I write often about The World That I Grew Up In. There were great things about being a kid in the Sixties on a farm in the middle of Brown County. I was blessed to be in a safe home with parents who loved me. I got to be outside a lot. There were seasons that meant each day was unique. Sleepy Eye was small enough to be comfortable, yet big enough to have interesting characters.
I mean I wouldn’t want to live there now. That particular time and place doesn’t exist anymore. Things change. Some good changes, some not so good. There are choices we are given. To be in a non-changing world isn’t one of them. A static world would a dead world.
The World That I Grew Up In was simple for a kid to maneuver. Everyone was Catholic or Protestant. Everyone descended from western Europe. The rest of the world was far outside my vision. It was deceptive in that way. Even as I was going to Chisey’s with my dad for a Nesbitt’s, young men from Sleepy Eye were off in Vietnam.
I belonged to a Weekly Reader club where once a month I got a small book about some country. I pored over each one when it came. They fascinated me, but Egypt and Argentina might as well have been Mars and Venus. It was an exceedingly small piece of the planet where I grew up and, in hindsight, isolated. I never really talked to a Black or Hispanic or Asian person till I was in college. Nor a Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu person.
New Ulm was the big city where once a year we would go to eat at the Red Onion. I learned later that New Ulm was the “most ethnically homogenous community of over 10,000 in America.” Hanska with its Norwegians is what passed for diversity in The World That I Grew Up In.
Not surprisingly, change has come. Technology, communication, and transportation mean our world is “smaller” now. More people move more distances. Since being an adult, a significant number of Hispanic people have moved to Sleepy Eye. They are essential parts of the workforce around here. At first, many came seasonally. Now hundreds are full time members of our community.
Increasing numbers of Hispanic men, women, and children are common through the Midwest. Other groups have arrived, too. Hmong, Laotian, Somali, Congolese. It is very much the case that the world is coming here. They are following the same pattern of the Germans and Scandinavians.
A small amount of analysis tells us this trend will continue. The Euro-centric families I grew up are smaller now. That is not just true here. It is a fact that North Americans and Europeans are having fewer children. Africans, Asians, and Mideasterners are having more. We know with certainty that the world our children and grandchildren will live in will be more African, Asian, and Mideastern. It is not a matter of accepting or opposing this. It simply is.
Before Christmas, I was in Worthington and had some time to kill. I parked downtown and went walking. It was a brisk, late afternoon. In the early dark of the season, warm light coming from store fronts illuminated the sidewalks. Nearly every building had light. Most held some business. That is not common in Midwest towns where empty storefronts are pandemic.
As I walked, I could see many of these had Hispanic or Asian roots. They were inviting in the chill air. I stepped inside a few, buying some snacks and a few Christmas gifts. There were people around, too. It struck me that it felt like stepping back in time to see a rural Main Street that active.
Later I looked up some information about Worthington. After decades of population decline, Worthington began to grow in the Eighties. At first, churches sponsored new people coming. Then more came for jobs. The hog processing plant was the big draw, but there were other ag-related positions. Now it turns out that one third of Worthington residents are foreign-born. It is not a coincidence that Main Street is alive there. A quote said that the city takes pride in being a welcoming community. I’m sure that is not a universal sentiment. But it is the dominant one.
I suspect cities and towns fall in a range when it comes to how open they are to new people. As the number of farms and size of families shrink in the Midwest, it will be a defining factor for communities going forward. Those that embrace change and welcome new people are many times more likely to thrive.
A few weeks back, The Journal reported about a piece of hate-mail that Alma Marin received. I know Alma a little bit. Her family is from Bolivia, and Alma is an American citizen. She is exactly the kind of good and decent person New Ulm will need to have a prospering future.
Suffice it to say, the letter was disgusting, with lines like, “Whites earned our freedoms not some taco, unfriendly, smelly Spaniards.” Letters in support of Alma were printed in the following days. That was encouraging. Unfortunately, the stench of the anonymous writer’s thoughts lingers. Sadly, it takes two-parts love and virtue to staunch one-part hate and vile.
The line I quoted is so un-American as to be absurd. “Whites” are a part of America, but if that is all there is to America, we will be known for nothing of value by historians. It is because the writer is so absolutely wrong that America remains a beacon. If it is only meant for white Christian Europeans, we might as well dismantle the Statue of Liberty and scrap it out for copper.
The writer can wish all he wants that the New Ulm would remain the way it was in the 1950’s. That will not happen. Long after the writer has gone to meet his maker (and that should be an interesting conversation), New Ulm, Brown County, and our nation will be changing and different and hopefully thriving because of it.
(Speaking of the afterlife, I also think there will be a special place in hell for politicians and commentators who demonize groups of people and sow fear and paranoia.)
I stumbled across this recently. Anne Frank once said, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Contrast that to the letter that was sent to Alma. Each of us each day chooses whether we will make this a better world. Or not.
We think of indoors and outdoors as separate, divided by the walls of our home. Inside, we control things: temperature, light, cleanliness, orderliness. Outside, nature calls the shots. Sometimes the line gets blurred.
In our house, various of our children occasionally traverse through. But mostly it is Pam, me, and the cat now. Except when the line between in and out is blurred, and we have uninvited guests.
Early this winter, I was in town. Pam called to report breathlessly that she had extricated a bat from the kitchen. A broom and a dish towel were skillfully used in the roundup.
Years ago, our home regularly had winged visitors, more often birds. A wire guard around the chimney put an end to that. So, the bat was a surprise. So was the next one.
That evening, Pam was in bed watching Netflix, when I heard a shriek. I ran upstairs to find the covers over her head. Then I saw the second bat darting about, looking at least as frantic as my wife. Pam yelled something about a tennis racket. I raced downstairs to look for that. I haven’t played tennis in 20 years, so had no idea where it was.
I grabbed the broom and a box. I spent some time swinging and missing. (It reminded me of my baseball career.) Finally, I knocked our visitor to the floor, got him/her into the box, and outside. I like bats, so was happy to see it fly off into the night when I opened the box.
When I see bats in the farmyard on summer nights, they are more a shadow than a real thing. I got a good look at our bat-guest as it was flying directly at me. About 6 inches with its wings extended, it was cute in a bat sort of way. As I said, I like bats. Anyone who eats mosquitoes is a friend of mine. We still aren’t sure how they got into our house. We assume they were a pair. There haven’t been any bat sightings since.
Our bats were a surprise. Mice aren’t. We usually have a caravan of mice looking for a winter home each autumn. Sometimes a couple, sometimes up to a dozen end up in a trap. It’s possible an exceptionally smart one or two isn’t falling for the old trap trick and overwinters with us.
One memorable morning, I was getting breakfast for our kids before school. One of Abby’s cat-friends was in the house at the time. In a hallway just off the kitchen, the cat suddenly leapt upon an unfortunate mouse making its way home from a night of crumb-hunting. I’m not sure if you have ever heard a cat eat a mouse, but there is loud crunching. The kids were repulsed and intrigued and excited. Nothing in science class that day could have been half as interesting.
About 20 years back we had the Plague of the Ladybeetles, a plague of biblical proportions. The Eurasian ladybeetle was brought to North America to protect crops. Turned out they absolutely loved soybean aphids and multiplied by the gabillions. It was fine to have them chomping aphids out in our fields, but then they began to seek shelter for winter.
Farm houses were perfect for that. They got in by the thousands, crawling on every window and across the ceiling. They had a clever defense mechanism of being stinky if you did anything to them. Kamikaze bugs dive-bombed into my coffee. It was as if they were trying to drive us from our house.
There were raging debates about the difference between the ladybeetles and ladybugs. Everyone was an entomologist. It seemed a distinction without a difference. For whatever reason, the plague passed before we were forced to move to the Arctic.
These structures we call homes are meant to shelter us from nature. Inside, we are isolated from the world outside. It is an enclave in that way. That’s a good thing when it is -20 outside. We are blessed to have one if we do, as millions on our planet do not have permanent and safe shelter.
Nature has ways of intruding, as our bats, mice, and bugs give evidence to. There are other critters, too: flies, spiders, fruit flies, and a few creepy, crawly things that show up in the basement. It is said that the most adaptable species on Earth are human beings and rats. Rats flourish wherever people migrate to. I’m pretty sure Pam would be gone if there were rats in the house.
Of course, we are trying to maintain these abodes on top of what used to be the tall grass prairie. Human beings are disruptive of nature wherever we take up residence. But nature has a way of adapting and likes to fill a vacuum. Which is a good thing. Otherwise mankind probably would have killed off this planet long ago.
Long before we came along, Brown County was home to a vast array of prairie plants and creatures that evolved over millennia. Maybe our forebears should have tried harder to live within the natural systems that were here. Or at least maintained more of what was here in preserves, like a museum to honor the natural past. But they didn’t, and our homes are mostly surrounded by lawn and pavement and millions of acres of corn and soybeans. Prairie was pushed to the margins, tiny margins.
I was talking to a farmer during a late spring once when we were having trouble getting into the fields. He was disappointed that plants were growing out in his untilled fields. He thought after all the years he had controlled weeds that the seed bank should have been reduced to none.
I remember thinking it was a good sign that nature was prepared to cover that soil with growing things if we couldn’t. Unfortunately, it is not the ancient prairie plants that were sprouting. It was the common weeds that farmers do battle with. I suspect though, that given time, the prairie would have returned. We see that where programs to reestablish prairie are in place. It is a testament to the nature’s resilience.
Man vs. nature is the ancient battle. Now we know that is a wrongheaded way to see this. If it is a battle, both sides lose. We begin to understand man must work with nature if we are to survive.
In this worldview, bats and other critters have their place. Maybe not in our house, though.
When I was a kid on the farm, we had cows, pigs, and chickens. The animals didn’t take days off. Neither did my dad and mom, Sylvester and Alyce. A wedding dance or graduation party was the nearest thing to a vacation we had. But there were Sundays.
That meant church, but also a dialing back of work. Chores went on, but field work was to be avoided if possible. If it was summer with its long, relaxed evenings, my parents would load my brother Dean and me into the back seat of the car after late milking. We drove around to look at the crops. That would end with a trip to town and a root beer at Leo Hengel’s Drive-In or a cone at Reuben Schneider’s Dairy Queen.
The World That I Grew Up In is a distant land, living in the shadows of my memory. Some things remain. One of those is Sunday as a day set apart. Other days of the week have given attributes: Monday, back to work; Wednesday, church night; Friday, beginning of the weekend. But Sunday still stands out.
It is the Sabbath or church day. As a Catholic, it is Mass day. But Sunday has other roles: family day, visiting day, a day of rest, even perchance a nap day.
This goes back a long way, a really long way. From the Book of Genesis, “On the seventh day God had completed the work he had been doing. He rested after all the work he had done. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he rested after all his work of creating.” God deserved a break. I might be tired after a long week of farm work. That’s nothing compared to creating Earth and the firmament.
Then God instructed in the Ten Commandments, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” Genesis goes on to say you shall not do any work, or your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
Not a lot of us have livestock. Less of us have servants. But God’s admonition remains. It’s clear that the call to rest and worship is important.
Ancient people carved out time in ways that could be measured. The Babylonians quartered the 28-day lunar cycle into weeks. The word “shabbath” is a Hebrew word for rest, and there it is at the beginning of our Judeo-Christian tradition.
I have seen Sunday called the beginning of the week even though I more think of it as the end. The poet Henry Longfellow wrote, “Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.” It seems right to begin or end my week in church. The rest of the week revolves around it. It is one hour where the busyness is set aside, I am stilled, there is time to reflect. I might or might not pray well, but at least I will shut up. There’s value in that.
Church attendance has declined. Sunday is still a day off work for most. It does not include attending services for as many. I guess I will never know what that feels like. Sunday and church can’t be separated in my 62-year old head.
I mentioned that my dad tried to schedule field work away from Sundays. He would never cut hay on a Thursday that was likely be baled on Sunday. As the farm drifted from livestock to crops in my time, that has changed. Now, I look at a good weather day for planting and jump on the tractor as soon as I’m home from Mass.
I don’t talk to God about this as much as I used to. Too often rain has stopped things for two weeks at a time, and I feel compelled to be out there. Would God provide enough days me to finish, since he provides for the birds of the air who don’t sow or reap? I don’t know; maybe this is a sign of weak faith in me.
It wasn’t just farmers back then who took a respite. Stores weren’t open on Sundays for most of our nation’s history. A couple weeks ago, in the Journal’s page of fifty-year ago news, some stores in New Ulm made an organized effort to challenge the ordinance that prevented them from being open Sundays. The article mentioned that some suburban stores had begun staying open Sundays about a decade before. I assume that was referencing the Southdale Mall that opened in 1958. It reported that the downtown Minneapolis stores had not followed suit.
I was too young to be paying attention then. But reading that it struck me that is a significant societal shift.
Last year Minnesota allowed off-sale liquor stores to be open on Sundays. I like liquor as much as the next guy, but I didn’t think we needed that. The small prohibition was a slight nod to our traditional roots. It was a tiny reminder that there is something different about a Sunday, that our lives are more than a steady stream of consumption.
One thing Sunday has become is a sports day. For five months, pro football and Sundays have become linked. I hope it is not the case that football has replaced religion. But one has declined in practitioners as the other has risen; it is hard to not see such an implication.
In the summer, Sundays give us amateur baseball, a source of joy for ball players and fans across Minnesota and certainly Brown County from Searles to Springfield. It is interesting to go back to the early 1900’s when pasture ball and town ball games were played on Saturdays. With the coarse language, betting, and smoking that attended the games, it was considered an improper activity for the Lord’s Day.
Whether you are a churchgoer or not, I think we can all be glad for Sundays. Even if you are a marginal believer, it sets time apart from the patterns of the rest of the week. Sunday allows an opening for the sacred in our lives. Maybe we don’t always take advantage, but it gives a space for our minds to lift to the beyond, whatever that may be. Thank God for Sundays.
There are things we take for granted, things that are underappreciated: like a good can opener, hitters who use the whole field, Little Debbies, George Strait. The sun belongs on that list. Since it’s responsible for all life and energy on Earth, it’s a pretty big deal.
We for sure take the sun for granted in the summer when we’re getting sixteen hours of solar power. If it’s 90 degrees out, we do everything we can to hide from it. This time of year we notice the sun, but more for its absence. The days shorten. These are the cloudiest weeks. We get a time change that seems to rob more of our already shrinking light.
If you are working outside, there are signs of day’s-end as the Earth leans toward shadow and stillness by 3:30. The sun sets an hour later. By 5:00 it’s dark, and morning is a long time away.
I’m told it’s always been this way. I only noticed it a few years ago. Something about Last Kid moving out of the house brought this dismal pattern to my attention. That first November he was gone, after harvest’s 16-hour workdays and busyness wound down, I began to notice the seemingly eternal darkness. Days didn’t used to be this short before, right?
When you’re a kid, you live in the present moment, and conditions don’t much matter. Then you get older and fall in love, and dark is a good thing. When you have your own kids, their demands consume the next couple of decades: diapers to homework to school activities to worrying when they’re out late. When Last Kid left, I could take a breath.
But an empty house gets darker faster. I suggested to friends that Global Darkening was a grave concern and we needed to do something about this affliction. They looked at me funny.
It appears there’s not much I can do about these long nights. Some evenings I might have a meeting to distract me. But when there are none of those, my body wants to go to sleep after supper, like some innate urge to hibernate. That’d be great if I was a bear.
On a summer evening there are a million things to do outside till dark. On a winter evening, I can either read something or watch something, both of which are effective at inducing a coma-like state. I like to snuggle on a corner of our couch with a book under a worn quilt with moose designs that Pam won years ago and would really like to throw away but it’s my favorite. In that comfortable position, I get through about a page before my head slumps. So I go to the table and sit on a hard chair in the cold kitchen under a harsh light, where I might get five pages in before my eyes turn to lead.
Typically, I go to bed after ten and get up at five. Giving in to hibernation-urges, I find myself going to bed at 9:30, which means I get up at 4:30. That night I am tired earlier, so I want to go to bed at 9:00. Which means I get up at 4:00. You can see where this is leading. Going to bed at 6:00 and getting up at midnight is not real practical.
I told Pam as long as I was getting up this early, we should get some cows to milk. We’re losing money on corn and soybeans; why not add a third unprofitable enterprise? She wasn’t impressed with my business-sense.
I understand this wretched darkness is part of some larger plan doing with the Earth’s annual journey around the sun and the tilt of the planet going from one pole to the other. Over the course of a year, wherever you are on Earth, you will get an equal amount of day and night. Same for a lifetime; you’ll get half day and half night. It all evens out in the end.
Then I thought about the increasing number of my friends who are going south in the winter. They are travelling to where the days are longer and then coming back here when our days get longer. It struck me that they’re getting more than their fair share of sun. I’m not sure that should be legal. They should have to pay a Sun Excess Tax.
Of course, we are advantaged over our ancestors to have artificial light available to us. A hundred years ago, dark meant dark. I heard an economist talk about how many hours of labor it took to purchase oil to light one room for one hour a century ago. Now we light whole houses for pennies. There is nowhere you can be at night in southern Minnesota except for maybe the deepest ravine and not see yard lights. Satellite photos of the planet at night show light glaring over large areas that aren’t ocean. Now, dark isn’t that dark.
Some of us struggle to find a space dark enough to sleep well. And you might have heard that excessive manmade light is disrupting the migration patterns of birds. Humans, like all creatures, evolved with half a life in sun and half a life in dark. Who would have thought, but darkness is a commodity that might be in short supply?
We’ve got a few more weeks of the North Pole tilting further from the sun and dragging our little piece of Earth with it. These interminably long nights and abbreviated days will be with us for a while. We’ll get through this. We need to stick together. If each of us tries to be a little nicer, a little less grumpy, maybe tell a few more jokes, we can do this.
It helps that right around the longest dark and darkest long night Christmas comes. Even if Jesus’ birth wasn’t really on that date, it has been part of how we know the sacred birth since we were small children. That night seemed magic to us then and its charm spills into adulthood.
Sometime in January, maybe February, you’ll be driving home from work, and see a bit of sun still hanging on the western horizon. That’ll be a sign that you made it. And you can look at the sun and wink and say, “Don’t be a stranger.”
Each of us has some disposable income if we are fortunate. You can look through your checkbook and see where that went: vacations, hobby and entertainment costs go here. We also have disposable time. Here fits TV, reading, listening to music, and such.
Time and money are limited; who we are is partly defined by how we spend these. I try to be more selective about my dollars and minutes as I get older.
Sports have taken lots of both in my life. I played some baseball/softball. Throw in a little pickup basketball, a bit of golf, some volleyball at parties. No regrets there. More hours were spent being a fan. Some have been at ballparks and arenas around here, watching friends play, watching my kids play and kids of friends play. No regrets there.
What about hours watching pro sports? Here might be a smidgeon of regret. I could have made a bunch more money or done a bunch more volunteering with time I spent watching and debating pro sports. The fact that I can name the offense and defense for the 1970 Vikings isn’t going to impress St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.
I’ve drifted away from sports a bit. I never used to miss a Vikings game; that’s no longer a priority. But my affection for baseball remains, illogical as it may be. Most of 162 Twins games are on the tractor, car, or house radio.
Why does this diversion remain vivid? I think it has something to do with being 12 years old. When I am going to a game at Target Field, I feel the same giddy, anticipatory sensations I did when older brothers Dale and Marvin took me to Metropolitan Stadium. Probably most of us spend some of our disposable time and money on things that sparked us as a kid. That might be fishing you did with Dad or baking cookies you did with Mom.
Several hundred players have put on a Twins uniform. From Fernando Abad to Bill Zepp, I remember most of them. In the fifty-seven years since moving from Washington, four players stand out and stand for different eras in Twins history: Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Kirby Puckett, and Joe Mauer.
I was on the tractor last week ripping corn stalks when I heard that Joe was retiring. We more or less knew that was coming. But to see if finally and certainly caused the 12-year old in me to frown. “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” I said to myself, stealing a line from 1919 baseball history.
None of the four players on the Mount Rushmore of Twins would have scripted the end of their career the way it played out. Ends-of-careers are like that. No one stays young and healthy.
For Harmon, there was a final year as a 39-year old designated hitter in Kansas City, after several years of declining health and statistics with the Twins. That September 1975, I went to a game against the Royals at the Met. I was a freshman in college, and we snuck into seats behind the Kansas City dugout. When a graying and frumpy Harmon came out on deck in that pastel-blue uniform, my heart sank. It was as if I knew my youth was over.
Rod Carew left after things turned sour with owner Calvin Griffith. Most fans had turned against Calvin. After an infamous speech to the Waseca Lion’s Club by Griffith (you can look it up), we all knew Rodney needed to leave. We were saddened but understood. It wasn’t as traumatic to see Carew in an Angel’s uniform; we couldn’t help but root for Sir Rodney.
For Kirby, the ending came joltingly. On March 28th, 1996, news came that Puckett’s vision was clouded by a spot in his right eye. He was having a wonderful spring. Twins fans were assuming another wonderful season. There followed several months of eye procedures and conflicting reports, a roller coaster of emotions.
The ride ended with a thud on July 12 when doctors reached the conclusion that damage to the retina was irreversible. An impromptu press conference was held that was touching for its positivity and perspective. Teammates were fighting back tears. “I want to tell the little kids who prayed for me that just because I can’t see doesn’t mean that God doesn’t answer prayers,” Puckett said. “I still can see with my left eye. I’m still alive.” Now I was in tears.
Puckett’s life after baseball didn’t go well. There were allegations of sexual misbehavior that tore away at the myth of Kirby. His marriage to Tonya ended. Then came early death by stroke at age 45.
None of us stays twelve years old. Part of growing up is learning that all of us are imperfect. It was a reminder that we admire these players for what they do on the field, and sometimes that is as far as it should go.
Joe is a mere 35, with lots of life to go. Godspeed to him as he leaves the playing field. He’ll be around and about for many years, but our relationship with him as a fan ends.
In that pantheon of Twins stars, Joe is unique. Minnesotans have known about him since his teen years. He was All-State at Cretin-Derham Hall in football, basketball, and baseball. Joe was gifted athletically such that he could have pursued any of those sports at a higher level.
He chose baseball, and the Twins chose him with the first pick of the 2001 draft. There would be several years he was be the best player in the game when the team was regularly in the playoffs. That is when I told friends that this story of the hometown-kid-makes-good had to end with Joe lifting the World Series trophy. I could see it clearly in my mind.
Then came the Contract and the Concussion and Bilateral Leg Weakness. Lots of grumbling ensued. It coincided with the opening of Target Field, a delightful ballpark that has hosted mostly dreadful teams. Hoisting a World Series trophy became a distant possibility. It’s a good thing I’ve never gone into the prediction business.
I took my kids out of school to see Joe’s Twins debut in 2004. I was scheduled to go to his last game on September 30 but had to combine corn. That was the game that turned into a beautiful tribute to Joe. In between I suppose I saw Joe play maybe 100 times. It was fun. All fun things come to an end. There was no trophy to hoist, but lots of memories of a St. Paul kid who loved the game.
There was a day in October I could see six combines running from our own field where we were starting in corn. Harvest had gotten off to a slow start. A frustrating, rainy stretch limited farmers to a few sloppy days. Then in mid-October the sun proved it still existed, and we had a welcome dry spell of ten days.
For those days (and nights) farmers could ignore markets, politics, and injuries to the Vikings’ secondary. There was single-minded laser focus on getting the crop out of the field. As the six combines in my sight evidenced, it was all hands-on deck.
Each of us farmers have our own fields and responsibilities. Most of our time is spent alone on the seat of a combine, tractor, or truck. But the season of harvest is something we all share. There is immediate connection with any farmer I meet at the elevator. You can think of us as a big team stretching across the corn belt.
One terrible day the “team” here in Brown County was dealt two tragic losses. On October 17th, within hours, John Hoffman and Kaleb Fischer suffered farm injuries that led to their deaths. Every farmer when they heard of those, felt a wrenching in the pit of their stomach. It was deep sadness, but also the knowledge that such could happen to any of us.
I didn’t know John or Kaleb. I know people who did, and all the reports I heard over the next days about the two men were filled with positives and tributes. One at the peak of his career and the other just starting out, they were dedicated to this craft of farming. More importantly they were good and decent neighbors and friends. One loss like that tears at the heart of our community; two is almost unbearable.
We know this can be dangerous work. Plants, soil, and weather can be fickle, unpredictable things. When the tools we use are large and powerful machines, there are sure to be hazards.
Logging, mining, and farming top lists of the most dangerous jobs. That is true of farming year-round. When you add the pressure of harvest, the risks ratchet up. When I was young, “harvest” stretched over months. Haying, grain harvest, silage all took place before October. Now most fields are corn and soybeans, and the months are reduced to weeks. The calendar and impending winter breathe heavily on our necks. Those of us around for the Halloween Blizzard of 1991 have that implanted in our brains.
In off-farm jobs I’ve had, there is time and emphasis devoted to safety training. Friend Scott Surprenant is the Safety Coordinator for Mathiowetz Construction Company, and he spends many hours prepping for Safety Week each winter. OSHA is the butt of jokes and complaints, but it has made workplaces safer and saved thousands of lives.
We really don’t get training in this farming thing. We learn from our fathers. When we purchase a new machine, we get an hour with the mechanic who delivers it. We might compare notes with other farmers. My operator manuals are ragged and grease-smudged in the settings and maintenance chapters; the safety section still has crisp white corners.
I was twelve years old, home playing with my brother, when someone, I’m not sure who, called my mom to tell her she needed to come the hospital right away. Something had happened to my father. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with Dean and knowing this was bad. We were an age when we weren’t left alone much, so we knew it was serious.
Sometime later, probably minutes which felt like hours, my sister came to get us. We found out my dad had lost his right hand in a combine accident. That didn’t even make sense to me at the time. I would come to know the consequences of that single moment in my father’s life over the next thirty years.
That’s the thing about accidents. A part of a second changes everything forever. Dad would go on to adjust to farming with a prosthetic hook where his right hand had been. He milked cows for ten more year and helped with field work till he was in his late eighties. I came to take for granted that we had a “hammer” and “pliers” with us when we worked together. I’m sure he would have rather had a hand. Looking back, I probably don’t appreciate how difficult it was for him.
It was often said back then that you could tell the farmers in a crowd; they would be missing a finger or some other part. I remember hearing that and looking at my open hands and imagining life without all of those. Corn pickers were especially sinister. They are rare today, but I just googled corn picker and saw that a 27-year-old Indiana man was killed by one last week. Thankfully, farm equipment has been made safer. More of us are complete.
I try to be aware of risks as I go through my day. This time of year, I have to crawl atop bins. As my wife and I begin to consider a time one of us won’t be here, I jokingly begin with, “If I fall off a bin…” I have made Scott the highly unpaid Safety Consultant for Krzmarzick Farms. He has me thinking “three points of contact” while I am climbing with three of four limbs always on something solid. I appreciate that.
Certainly this time of year can be stressful. But every farmer knows that even in the midst of it, there are moments that catch our breath with their beauty. A setting sun, geese flying overhead, the crisp air of October: there are these times of overwhelming grace when we know we are blessed to be doing this work, sharing in creation’s bounty.
I step off the combine after shutting it off. Usually some machine is running, so stillness is rare. There is the rustling of corn leaves in a cool breeze. I stop myself; this is one of those moments of blessedness. Then I think of John and Kaleb and offer a prayer for their families. I wish so much they could have more days to do this work and moments like this in a corn field.
Then I go to get the grease gun from the back of the truck.
Ours is a nation blessed with breadth and wealth. The combination means we have a network of roads from sea to sea. The Interstate Highway System is one of the great achievements of our nation. But I want to talk about the poorer cousin of those multiple-lane expanses: the gravel road.
Every summer I spend time inspecting fields for the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association. That can take me roughly a hundred miles in any direction from home. Typically I use a highway, then county roads to get me close. In most cases I end up on a gravel road; that’s where the fields are.
You hear them called dirt roads, and in some parts of the country that may be accurate. But around here, the top layer is gravel. They are also called township roads. There are a few county roads that are not paved, but most gravel roads fall under the purview of the township. The township is that most local form of governance.
I live on blacktop. I’m spoiled that way. There is quick, smooth driving either way I turn out my driveway. But my part time job gives me miles of dusty driving.
As I tool around southern Minnesota, I’m amazed how this part of the continent has been turned into one-mile square sections, most bordered by gravel roads. The sections are part of 36 square-mile townships. It’s as if someone laid giant grid paper over the Earth. Inside the one-mile sections are 160-acre quarter-sections. Most fields’ size is divisible by 40.
This was all sloughy prairie once. Those thousands of miles of roads were built up without GPS and the heavy equipment we have today. We can assume a lot of backbreaking work by men and horses was part of laying out this grid. How does one even begin carving things into 5,280-foot increments a hundred years ago?
When using my stash of plat books to find a route to a field, I instinctively favor tarred roads. Gravel roads are generally slower going. They are also tougher on whatever vehicle I have. Loose sand and tiny rocks chink away at the exterior. Dust coats the outside, and inside if the vehicle is not perfectly sealed.
Sometimes it’s a matter of weighing time, distance, and convenience. “Let’s see, I can go up and over three miles on tar and then down two on gravel. Or I can run straight four miles on gravel.”
A clear advantage to gravel roads is the light traffic. Sometimes no traffic. I can park in a field approach, check my notes, walk the field, and write my report, which takes about an hour, and often not see another vehicle. That is quite pleasant compared to crossing the highway by our house to get the mail and feeling like I’ve stepped onto a NASCAR track.
If you are parked on a gravel road, you draw attention, at least what attention there is to be drawn out there. Dogs on nearby farm sites notice you and bark. Humans on those farms are likely suspicious. If someone happens by, it is not uncommon for them to stop and ask if I need help. And when I tell them what I’m doing, for that to turn into a conversation about the state of the crops/weather/markets. Old Guys especially like to visit.
You’re on the edge of civilization on gravel roads. There isn’t really anyone patrolling out there. When some teenage boy goes barreling down the road in a cloud of dust at a speed that is wholly unsafe, he’s unlikely to be pulled over. Loose gravel, ruts in the road, farm equipment, even animals are all good reasons to drive cautiously.
Most intersections are unmarked out in gravel road country. Especially when the corn is high, these are blind intersections. It is not uncommon to find crosses affixed to a pole, indication that something tragic happened here once. Even though I don’t know the story behind that cross, I whisper a small prayer.
There are well-kept farm sites everywhere. But the further you get off tar, the more likely you are to encounter “interesting” places. Unused pastures might be given to weeds. Generations of rusting machinery might be along the edge of the grove. Old granaries and barns might be left to fight a losing battle against the elements.
Then there are places that are wholly abandoned. When I walk the field around one of these, they seem as if ag museums. The people are gone, but the skeleton of a farm remains. The scale is often small. One finds modern hog barns on gravel roads the size of several football fields. On abandoned farms, the barns were meant to house animals by the dozens, not thousands.
There is always a little sadness to these places left to the encroaching grove, the birds, and the wind. This was some family’s dream, a place of busyness and toil and probably some play. Now it awaits the bulldozer and back hoe. Every time crop prices shoot up, a few more get buried.
I am out on the gravel roads in the daylight, but these roads serve a certain clientele after dark. Evidence of that is random beer cans strewn about. The current beers of choice are Busch Light and Keystone Light. It is good to see our rural youth are conscious about keeping their weight down. Back in my day, Old Milwaukee was the standard. If we would have ever done such a thing. Which of course we have forgotten.
Gravel roads have historically been home to other secretive behaviors. “Parking” used to be a step in courting between young men and women. I am removed from those years, so have no idea if that is still practiced. Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder if Pam might like to go parking this weekend? We could take the ’77 pickup, find some music on the AM radio, and pretend we’re 17. Do they still make Old Milwaukee?
Dirt roads don’t get a lot of traffic, and they don’t get attention by those driving on the interstate. But a whole lot of our nation’s food supply comes from them. If the highways are the veins and arteries of America, these unpaved roads are the capillaries. Small, but vital.
Let me go back to the beginning of that for me. On May 13, 1981, Pam was very pregnant with our first child. (I know you can’t be “very” pregnant; you know what I mean.) That day, there were hints at contractions. In the evening those became more intense, and we made our way to Sleepy Eye Hospital.
I was in the middle of planting that spring, and I was tired with work to do the next day. I remember thinking I would be home by midnight with wife and child resting peacefully in town. It was my first lesson in learning how wrong I could be about children.
Pam and I had taken Lamaze classes, and I was prepared to coach my wife to a successful birth. Hours later, Pam and the baby I had yet to meet were having the worst nights of their lives. This birth was not going to go quickly.
At some point in the difficult labor, my “team” was no longer interested in my coaching. It became a long night of uselessness for me. I was clearly the least important person in the room behind mother, child, doctor, and nurse.
I took breaks in the waiting room, pacing some and dozing fitfully a couple times. During one of those late hours, it occurred to me to pray. I prayed really hard. I thought it was the hardest I’d ever prayed in my life. Sometimes prayer is vague: something like “God, your will be done.” This time I was very specific. I was pleading with God for a healthy wife and child.
It was the beginning of praying for that child who would be named Anna. I may have prayed for her in the womb. But that night at the hospital, I began to consider her as a person independent of my wife. Anna finally did arrive, by C-section about 9:00 the next morning. There were complications for mother and child, but both would be good after recovery.
Prayers answered? Yes. With credit to the medical staff. But aren’t a lot of prayers answered here on Earth with the assist of skilled and talented people?
If you are one who prays, you know intercessional prayers aren’t always given such a happy ending as mine that night. I remember vividly my mother praying for my brother who was dying. Dean was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor in 1972 which would kill him a year and a half later. There were many nights I can picture my mom in her living room chair, her hands diligently working the beads of her rosary.
I’m sure my mother prayed that her son would live. That prayer was not answered affirmatively. At the end of his life, I suspect her prayers shifted to a peaceful and gentle death. She also likely prayed for strength for herself. If you are a believer in prayer, you know prayers are not always “answered,” at least as we perceive it. Faith leads us to accept they are “answered” in other ways: for Dean, for our family, for the community around him. Who knows the ways my mom’s prayers lifted us?
It occurs to me that my mom was modeling a behavior. I have prayed for the child born that morning in 1981 and the two who followed. I have prayed pretty much every day, although some days it might only be a passing thought.
As parents, we understand our children’s lives won’t always be easy or comfortable. We don’t pray for that. We know that often growth comes in tough times. Our prayer is that they handle those, take what lessons there are, and become the best person they can be.
I mentioned the evolution in our relationship over time with children. Prayer evolves within that. As babies and toddlers, our prayers are almost solely on health. We ask the Lord to hold them close and keep them safe.
At the top of the steps upstairs in our house, a painting hung for years. It was of a guardian angel with her arms above a little girl exploring in a garden. I don’t know about the theology of that painting. But the warmth and care that it expresses were comforting. Our prayers for our children when they are young are indicators of our love, attention, and presence in their lives. We want to be like that angel in the painting.
As the child grows, there is the gradual letting go. At first this is letting them go up the steps. Then it might be letting them go out in the yard. Later, it means sending them off in the car their first time. We still pray for their safety, but now we ask for God’s guidance and wisdom upon them. Step by step, they are leaving our side and becoming the world’s. We are proud of them. But it’s scary as hell, too.
Our three children are adults, away from the home, far away for one of them. They are all in transitions. Each is facing challenges. Anna is in Rochester, returning to school to become a nurse anesthetist. Anna is mother to Levi, another generation of prayer-recipient. Abby is in France for a second year of graduate school after a year in Spain. Ezra is in Montana, beginning a career, along with National Guard duties.
We try to help each of them with funds as we can which are graciously accepted and advice which is sometimes accepted. Those things they know about. Prayers for them are less obvious. Occasionally I mention that I am praying for them. It is part of how I keep them in my heart when they are miles away.
They are in my heart, but I remember when they were in my arms as I rocked with them. And after rocking them to sleep, setting them gently into their crib, and praying over them with my hand on their small head. Much has changed; prayers continue.
I was at the Corn Days street dance in Sleepy Eye. Up on a flatbed trailer, Heidi and his Good Ole Boys were offering up their distinctive blend of Americana musical dishes. There was a gap on First Avenue between the band and picnic tables, a place set aside for dancing.
Early in the evening, dancers were still being shy. That space was taken by a group of little kids, mostly girls. They were flinging themselves through the air, cartwheeling, flipping, and hand springing across the street in front of the band. It was a whirlwind of arms, legs, and hair as the kids put on an amazing display of athleticism. It was as if gravity had loosened its hold on them.
I and some friends sipped our Grain Belts as we watched this demonstration of physical buoyancy. That’s when I told them of my plans to do a cartwheel. At this time, my cartwheel exists solely as a theoretical possibility. But then, so did space travel once. I have discussed this with Pam. She is dubious. I’m working out some of the details for my cartwheel now. Like, should I have medical staff on hand. Just in case I am wrong about this.
Seriously, how hard can it be? It’s just a matter of momentum, propulsion, and space. This is preceded by a running start and throwing oneself to the wind. After all, it’s arms, legs, and a torso, same as the kids at the street dance, right?
Those kids have one advantage over me. Their parts don’t have nearly as many hours on them. There is getting to be, as they say, quite a bit of wear on my tread. There’s debate as to when we reach our peak physically, somewhere in our late teens to perhaps thirty. Regardless, those ages are wistful memories to me.
Lately when getting together with friends my age, there is often time spent comparing aches and pains. Mostly these are annoyances that allow us to carry on. But the older we get, the odds of things becoming more than annoyances increases with each passing year.
Of course, to be here at all requires thankfulness. I have a brother and several friends who weren’t give the chance to see life through middle age. Stuff happens, some of it bad. Serious accidents, slow things like cancer, sudden things like heart attacks: any of us could be “chosen” for these. “Each day is a gift” is heard more often now than 20 years ago. Of course, it was as true back then as it is now. That is perspective working there.
Another common topic of conversation now is healthy habits. Almost everyone my age I know is walking, biking, doing yoga, or going to the gym. Science indicates that it truly is a case of use it or lose it. And doing anything is better than doing nothing. Along with moving, we’re trying to eat better. Some of us have made incremental changes; others, big life transformations.
I have run off and on since I was in high school. “Run” is not quite accurate; “jog” is more like it. A few years ago, when our kids got older, I got a little more serious about that. I know I am lucky to be able to run and don’t take it for granted. I try to go about a half hour at a time. That’ll get me 3 miles, give or take.
Runners talk about the release of endorphins creating a “runner’s high.” I remember that from when I was younger. Those were glorious moments when running seemed effortless. I’m not sure what happened, but endorphins don’t come around much anymore. Whatever produces endorphins seems to have gone limp. It’s a chore tottering around the lake trail or the highway.
On bad days, I come home and tell Pam that I feel old and fat and slow. I tell her I want to feel young and thin and fast. I get that same look that I get when I am discussing my cartwheel.
At some point I will shift to walking. There are couple elderly folks out mornings on the lake trail, balancing with walkers, moving one step at a time, one foot ahead of the other. They are my role models if I live so long. One step at a time, one foot ahead of the other, until the Lord says it is time to stop.
A lot of us inflicted needless harm to these bodies in our early years, the bodies we hope will keep on going for a few decades. I smoked a few years (quit), carried too many pounds (down twenty), ate junk food (eating better with occasional lapses), and drank more than I should (I’m working on that). What’s past is past. Today is the gift we hold in our hand, not yesterday or tomorrow.
In First Corinthians, Paul tells us, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” Our body as a temple? We likely don’t think in those terms. If we do, some heady responsibility comes with that. Then, it’s not just a matter of feeling well and living long. It’s also giving right glory to God.
I admit to making a mess of this temple on occasion. While God is forgiving of our sins, that doesn’t always translate into fixing our bodies when we abuse them. But again, all we can do is live from today forward. Honor thy temple the best one can from this moment. And if we fail, try again. One step at a time.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I might go try that cartwheel. If you don’t see my column for a while, maybe Pam was right to be skeptical.
When I was a kid, I liked to fall asleep with the Twins game on the radio. The gentle tones of Herb Carneal lulled me to sleep. Franklin Hobbs played soothing music through the night on WCCO to which I would occasionally wake and drift back to sleep.
On June 4, 1968, the Twins beat the Yankees 3 to 0. I looked it up; I don’t remember the game. The next morning, I remember clearly. I woke to the sound of a CBS newscaster reporting the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. The window was open; the chirping of birds mixing with distressed voices coming from my radio.
I was only 12 years old, but I knew this was a moment of high tension. John Kennedy’s assassination was one of my first clear memories. Martin Luther King’s assassination in March was on everyone’s mind.
Moments like that stick in our heads, while myriad others pass unremembered. I bet you can script out the places you were on September 11, 2001, but not September 10, 2001. We remember times of intense tragedy and anxiety. Thankfully moments of joy and bliss stay with us, too. E.g., birth of children.
1968 is a half century in the past. If you are younger than me, you don’t remember much from that year. If you’re older, probably quite a bit. I listened recently to a documentary on Minnesota Public Radio called “The McCarthy Tapes.” It used radio archives from 1968 when Eugene McCarthy made his unlikely push for the White House. It included events beyond politics that made it such a volatile year.
As I listened, I was quite surprised how much I recalled. I was on the living room floor on a Sunday night when Lyndon Johnson shocked the nation, announcing, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” I was listening on the barn radio when chaos overtook the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I was with my mom when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague over our kitchen radio.
I was thinking about the 12-year-old me. I must have been a kid-news junkie. I wonder if my parents thought I was weird caring about this stuff before I’d even discovered girls.
All these events arrived on our farm from a small number of sources. Channel 12 from Mankato was the only TV station we got. KNUJ was the only radio station anyone turned on until I discovered Twins games on WCCO. We got the New Ulm Daily Journal and the Sleepy Eye Herald Dispatch. That’s it. Nothing like the thousands of ways news comes to us today.
Books have been written about 1968. The Minnesota Historical Society has “The 1968 Exhibit” up all year. There is a bias where we think the current time, the one we are living in, is critical to our nation and the world. Given the perspective of fifty years passing, that claim holds up for 1968.
While not true mathematically, 1968 was the middle of the “Sixties.” A number of issues were colliding: civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war protests: it was as if a long burning fuse found the powder keg.
The year began with the incumbent president heavily favored to win reelection. Lyndon Johnson was a larger than life figure. He had long sought the presidency, but not the way it came to him on a plane back from Dallas in 1963. Important legislation passed during his tenure, but the conflict in Vietnam sucked more and more of his attention.
When 1968 began, a majority of Americans supported the Vietnam War. That was not true at the end of the year. In January, North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive made it clear this would not be the easy victory most had thought. In 1968, 16,899 Americans were killed, the most for any year.
Feb. 16, 1968 is another day I don’t remember. It was a Friday. I was a sixth grader in Mrs. Forster’s room. It was the last day of Gerald Milbrodt’s life, killed in Vietnam. Gerald graduated from Sleepy Eye Public in 1965. He was described by a classmate as a gentle soul and an artist. His was a life cut severely short.
For what ends? More and more Americans were asking that question. Minnesota Senator Gene McCarthy was one of the first national figures to oppose the war. His candidacy galvanized support from young people who vowed to “Get clean for Gene.” I met McCarthy later on at St. John’s University, his alma mater. Out of politics by then, he was a writer and a poet. Perhaps our nation would have benefitted from a poet in the White House.
After McCarthy finished strong in the New Hampshire primary, Johnson made his surprising announcement. Robert Kennedy entered the race along with Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. No one would emerge as a favorite until Kennedy won the California primary. That was on June 4.
Minnesota had an out-sized voice in national politics at the time. Humphrey became prominent at the 1948 Democratic Convention. As the young mayor of Minneapolis, he challenged southern delegates on civil rights, urging the party “to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” He went on to the Senate, the Vice-Presidency, and the nomination for president in 1968. Gene McCarthy was a good friend, but tensions over Vietnam damaged their relationship.
Walter Mondale replaced his mentor Humphrey in the Senate. He also became Vice-President and nominee for president. Orville Freeman was Secretary of Agriculture when that was an important national position. These Minnesotans were influential for a couple of decades.
It is interesting to think what a Humphrey presidency might have looked like. He was called the Happy Warrior, known for his energy and joyfulness. The Vietnam War chewed up Humphrey’s career like many others.
Richard Nixon did win in 1968, setting in motion a Faustian tale that would end badly six years later. Nixon was intelligent and savvy. Between Vietnam and Watergate, he gets credit for some large accomplishments: opening up China, arms reduction with Russia, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. This was back when Democrats and Republicans could work together.
(I never thought I would look back nostalgically on Richard Nixon. Current circumstances compel that.)
Sociologists point to the Sixties as a time when trust in institutions declined. While there was never pure support for government, churches, and business, there was not the level of cynicism that took root and remains with us today.
You can find sentiment that things were “better” before the Sixties. Increased tolerance of drugs and sexual license came with costs. But if we go back to the Fifties we’d find racism festering in many places. Domestic abuse was tolerated. If you were gay, you were bullied and worse. It’s complicated. It’s always complicated.
The Beatles’ White Album came out that year. I would discover that much later. In 1968, I was a chubby kid with a heinie haircut, desperately uncool. I was watching Walter Cronkite, not listening to records.
Walt ended every broadcast with something like this: “And that’s the way it is, 1968. This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News; good night.”
