

The commodity groups are also major players: the National Corn Growers Association, the National Pork Producers Council, etc. There’s even an American Emu Association protecting emu growers’ interests. I want to say right here that I’m fully for emu rights.

If you’re a long-time reader of this column (hi Pam!), you remember that I was involved in the creation of a lesser-known farm organization in 2012: Producers Opposed to Obscene Payments, aka P.O.O.P., was founded in response to large direct payments going to well-heeled big farmers.

Direct farm payments ended in the 2013 Farm Bill. Members of P.O.O.P. like to take credit for that. But, alas, those payments were replaced with increasingly large subsidies for crop insurance. The leaders of P.O.O.P. considered changing our name to Producers Intent on Stopping Subsidies. We decided that wasn’t a good idea.

A large problem, the problem, with both direct payments and crop insurance subsidies is there have never been any practical limits on them. I’ve written about this before; It bugs me enough to harp on it. There have been “caps” put on payments and subsidies, but they’ve never been so strictly applied or cleverly written as to prevent large operators from benefiting handsomely from government largesse.

Under the current Farm Bill, the government pays $10 billion to crop insurance. $8 billion goes to pay about 62% of farmers’ premiums. $2 billion goes to cover costs to fourteen private insurance companies. According to the General Accounting Office, those companies make “above normal” profits. Guess who becomes a major lobbying group for continuing subsidies?

The top ten percent of farmers in sales receive 68 percent of crop insurance subsidies. The lion’s share of those farmers are in the south, which has always had an overly large voice in farm policy. Ask Collin Peterson about that.

Collin spent his career championing northern farmers until voters decided he wasn’t appropriately beholden to Donald Trump. He was also willing to work across the aisle. This was before the aisle was fitted with barbed wire.

I have no problems with any farmer wanting to operate a lot of acres. With advancements in technology, it’s clear that less and less of us will be running more and more acres. “Big” farmers are as likely to be good citizens and neighbors as “small” farmers. In some cases, they can be better stewards of the land.

The question, as it has been for decades, should the government be in the business of reducing their risk? Shouldn’t Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith and Brad Finstad and Michelle Fischbach consider that? They might not get votes for it, but doing something overdue like putting real limits in the Farm Bill would be the right thing. Doing the right thing still counts for something.

I am not anti-government. In a democratic capitalist system like ours, good government is essential. But we should constantly ask, can it be better?

It’s possible to imagine the billions of dollars spent supporting farmers going for more good. Maybe contributing to a more diverse agriculture across the Midwest. Maybe we could grow more of our own food instead of shipping it here from California and South America. Some of the billions could really be supporting small family farms.

We can imagine it. Why can’t we do it?

When you live where your father lived and work where your father worked, you hear his voice sometimes. He passed away twenty-five years ago, but he still reminds me to put equipment away at night and clean up grain spills.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t put gravel on the driveway in a long time. My dad used to have that done. A voice in my head said I should do that. Or was it my dad’s voice?

Regardless, I called a Heiderscheidt. That is what I do in all matters of earthly materials, A few days later Monte was artfully applying a layer of gravel the length of the driveway. When Monte was done, I ran our 4-wheeler with a small drag in and out the driveway.

Then I went to rake a few spots. Virgin gravel is an exquisitely perfect thing. You almost hate to be the first one to walk on it. As I pulled the rake back and forth, a memory came to me. I recalled being a kid, and my brother and I going out to play in new gravel. Sometimes it was a pile and sometimes a layer like this.

We’d get our “beach toys” like shovels and pails and our toy tractors. If we were good the Christmas before, we had Tonka Toys to move the sand around.

I quit raking and knelt down. I pushed my hand into the soft, cool gravel. It will soon be hard and warm, but it’s squishy and kind of supple when it’s fresh off the truck. As kids, we had to get out there and play in it right away to experience those best conditions. Like many good things in life, it was fleeting.

I briefly wished I was a kid again. We have toys in the basement for when our grandson visits. I think Pam might have been concerned if I had gotten them out to play with. So, I returned to boring adult raking.

As much as one can retrieve feelings and sensations from six decades in the past, it was fun to remember the excitement of new gravel to my kid-self. I thought about other times when fun presented itself, times when a play-world appeared unexpectedly.

New snow came to mind. We all remember rushing out into the first snow. Our moms may or may not have got our boots on before we ran out. Maybe we fell to the ground to make a snow angel. Or we made the season’s first snowball if the snow was right.

There were other places on the farm that called to us as kids if the day was right. The rock pile could be a stone castle or a garrison with imagination and shifting stones around. There was a hill south of the house that leant itself to rolling down when it was newly mowed. You lay at the top, tucked your arms in, and turned yourself till gravity took over. Dizziness followed.

A couple nights ago, I stepped outside. Above were a thousand stars. Below was the sound of a thousand crickets. It’s a good cricket year judging by the size of the nocturnal choir. It was reassuring to hear that; there weren’t many crickets last year. Again, I flashed back to being a boy, looking up and being filled with something. I’m not sure if it was awe looking up at Creation. Or maybe it was confusion, trying to figure out how I fit in that eternity.

I was recently visiting with friends who are bikers. They regularly use the abundance of trails in the Cities for two-wheel journeys. Beth said, “I feel like I’m twelve years old when I’m on my bike!”

Of course, Beth’s not twelve on her bike, and I’m not eight with my hand in the cool gravel. But there is an urge to slide back to childhood in little moments. Unfettered exuberance, wonder, and total curiosity are things we were better at as kids. It’s good to reclaim those now and then.

It’s emotionally healthy and perhaps even physically healthy. I jog a little, and I came across a technique call “chi running.” That borrows from the Chinese martial art form of tai chi. It is supposed to increase efficiency and reduce injuries. A major principle of chi running is to run like a child runs.

From an instructor, “Look at the way you used to run as a kid. Kids are constantly taking quick steps and leaning forward to let their body, not their legs, do most of their work.” With that in mind, I’ve watched my eight-year-old grandson run and tried to imagine myself as him when I’m running. Alas, I am still a 68-year-old plodding old guy. But it’s fun to try.

I realize living where I grew up is an odd phenomenon. It’s true for some farmers but for few others. It does mean that you not only get to hear your father’s voice, but you also get to stand in the places you stood as a kid.

Perhaps that makes it easier to relive youth moments. But it’s not perfect. Recently I was in our orchard. I realized every tree that was there when I was a kid is gone. In their place are trees Pam and I planted. The three apple trees that marked first, second, and third base in kickball games are gone. As is the big sweeping Duchess apple tree that hung over the swing. The trees there now hopefully carry memories for our children.

This summer, Pam has been carving a path to walk through the grove. We’ve found a collection of rusted tools, farm parts, bottles, and barbed wire. Buried in brush and leaves, I found an old baseball, soggy and moldy.

There are others back there, as I can recall hitting balls over the granary and spending time trying to find them. As I held the ragged ball in my hands, I thought that I last held the ball half a century ago. I had a vision of the boy-me handing the ball to the old guy-me.

You can’t be twelve again, but sometimes you can touch it. I hope each of you gets your own chance. We need breaks from adulthood.

I go to church. That put me in a solid majority of Americans when I was young. Now I’m in a minority.

The trend toward that significant shift began a few decades ago. It got a jolt during Covid when staying home became a preferred pastime for many.

A lot of people blame a lot of things for the drop in church attendance. We can take comfort in knowing God’s time is not our time. Rather than griping about it, how about if we believers commit ourselves to being the most decent, loving, and kind people we can be? Maybe we can attract someone back to a pew who wants to be part of that.

I don’t know if I’m weird, but I actually like being at church. For me, that’s the Catholic Mass. I move around from Sleepy Eye to Leavenworth to New Ulm. I’m stealthy in that way.

I was sitting at Mass a while ago, and my mind was wandering. That’s common for me. Focus was never my long suit. Pam says I have ADHD; she might be right. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. Church.

Anyway, I was thinking about why I liked being there. Then it hit me, how about a Top Ten list. The Top Ten Reasons for Going to Church! Thank you, David Letterman. Only my list isn’t really the Top Ten. That would include our salvation and knowing our Creator. So, this is Ten Other Reasons for Going to Church.

1. That’s a big one. For most of us, singing is what we do with the radio on in the car. Maybe the occasional Happy Birthday or Take Me Out to the Ballgame. But in church, we get to join our voices with others in a de facto choir. Sometimes it’s majestic. How often do you get to be majestic in a typical week?

You don’t have to be a good singer. Just join right in and add to the volume if not the quality. Tom Larson is a really good singer. He has led singing at St. Mary’s for years. After Mass, I tell him how good we sound together. I think it’s mostly Tom.

2. Go for the art. Most churches have glorious statues, wall paintings, and wood carvings. There’s something uplifting about being surrounded by beautiful things. It’s not like going to your uncle’s place with the painting of dogs playing poker over the fireplace. If you’re lucky, the sun will shine through the stained glass on to your forehead some morning, and you can be part of the artwork.
3. You get to see some of your neighbors that you only drive past and wave at. The people-watching can be great. If you’re a regular, you watch kids grow up and people get old. That can be a reminder that you’re getting old, so maybe that’s not so great.
4. You get some exercise. Especially if you’re Catholic. At a typical Mass you genuflect, kneel, sit, stand, sit, stand, kneel, sit, stand, sit, stand, bow, kneel, stand, kneel, walk, kneel, sit, stand, genuflect. I’m tired just typing that. If there’s not donuts afterwards in the church basement, that counts as a workout. My Protestant friends don’t get as many calisthenics. But they at least have to get up off the couch to go to church.
5. You have to be quiet and listen. That was a useful tool when we had kids, letting them know there were such times. This can be a time to reflect, a time to quiet the noise in your head, or just a time to shut up for once. We all need that. In Psalms, we are told, “Be still and know that I am God.” Once a week that’s not a bad idea.
6. Face it, you know your parents want you there. This is true whether they are living or have passed. When I headed off to college, my dad told me to “Get your rear end to church.” Only there might have been a shorter, coarser word used than “rear end.” Regardless, getting one’s posterior into a pew is still a good admonition, no matter our age.
7. It’s an excuse to get out of the house. I tell people, I don’t get off the farm much, church on Sunday and town for supplies a couple times a year. That might be a slight exaggeration, but church is still a good reason to set your routine aside for an hour a week. Plus, you can check the neighbor’s crops on the way to town.
8. You get to dress up. You don’t have to look like a slob all the time, you know. Those clothes in the closet you have for funerals and weddings? You aren’t going to wear them to go to the parts store, but you can sure wear them on Sundays. Maybe even show you have a little good taste. You might surprise fellow parishioners that you don’t look half bad when you clean up.
9. There’s going to be a sermon. If you don’t let your mind wander too much, you can learn something. Your priest or minister thinks about this stuff all week. They went to seminary for this. They might have something to say if you give it a listen. You get extra points if you ask him or her about a certain line when you see them in the back of church later. That will prove you were listening. Surprise them.
10. Finally, there’s that keeping holy the Sabbath thing. By keeping holy the Sabbath, God did not mean Bloody Mary’s with brunch, before settling on the couch to watch the Vikings game. They didn’t even have football when the Ten Commandments were given to humankind. There was baseball, “In the big inning,” but no football. (Old joke, but I’m an old guy.)

There’s my list. Feel free to add your own reasons. The important thing is getting your you-know-what in a pew. See you at church.

In June, I went to certify my acres at the Farm Service Agency. It’s an annual task after planting. As I drove to town, a foreboding line of dark clouds hung over Sleepy Eye, like a wall cloud on steroids. As I stepped into the office, you could see the blackening sky out the north windows.

I said to the staff, “That’s a scary looking sky out there. It could be a sign of the apocalypse. Do I really need to certify my acres if the world comes to an end?” It got something between a chuckle and a smile. It was the kind of goofy thing I regularly say.

Why do I say goofy things? I was thinking about that; I’m not sure the answer. I know that I enjoy the experience of being funny, or trying to be funny.

I’ve been paying attention to how much my varied conversations through a day involve humor. It’s certainly true when I’m with friends. Joking around and laughing takes a large part of my time with them. I’ve never done a scientific study, but it’s a lot. Maybe half?

I noticed something last week as I was on my way to Miller Sellner to buy a set of spark plugs. As I pulled into the parking lot, I was thinking of a funny line I could throw out when I got to the counter. I know all the parts-people. I was even considering different lines depending on who was working.

I was almost doing that unconsciously. It’s the same way with Renee at the bank or Joann at the grocery store. I usually greet them with something silly.

Wife, Pam, has had to listen to my routine for decades. At home, it’s like a stand-up routine when I’m on a roll. She’s been a captive audience to my one-man show, bless her soul. “I’m here all week, Pam. Try the veal.”

With her and others who know me, it’s part of a relationship. I like being the comic, but I also like being the audience. I enjoy laughing at the jokes of my companion.

It’s not only people I know. I say silly things to complete strangers I cross paths with. It might be a waitress or bartender. It can be someone I’m standing in line with. Sharing a smile with a fellow traveler feels good. Occasionally, I get a strange look back. But it’s a chance I take.

As I describe all these moments, it sounds like a type of addiction. Does it make me feel clever to deliver a good line? I can’t deny that ego could be part of it.

It’s a way to feel at ease with someone. Any relationship can have land mines to circumvent. Laughing together helps us tiptoe around those. It feels good when people are smiling around me. It’s a warm sensation, a connection made between me and a partner in humor.

Writing these columns, I sometimes write a line that I think is funny. I find myself smiling across the keyboard at you the reader.

Is that something on your shirt? Ha! Made you look.

I enjoyed reading Dave Barry’s columns and James Lileks when he was in the Star Tribune and Jerry Nelson now. Their works usually bring a smile. It seems a little strange, to respond like that to something on a piece of paper.

Occasionally, I set out to write a humorous column. Oddly, those are difficult to write. If I’m sitting with you at a bar or we’re walking somewhere, funny lines bubble up, organically. Humor flows naturally from the moment. But if you put a gun to my head, and tell me to be funny, I’m in trouble. Writing a column isn’t quite like that, but you get the idea.

We’re told that laughing can have health benefits. I suppose that’s true within reason. There are limits to anything we do, except maybe breathing. If everything’s funny, then nothing’s funny. But for most of us, in a world full of serious concerns, laughing with friends is a wonderful outlet.

I had surgery on a wrist once that I broke in a machine accident. I had to spend a night in the hospital and there was a lot of pain. As I lay in my bed, unable to sleep, I discovered the Comedy Channel was on my TV. There were a series of standup comedians doing their routines in front of laughing audiences. I noticed that the pain in my arm wasn’t as bad when I was laughing. I “made myself” watch hours that night, a type of therapy.

Apparently, God likes to get into the act, too. There’s an old Yiddish saying, “Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht.” Man plans and God laughs. I really don’t believe God on high is laughing at us mortals flailing away at life down here. But it does point to limits we face in controlling events around us.

The poet Robert Burns pointed to that with his line, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Humor can help. Except for really terrible things that happen to us, there is something funny to be found in most situations. Breakdowns on the farm, crops drowned out, water in the basement? There’s humor to be mined in each. A small laugh can make it a little better.

Two types of humor stand opposite each other. Self-deprecating humor is where you use yourself as the brunt of the joke. Who among us doesn’t have weaknesses and foibles that can’t be made gentle fun of? I can think of some nights on the dance floor where I left myself open to wisecrackery.

That can be harmless if done in a good-natured way. A dark side of this light topic is making fun of others. And, boy, do we have a skilled craftsman of that art! Donald Trump seldom goes more than a few words without mocking someone.

When he makes fun of someone’s stutter or the way a disabled reporter walks, I suppose it’s “funny” in a way. At least his admirers think so. Everyone who isn’t fully on his side, gets an insulting nickname. If your sixth grader did that, you would properly reprimand him. If the former president does that, his approval ratings go up.

The British writer, Nate White, wrote about why his fellow Brits don’t like Trump. “We like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty, or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I mean it quite literally. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility. For us, to lack humor is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.”

Humor can be a wonderful balm. Or it can be a cruel bludgeon. We get to choose.

On June 3rd, 1990, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev came to Minnesota. At the time, he had begun to reform the failing Communist system. He was one of the most significant figures of the Twentieth Century. His visit to Minnesota received international attention. It was an unseasonably cold, blustery day.

I wrote this then. Earl Kruger has since passed away. Earl was a real person. The Kretschmers occasionally show up in my column. They are real to me. Paul and Julia have since grown. Bart quit farrowing and put up a finishing barn for Schwartz Farms. Katherine battled with her novel for a few years and switched to writing poetry.

The old Mustang that his advance team had purchased for $300 was a treat to drive after riding in big honking limos all week. The muffler was rusting out, but that steady rumbling felt oddly liberating.

Gorbachev had surreptitiously flown to Minneapolis on a commercial flight from Washington early Sunday, disguised as a regular guy. It was about 11 a.m. when the president of the Soviet Union rolled into a quiet Sleepy Eye. A dreadful northwest wind had evacuated the streets except for church traffic. He really didn’t know how big this “Sleepy Eye” was when the dart he’d tossed hit square on the “E.”

That was the funny part of it. All those analysts were trying to figure out “Why Minnesota?” Gorbachev just wanted to see something on his trip to America besides large halls and offices. So, his staff got a map of the United States, ripped off the coasts, and blacked out the big cities. He threw the dart. “E.” Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.

He was nervous every time they used the Gorbachev double. But it was necessary for his sanity sometimes. Government and business leaders never listened anyway, never really heard a word he said. So why not use a stand-in? The double was up in the Cities that Sunday with reporters chasing him around.

Especially Fidel Castro. Gorbachev could have recited soccer scores to him, and Castro would have just kept talking. He always sent the double to meet him now. Castro would go nuts if he knew he was lecturing a welder from Leningrad. The welder was having a ball though. A little makeup, and he got to be president for a few hours.

Gorbachev’s first stop was at Hardee’s for a coffee. The Mustang’s heater was about as good as its muffler; some coffee might warm him.

The Russian embassy had given him a Trojan seed cap that he wore along with a plaid jacket and work pants. A three-month crash course in English left him with an accent, but he could get by. In Washington, he had spoken Russian. That gave him time to think during the translation. Now he was anxious to try his English.

He sat down next to Earl Kruger. Earl was looking out at a robin struggling in the wind. “Good morning,” said Gorbachev.

Earl turned away from the window. “Good morning. Say, do you suppose robins look for worms in a wind like this, or do they just wait till it dies down?”

It was a good question, and the two talked it over.

“So what brings you to town?” asked Earl. Gorbachev had prepared a story about going to see relatives in South Dakota.

“So you’re from east of here?”

The Soviet president grinned. “Yes, east of here.”

“I hear it’s so wet by Rochester some of the corn’s not in,” said Earl.

And so the conversation went: birds, weather, crops. After a while Earl told Gorbachev about his idea to plant apple trees all through the region. How 4-H clubs could plant and care for them. How they could use the parks and empty lots in town. How Sleepy Eye could be “The Apple Town.” Make it Buttered Corn and Apple Pie Day.

Gorbachev loved apples. He remembered an idea like that from when he was a young agriculture official. Sadly, it got buried by some bureaucrat. The two men talked apple trees for half an hour.

When it was close to noon, Earl had to go home for dinner with Delores. Gorbachev walked to the rusty Mustang. When he got in, he made a note to mention Earl the next time he met George Bush. Suggest him for the Interior Department or something. Somewhere they could use good ideas.

Next, he drove west on Highway 14, into the wind, under the low, gray sky. He turned south on a gravel road wanting to see farms. He had liked the plan for him and Governor Perpich to visit a dairy farm outside of the Cities. But his double could wade through the cameras and rabid reporters.

As he got near the Cottonwood River, he drove past the Kretschmer place. It looked as good as any, and he pulled the Mustang over to the side. He got out and walked up the curvy driveway, holding his seed cap in the gusts, past the cottonwood tree with blown off sticks beneath it, up to the brick home.

He knocked on the wood screen door. Six-year-old Julia came to the door, “Hi!”

“Hello, how are you little girl?”

“I’m painting see all those newspapers on the wall and the table I’m painting everyone I know and we’ll put it up on the wall if it fits I know a lot of people.” Julia spoke in torrents.

Julia talked faster than anyone could listen. Gorbachev thought, “Now here’s American vitality!” His English instructor hadn’t quite prepared him for Julia.

“Is your mother or father home? I need some gas.”

“Mom’s writing and I can’t bug her for 36 more minutes Dad’s in a pig pen Paul’s watching basketball he always watches sports it’s so dumb.”

After hearing about Julia’s kittens and her last day of kindergarten, Gorbachev found himself going down to an old shed to find Julia’s dad. Bart Kretschmer was kneeling in straw in a make-shift pen, wet and pig-dirty. He was trying to nail a board up despite the affections of about twenty young gilts.

“Hello,” announced the visitor. “Can I help?”

“Oh hello. No. I deserve this,” muttered Bart, half talking to himself. “‘Breed extra gilts,’ I told myself. ‘I’ll just put them in my workshop and open the south door and fence in a lot for them,’ I said. I should have known it would rain for the first time in four years and turn it into a mudhole. I should have known they would find my tools so darned interesting that they’d break the fence down on a weekly basis. No, I deserve this.”

Gorbachev ended up holding boards for Bart and even came up with a different corner scheme to strengthen it. As they worked, they talked about pigs.

“What’s crazy, is these are $60 market hogs I’ve kept back. Probably just to farrow 200 pigs that I’ll sell into a $40 market.”

This was almost as good as apple trees. Gorbachev was giddy thinking about the faces of glazed over politicians and businessmen he was missing. “So why’d you keep them?” he asked.

Bart grew sober for a minute. “I need extra pigs for November’s land payment. I had some bad farrowing last fall, some ungodly virus. Then a tractor overhaul, and Paul’s braces. If hog prices don’t stay up, we’ll come up short. By the way, how do you know so much about pigs, Mr. Gorbachev?”

The president’s jaw dropped.

“Your English isn’t that good. Besides, there ain’t been a Trojan company for years. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. You helped me with the fence. It’s the least I can do.”

Gorbachev smiled. “I’m not really out of gas. I just wanted to see something that wasn’t so planned.”

“Well, those pigs getting out sure wasn’t planned. Come up to the house and clean up.”

Later they sat down to muffins that Bart made after church. He cooked on weekends to let Katherine work on her writing. She was a nurse at the clinic in town. Weekends, she was a writer with pages of a novel spread out over half the basement.

Katherine wasn’t surprised to see Mikhail Gorbachev in their kitchen. She saw everything in life as parts of a novel. This was just a strange Kurt Vonnegut-sort of chapter.

They visited into the afternoon about the farm, the Kremlin, corn, old cars. Julia painted the Soviet president into her mural and told him about her Cabbage Patch doll. They even watched Gorbachev’s double on the TV news.

That early evening as Gorbachev rumbled in his mustang back to the airport, he felt relaxed for the first time in weeks. He smelled a little like pigs, but that was okay.