February 25, 1998 saw a confluence of events in my little world.  It was a now-mostly-forgotten birthday.  It was Ash Wednesday, a favorite day of mine on the church calendar.  And it was the beginning of Perpetual Adoration at St. Mary’s in Sleepy Eye that continues twenty years yon.

Perpetual Adoration is continual worship by a community of people in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.  It is a Catholic thing.  There are a lot of Catholic things.  One can be Catholic their entire life and never fully plumb the 2,000 years of rituals, music, and spiritual practices within our faith legacy.  I like that.  To my non-Catholic friends some of it may seem a bit quirky.  I can see that.

We believe Jesus is present “Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity” in the Eucharistic host, which has been consecrated at Mass.  While God is certainly present everywhere, we consider Jesus to be present in the host in a unique and powerful sense.  In the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus is with us as he was with the apostles.

So for twenty years, excepting Mass times and a couple of blizzards, someone has been in Adoration at St. Mary’s, an hour at a time.  It was first located in the convent chapel.  When the convent was taken down, it shifted to the back of the main church.  It also spends part of each week at Divine Providence Community Home in the beautiful chapel there.  Last year, Adoration moved to the dedicated chapel in the new north addition.  God willing it will continue there for many years.

That is 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  It is remarkable when you think of twenty-below days, 2:00 and 3:00 AM time slots, and busy weekends.  Every hour.  That means in our little parish here on the prairie, more than 200 people are taking turns in prayer.  It is an amazing feat really.

I have had the 5:00 AM Wednesday hour for those twenty years.  Sometimes I have been with someone, sometimes alone.  One time I slept late and got there late. I usually miss a couple times each year for travelling.  A little figuring means I’m coming up on 1,000 hours.

I wish I could report those were 1,000 hours rapt in deep spiritual devotion.  When this began, I was wildly enthusiastic, ready to save the world with prayer.  I remember the first few times, kneeling the entire hour and making excruciating effort to pray deeply.

After realizing my knees and brain were fighting me on this, I relaxed my regimen.  I kneel a while at the beginning and end of the hour.  In between, I sit.  Often I write or read something religious.  Intense focus has turned into trying to keep my thoughts from straying too far.

In meditation, we are told to let random and distracting thoughts float by as if in a stream.  Don’t focus on them, let them go gently past.  I try.  But sometimes the thoughts climb up on the dock and jump up and down demanding attention.  Thoughts that range in gravity from “Soybeans are up.  Should I sell some today?” to “Will the Twins beat the Yankees in my lifetime?”

Some days the hour goes by quickly and others it drags.  Regardless, I am glad I have that time.  Sunday Mass and Wednesday Adoration are fulcrums that the rest of my week pivot on.  I know Jesus is fully present, even if I am not.  Some days all I can offer is, “Here I am Lord.”  There is an old saying that goes, “Half the battle is showing up.”  I’ll lean on that and give myself credit for those 1,000 hours.

Thinking back, there has never been a shortfall of things to pray for, on, and about in these twenty years.  Later in 1998, my father passed away, and my mother the following spring.  Our three children have grown and left the house; now we have a grandchild.  If you are a parent, you know those prayers.  Friends and family have battled afflictions.  Several close friends have died.  It has probably been no different than any twenty years in any of our lives; challenges are a constant.

Regardless of our faith, we all have varied ways of seeking and being present to the Creator.  Many take time in nature.  God is in the spectacular: sunrises, sunsets, mountains, oceans.  He is also to be found in smaller matters: bird song, an intricate leaf, snowflakes.

Then, we meet God in the unlikely mix of people we encounter each day.  God is in circumstances, some we create and others that are thrust on us.  The chance to help someone, to listen to someone who needs an ear, to disrupt our own plans for someone else’s.  Or are those God’s plans?

At Adoration, outside of short conversations of greeting with the persons who have the hour before and after, it is quiet.  The room is simply adorned.  The host is displayed in a “monstrance” on a small altar.  There are a few candles, sometimes plants, and stained-glass windows above.  The overriding characteristic is silence.  Once you encounter the quiet, then comes the task of quieting your head.

Silence is not common in our world.  Our ancestors would have known silence better.  In the last century, generation by generation has added tools that are wonderful, but each added to the noise: radio, telephones, television, computer.  Now we have phones that are all those things.

In the First Book of Kings, we are reminded why we need silence.  Elijah is told to go to the mountain and wait for the Lord.  “Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. a still small voice.”

That was God.  The still small voice.  Whether it is in a chapel, or the woods, or our homes, it is good to be in quiet sometimes.

I am excited to announce that I have finally figured out what I want to do with my life.  A recent birthday means I am eligible for early Social Security, so it’s about time.

My new career is really going to be two careers.  Bilingual daughter Abby has drawn my interests to all-things Spanish.  So I plan to be a professional soccer player during the “futbol” season.  More than likely this will take me to Europe, perhaps with Real Madrid or Manchester United.  I see myself as a Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo type.

Then in the off-season, I’d like to try my hand at international Latino singing star.  Picture a cross between Enrique Iglesias and Marc Anthony.  I’m going to have to drop a few pounds and buff up.  Women around the globe will be drawn to me, but Pam knows I am ever-faithful.

Okay, you’re thinking I’d better stick with my day job.  But I have become a fan of those things.  For a kid who grew up on polka and baseball, Latin music and soccer are fun, invigorating, and a little bit mysterious.  We are just back from visiting our daughter in Spain where Abby is going to graduate school.  There I was immersed in these things, along with the sangria.

Son Ezra also gets credit for piquing my interest in soccer.  He played a few summers with the New Ulm Soccer Association.  The coaches and parents there were patient with me as they tried to explain offsides to this old dog.  I came to enjoy the games even if I didn’t understand the subtleties.  In baseball I know the corner infielders shade the line late in a tight game to prevent an extra base hit.  I have no comparable knowledge of inner soccer.

Abby and I went to see a La Liga (the Spanish professional league) match when we were there.  FC (Futbol Club) Barcelona is one of the top teams in the world.  Camp Nou Stadia is a legendary venue in soccer, the site of many historic matches.  It is like getting to see a ballgame at Yankee Stadium.

The capacity is 100,000.  We were in the cheap seats, but even up there the atmosphere was intense.  Here in America, it seems half the fans at sports events are looking at their phones.  There, everyone was watching closely.  Till halftime, when everyone gets up.  Good luck going to the bathroom then.

The match ended in a 0 to 0 tie between Barcelona and Getafe.  I’ve always liked a pitcher’s duel in baseball, so was not disappointed.  There was a lot of up and down and some good scoring chances.  Several times the crowd let out a collective “AWW!” as a shot went just wide.

Despite my time watching soccer at the New Ulm fields, there was much I didn’t understand.  Play would stop, and I was the only one of 100,000 who didn’t know why.  I didn’t understand what led to a free kick and what was ignored.  I know you can’t purposely trip an opponent, but with that many athletic men kicking at a ball, how does that not happen?  Often a player would turn to the referee with his hands out asking for a foul to be called.  In that way, it was like every incomplete pass in the NFL nowadays.

There are a couple of soccer pitches near Abby’s apartment.  (The field is called a pitch.)   They are on a bike-walk path that runs along the Mediterranean Sea and beach.  I like Sleepy Eye’s lake trail.  But this is a little more exotic, and I went there whenever we had free time.

I stopped most days to watch practice or a game.  The players ranged from children to high school age.  Adults played pickup games in the evening.  Up close, the athleticism, skill, and grace of the players is clear.  A good player maneuvering the ball is striking.  It is a beautiful game to watch.  The constant movement and flow of action with both sides seeking advantage is alluring.  There is something attractive about the spareness of it: a ball, two nets, a piece of ground and “Let’s play.”

Soccer shares elements with other games where a ball or puck is propelled toward your opponent’s side.  Basketball and hockey, even football are relatives.  In each, momentum, positioning, and controlling space are important.  The good players anticipate and have a sense of the play that will develop.  Wayne Gretzky famously said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

I have friends who roll their eyes when I bring up soccer: “Paint drying.”  I might have thought that in the past, but now I find myself wanting to understand the attraction.  It is wildly popular around our planet.  An estimate is that 265 million people play, an astonishing 4 per cent of the world’s population.  It’s like there’s a party going on and I want to be invited.

For whatever reason, the U. S. veered in a different direction.  That’s not to say that might not shift.  Seventy-five years ago, our most popular sports were baseball, boxing, and wrestling; the NFL was barely known.  Unfortunately while the world’s best players in baseball and hockey want to play here, our best soccer players for now go to Europe.

As friends approach retirement, many want to travel.  I assume along with that is an interest in other people and how they live.  There are many ways to know another culture: work, religion, art, food.  But the games people play belong on that list.

There is a well-known quote about baseball by the writer Jacques Barzun.  “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”  Since that was written in the 1950’s, other sports have taken up some of baseball’s prominence.  I think the essential truth survives though.  And in wanting to know the heart and mind of Spain and many other countries, it is good to learn “futbol.”

Sometime in the spring of 1864, Johann and Barbara Krzmarzick left the village of Deschenitz in Bohemia knowing they would likely never see that home again.  Their four sons and a daughter were with them.  The family went north to the port of Hamburg.  There, they boarded the SS Bavaria bound for the United States.

They traveled in “steerage,” the part of the ship reserved for cargo and the cheapest fares.  They were common people, not designated because of any merit system.  When my great, great grandparents arrived in New York Harbor on July 1, it was the beginning of our family in America.  All Krzmarzicks in America are descended from them.

Johann was listed as “farmer” on the passenger list.  Working farmland in Europe then meant laboring as a tenant-leaser.  The opportunity to own a farm almost certainly drew him to this country.  After going through Castle Garden Immigration Center, they somehow made their way to Wisconsin, where a sixth child was born in Green Bay.

A short time later, the family travelled to Brown County.  They settled a farmstead in Home Township, west of New Ulm.  Family lore has it that they lived in a dugout on the Cottonwood River for a short time.

I was talking with my cousin, some-times removed, Peggy Tauer.  Peggy is a great granddaughter of Johann and Barbara and has researched family history.  We know frustratingly little about those first Krzmarzicks in America.  We can speculate that the hope for a better life pulled them away from everything they knew.  The journey across the ocean and half a continent must have been difficult, even treacherous.  Once here, they faced the large task of creating a farm out of the prairie.

Unless you are Native American, there is a story like this in your past: ancestors taking tremendous risks, allured by the promise of this country.  It is the American story.  In most cases, they were hardscrabble families who were at the bottom of society in their old country.  The upper class were not compelled to take such a journey.

There is another family that I don’t know much about, except that they have the same desire to come to America that my great, great grandparents did.  I am on the Social Concerns Committee for the Diocese of New Ulm.  A while back, Deacon Tim Dolan told our group that the Diocese was exploring the possibility of hosting a refugee family with some other groups.

The lengthy process had begun for that.  It was likely to be a Congolese family.  Following civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, half a million refugees have been forced from their homes and are living in camps throughout the region.  These camps are unsafe places in poor neighboring countries.

Contacts had been made with local employers.  Southwest Minnesota has a worker shortage; there would be no problem finding jobs.  I started to think this was something I could help with.  It is exactly the kind of thing we Catholics should be doing.  It was the same American story Johann and Barbara were part of, separated by 150 years.

In September, it was announced that the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States would be cut from 100,000 to 45,000.  Our family was in the group that was cut.

45,000 is the smallest number of refugees taken by our country since 1980.  The Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations all supported a larger number.  This comes at a time when there are over 22 million refugees in the world.  They are in that condition through no fault of their own.  More than half are children.

When one sees a number like “22 million” in print it is easy to glaze over.  Don’t.  Stop for a moment and think of these people as real as those you live with, as real as your children and grandchildren.  Refugees are all in some heartbreaking plight.  Imagine your children or grandchildren in that situation.

To be honest, it angered me that our local effort was halted.  Countries like Bangladesh and Turkey are taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees.  Meanwhile, 45,000 is .2% of the world’s refugees.  Is that the best we can do?

The refugee issue is part of a larger debate over immigration.  There are those who see immigration as something to be feared and opposed.  That side is winning right now as immigration programs are all being slashed.

We are told that immigrants bring crime and take jobs.  But the crime rate among immigrants is lower than the general population.  And no refugee has ever been involved in terrorism.  These are simply facts.  As for jobs, immigration has always backfilled low wage jobs that are essential to agriculture and service fields.

In 1981, President Reagan released a Statement on Immigration and Refugees.  It included this: “We must recognize that both the United States and Mexico have historically benefited from Mexicans obtaining employment in the United States.  Illegal immigrants in considerable numbers have become productive members of our society. Those who have established equities in the United States should be recognized and accorded legal status.”

I showed that to a friend.  He said any politician who said that now would be tarred and feathered.

Reagan again: “More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.  We shall continue America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries.”

As citizens we need to weigh these issues.  As Christians, we are called to a higher standard.  The Bible is filled with exhortations to care for the alien and the foreigner.  In the Old Testament we are told, “In whatever tribe a foreigner resides, you are to give them an inheritance declares the Sovereign Lord.”  In the New Testament, we are told, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

We will be measured as Christians by this.  We are to care about the 22 million refugees.  We are to care about the Haitians and Salvadorans who are being forced to return to their struggling countries.  We are to care about families being torn apart here in America to achieve some imaginary security.

In this debate, I’ll stand with the Bible and Ronald Reagan.

Everybody I know grew up on a dairy farm.  Okay, it just seems that way.  Most of my farm kid buddies spent time with cows.  We dairy kids had a certain subtle scent when we came to school after morning chores: “Eau de bovine.”  Hundreds of farms in Brown County sold milk back then.

At some point, things from our youth become treasured as memories.  Time in the barn with my dad was when we had the best conversations.  I feel warm inside remembering the toasty barn on frigid winter nights.  I wasn’t fond of cleaning calf pens, but less pleasant things get shoved to the bottom of the memory-chest.  Memories sort themselves as we age.

I was talking with Terry Helget about this phenomenon of dairy kids embracing recollections of our shared childhood.  We were comparing remembrances of barns and calves and haying.

That is when I had the Greatest Idea Ever.  I’m pretty sure a lightbulb went on over my head.  I told Terry we’re going to open a Retirement Dairy Farm where aging baby boomers can come and relive their youth.

We’ll have twenty cows in stanchions with calf pens across the way.  There’ll be an AC Ochs silo on one end, feed room on the other, a hay mow up above.  Our customers’ hearts will skip a beat when they step inside and are suddenly young again.

I told Terry this is going to be big, really big.  He was skeptical.  That’ll change once I’ve shown him how this is going to make us a fortune.

Former dairy kids will be able to buy a season pass; they’ll be part of the Cow Club.  Others can purchase a week-long pass for Cow Camp.  We’ll leave spots open for those who want to come for the day.  They’ll be able to buy a Cow Card at the driveway ticket booth.

Grown men and women will tear up when they lean on a cow for the first time in fifty years.   A big ol’ Holstein is a wonderful creature, docile and huge, sort of a cross between a kitten and a brontosaurus.  Throwing a strap over Bessy and attaching the milking machine, even with the risk of a tail-slap, is an extraordinary tactile experience.

Besides the bovines, other critters will be part of the experience.  A farm dog will love you unconditionally and want nothing more than to follow you around.  (You know, like your wife did before you got married.)  The dog will be named Shep.  My dad called every dog we ever had Shep, and that’s good enough for me.  Barn cats will be near, ready for spilt milk and a back scratch.

There will be a barn radio up on a shelf behind the cows.  Our Retirement Dairy Farm will have Dad-Reenactors who will tune it to old-time music on KNUJ.  Our clients can try tuning in hipper fare like Steve Canon or rock ‘n roll on WDGY.  “Dad” will come back and switch it back to KNUJ.  He’ll tell you how the cows don’t like that modern stuff.

In season, though, “Dad” will let you listen to Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall announcing Twins games.  Cows like baseball.

Of course, some things won’t be exactly as they were in those long-ago days.  The gutter cleaner will actually work.  We all spent hours fixing those with our dads, learning useful cuss words.  We don’t need to duplicate that experience.  Our gutter cleaner will work, and when the stanchions are scraped, fresh straw put down, and barn lime spread on the cement, our visitors will remember the absolute perfection that is a clean barn.  This is just before a cow disrupts that with some type of excretion.

After a time, our guests will wander up to the haymow.  With haybales to climb and build forts, they will instantly be a boy or girl again.  The great thing about a haymow was the layer of hay that covered the floor, making it seem impossible to get hurt.  There’ll be a basketball hoop up at one end where they can pretend to be George Mikan, Bill Russell, or Larry Bird, depending on whether they were a Fifties, Sixties, or Seventies kid.

Calf feeding will bring a cascade of senses rushing back.  After getting warm water from the milk room, you’ll stir in the milk replacer with your hand, turning the powder chunks into a soupy mix.  Then you let the calf suck your hand clean.  This was the most exciting physical sensation you knew.  (Remember, you’re a kid; this is long before sex.)

A cup that came in a bag of milk replacer will be hanging on top of the hydrant out in the yard where our clients can get a drink.  The cup will be crusted in green gook.  That is disgusting, but now scientists understand that was how our generation inoculated ourselves.

In the winter, there will be a line waiting to climb the silo chute to throw down silage.  Being inside a warm, fermenting silo on a cold day is about as close as you’ll ever come to be in the womb.  Silage itself is a wonderful goulash that looks and smells almost good enough to eat.  Then you get to pitch this corn-hash to appreciative cows with large tongues.

In the summer, for an additional fee, patrons will be able to make hay.  Men can choose to cut hay with a Farmall H or a John Deere B.  They will drive out to the field shirtless because a tan is cool.  The smell of fresh cut alfalfa will open the memory vault like a damn burst open.  After they get sunburnt, our Mom-Reenactor will rub Noxzema on their back while scolding them for being stupid.

When it comes time to bale, we’ll stack the bales three, four, or five high depending on our client’s oomph-ability.  Around 3:00, our “Mom” will bring out a lunch of bologna sandwiches on Wonder bread.  Later, “Dad” will let you have a Hauenstein from a case of returnable bottles, even though you are a 13-year old kid on our farm.

I was explaining to Terry how great this is going to be.  I recalled the scene in the movie Field of Dreams where Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) tells Ray that he has to keep the ballfield.  “People will come, Ray.  They’ll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.  They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.  It’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.”

Barn of Dreams, Terry!  We are going to make so much money.

You’ll remember a couple of years ago, we learned of a fellow who had been at Babe Ruth’s barnstorming game in Sleepy Eye in 1922. And he was in the well-known photo of that event. And he had one of the baseballs that Babe hit that day. And he was still living in Virginia, Minnesota!

Len Youngman was 11 years old that cold October day in 1922. Len was 104 when Scott Surprenant, Dean Brinkman, and I drove up to visit with him at his home. We were amazed to find a man who was living at home, still driving, and volunteering at the hospital.

Len could describe in wonderful detail the day Ruth and Yankee teammate Bob Meusel played at the local ballpark. He also could vividly take us back to Sleepy Eye of the early twentieth century. We spent the afternoon with him recalling the hometown he left in 1942. Len told stories about people and places like it was yesterday.

Scott, Dean, and I returned last year. Len had slowed a bit, no long driving. (I joked to friends, “Watch out when you’re 105; it’s all downhill.”) But his mind was as sharp as ever.

We went to visit again earlier this month. We’ve gotten to know Len’s family and they make us feel welcome. Someone comes in once a week to clean, and family stops by each day. But Len is still in his home, still reads a newspaper every day. He continues to astound at 106.

Tom Larson came with us this time. Tom knows Sleepy Eye names and families better than anyone I know. As I suspected, when Len and Tom got going making connections with people and homes and businesses across the century, it was enough to make your head spin. Sometimes they would go to a street in their minds and go house to house and generation to generation.

Although some of it was going over my head, it was as if a history book had come alive. Len told stories of people, some of whom I knew when I was younger, some just a name I had heard. Occasionally the conversation took us down a dark alley; there were stories of misbehavior and bad acting. It’s good to remind ourselves that these will survive our time on Earth, too.

History as taught in school can be a stifling bunch of names and dates. There is a growing emphasis in the study of history that looks at how common folks lived amid the larger currents. Len gave us a real feel for living in Sleepy Eye 75 years ago. Not only that time and place, but also from his decades traveling the Iron Range as a salesman for Hormel.

I suspect “history” is something I will be thinking about a lot. I joined the board of the Sleepy Eye Historical Society last year. I missed the Annual Meeting in November, so of course was elected president. Actually I had agreed to that beforehand. In a small town, we’ve all got to take a turn at these sorts of things.

I enjoy history. But whether we enjoy it or not, all of us live in it. The day we lived yesterday has become part of our own history.

We can’t escape history. We might want to believe that we are robust individuals living lives we have scripted. The truth is that most of the way we think and act is an amalgam of the people and events that came before us. The more we understand those people, the more we can know ourselves.

Here in Brown County, history is thick with its presence. The US-Dakota War of 1862 was the inception of the Western Indian Wars that would end at Wounded Knee 28 years later. The international milling industry was centered here early in the twentieth century. From the Native peoples to the Turners to the German Bohemian farmers to the more recent inflow of Hispanics, waves of people have made their impact.

I’m sure there are similarly interesting histories every place on Earth. But this is ours, and we should claim that.

That is where the historical organizations come in. The Sleepy Eye Historical Society operates a museum out of the depot which was constructed in 1902. The Brown County Historical Society runs the museum in the 1910 post office. Both these buildings have been given a new purpose, and they are centrally located and essential to the attractiveness of their communities. Brown County and the City of Sleepy Eye own the buildings and deserve a lot of credit for their preservation.

I am on the board of the Brown County Historical Society as the representative from our Sleepy Eye group. In both cases, I feel as if I am returning to my roots. Or to be more accurate, my wife’s roots. Pam was involved with the group that saved the Depot and began the Sleepy Eye Historical Society back in the Eighties. Then she worked for the Brown County Historical Society for 20 years. I hung around a lot there with the kids when they were younger. It’s interesting how things cross back upon themselves in life.

So, I’m going to give you a warning. If you see me, I am probably going to ask/beg/beseech you to become a member of one or both of those Historical Societies. There is also the Springfield Area Historical Society. New Ulm has the Lind House and Wanda Gag House Associations. All need support to continue their work.

These groups are working to preserve memories of our past. Of course, it would be good if we could just keep fellows like Len Youngman around. We reminded Len that we have him booked to throw out the first pitch at the centennial of Ruth’s visit to Sleepy Eye in 2022. He’ll be 111 then. We told him he can move in a few feet.

Farmers raise a lot of things, including now shrimp, hemp, and arugula. But corn is still king. When farmers aren’t raising corn, they like to talk about corn.

On a recent miserable day outside, I went walking/jogging on the track at New Ulm’s Vogel Fieldhouse (which is a great place).  There I and my fellow travelers went around and around with “oldies” serenading us from the speakers.

The music took me back to times and places decades past.  That is, I guess, what oldies are supposed to do.  Oldies are on at a lot of places I go.  Now and then a warm memory of young friendship or a school event comes to mind when I hear some song of yore.  But then comes a song that make me cringe.  Perhaps it’s recalling saying something stupid to a girl I had a crush on; sometimes it’s flashing back to something stupid I did.

There are lots of things I don’t understand.  One of them is the attraction of oldies.  It seems to indicate that a lot of people circumvented those coming-of-age years more adeptly than I did.

I’m happy to have survived the seventies, but I’m not sure why you would want to relive it musically.  One time around with “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun, but the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time,” seems enough to me.

I don’t have oldies on any of the preset buttons on my car radio.  Oh, occasionally I enjoy a Bruce Springsteen or Motown tune that drifts across my consciousness, proof that I’m not completely void of musical feeling.

It is undeniable that music can call forth memories.  Music heightens feelings in such a way that a time and place get stuck in our head with a song.  I’m not a neurologist, but clearly music goes to a part of the brain that words by themselves don’t.  Connections hot-glued in our mind between a song and a moment remain in place fifty years on.

Music can hold power over us with lasting and deep impact.  Certain songs cause us to smile widely, others, to tear up.  Witness the faces of veterans as the National Anthem is played at a Memorial Day event or a family as Amazing Grace is played at a funeral service.

I think everyone is touched by music, at least a little bit.  This ranges from heavy metal headbanging to soft instrumental elevator strains.  It’s remarkable the wide spectrum of things people find pleasing.

When I was young, my folks had old time music on KNUJ exclusively.  The kitchen and barn radios were set to the Polka Station of the Nation.  I don’t think I knew there was other music.  I remember later realizing those polkas and waltzes were oldies for my mom and dad, music that transported them back in time.  Their earliest dates were barn dances; those old tunes were part of their romancing.

I have thought of music as a gift from a good and kind God.  We can communicate most things we need with the grunts that evolved into words in the planet’s many languages.  But somewhere back in mankind’s history we began using voice in melodic ways.  Clapping hands and sticks and stones could sound out a beat.

I asked some friends, “Why is there music?”  Lora pointed to the sounds of nature that surround us.  Songbirds, the wind, rainfall, even our heartbeats: perhaps these prepare us for music.

Reaching further, for centuries dating back to antiquity, the notion of the Harmony of the Spheres was used to explain the universe.  The spheres were the stars and planets, and creation could be perceived as a type of song with harmony and pitch.  In Latin, this was Musica Universalis, the idea that music, mathematics, and astronomy are tied together.  Plato said astronomy was for the eyes what music was for the ears.

I was thinking about music.  I’ve always been jealous of people in movies.  Movies have a score, music in the background as characters play out their story.  I have thought I’d like to have a score setting the mood for my life, building to a crescendo during the exciting parts.  Now that I have a phone with Pandora and Spotify, I have my score!  Problem is, the script isn’t all that interesting.  Music washing over me as I change sweeps on the field cultivator doesn’t make for a thrilling scene.

Baseball players get to choose “walk-up” songs.  The home team plays these as the batter steps to the plate.  The hope is that the energy-laced tune will provide a shot of adrenaline to the hitter.  Recently I announced to some friends that I was going to use a “walk-in” song when I entered their house.  I chose Viva la Vida by Coldplay.  I had to quit that when my walk-in music raised the anticipation level to a height that I couldn’t match live up to.

I mentioned saying stupid things to girls that I had a crush on.  Well, one of those girls married me.  Now I occasionally send her songs that express my feelings on her phone: romantic songs by Charlie Puth, Ed Sheeran, and, of course, Pitbull.  When I get home, I am invariably met by an eye roll.  It’s a look that says she is used to me after these 37 years.  (Happy anniversary Pam!)

This time of year, Christmas music makes its annual appearance.  No music associates itself with memories more so than Silent Night, O Come all ye Faithful, et al.  These songs were there at our earliest Christmases.  Joyful memories sometimes blend with melancholy.  Certain of these remind me of parents and brother who were part of my first holiday seasons and are no longer here.  Others remind of when our own children were young, and I miss that.  But often these old classics bring warm and gentle feelings.

Tradition has it that there was music at the first Christmas.  The Bible doesn’t exactly say that.  In Luke, we read, “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests’.”

But it has long been held by Christians that this moment, now 2,000 years ago, was filled with glorious singing.  That might be the best oldie ever.

While combining corn this fall, I looked over at the outside row and saw something sticking up from the gathering chains.  Instinct tells me to immediately and frantically shut down the header whenever anything is out of the ordinary.  When it whirred to a stop, I could see an ominous strand of barb wire poking up.

It was the row up against the line fence. I imagined the worst: a length of incorrigible barb wire wrapped a thousand times around a stalk roll.  It turned out to be not so bad.  It was tangled under the snoot, but I wrestled it away with a pliers and only a bit of blood lost.

Through the years I have spent time untangling barb wire from most every piece of equipment I own.  Rarely do I have gloves with me; usually my hands end up looking like they were in a fight with barb wire and lost.

There are hundreds of feet of old barb wire bordering our fields.  It was strung on steel posts before my time.  I don’t think about it much; it’s just been there forever.  In spots, it remains taut and straight, four parallel strands with posts upright.  More places now it is broken, posts bent or missing, wire partially grounded.  That’s the stuff that ends up in my machinery.

It had a purpose once.  It goes back to a time when most of the farm was pasture for the cattle and horses.  Crops were intermittently grown on the higher ground.

When I was young we still had pasture, and I mended fence with my dad.  But the remaining pasture was up near the barn, and that was electric fence.  The barb wire on the farm’s far boundaries was left to keep the corn from getting up and crossing over to the neighbor’s field.

Line fences are a disappearing artifact in farm country.  That has less to do with farms getting bigger (they are) and more to do with farmers wanting to get an extra row of corn or soybeans.  About a third of my line fences are gone.  In each case, the neighbor asked if he could remove it and I agreed.  It is no small amount of work to do that.

Where line fences remain, I am fine to let them.  Some critters live there, and tiny remnants of prairie exist.  (Unfortunately, they have come to be a refuge for giant ragweed in recent years.  Giant ragweed loves that small area that the sprayer doesn’t quite reach.  It can grow the size of a small redwood tree during a growing season.)

As I lay on my back in the corn stubble dislodging the steel intruder from my corn head, I thought about barb wire.  The full name would be “barbed” wire, but most of us shorten that.  In some parts of the country, it goes by “bobbed” wire.  Whatever one calls it, it is nasty stuff. Mine is all rusted, good reason to keep current on tetanus shots.

I suppose someday in a fit of ambition I could remove it all.  The chore list around the farm is long, so there’s a good chance another generation will have this historic remnant to deal with.

Later I was reading about barbed wire.  There were some rough types used in France early in the 1800’s.  The first patent in America was granted in 1865.  It played a large part in the movement of farming and ranching westward across the continent.  Before that, a fence had to impede an animal by physically blocking them.  Stone or wood fences took a lot of effort to construct.

At first farmer-ranchers were hesitant to use barbed wire, for fear it would harm their livestock.  It became apparent that animals quickly learned to avoid it, and usage exploded.  It is even blamed for a significant drop in the number of cowboys, as the need to herd cattle faded.

Regardless of its functional place in history, it’s not a very pleasant material.  As my hands can attest, it succeeds by the possibility of inflicting pain.  By threatening to cut and gash the skin, it uses some of the worst type of pain.  Of course, the fenced-in animal can avoid that by compliance.

Out on my line fence, the jackrabbits and racoons go back and forth unharmed, and hawks set on top scanning the field.  My farm equipment and my hands are about all the harm this old border-guard inflicts now.

It would be good if the story of barbed wire began and ended out on the prairies and western chaparrals, keeping animals in their place.  Darker images come to mind when one conjures up barb wire though.  It surrounds prisons where people, not cows, are meant to be compliant.

I picture barb wire in old war movies.  My reading told me that it was used extensively in the wars of the late nineteenth century.  This year, we remember our nation entering World War I a century ago.  That cataclysmic event with its trenches and intractable battle lines became a gluttonous user of barbed wire.  I suspect many of our grandfathers and grand uncles were haunted by visions of barbed wire till their deaths.

Flash ahead to the next war, and we come to the concentration camps surrounded by barb wire.  There, it became a tool to aid in unimaginable atrocities.

It is like most everything human beings create.  There are good and helpful uses for barb wire that can benefit mankind.  Then it can be used for ill-intended purposes that bring harm.  Sometimes I imagine God looking down on Earth shaking His head amazed at the evil things we find to do with the most incorruptible of materials.

In school, we all read the poem Mending Walls by Robert Frost, the one that ends with, “Good fences make good neighbours.”  That poem begins with, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” It goes on to tell how nature and time and hunters work at sabotaging the stone wall that the farmer has worked so hard to construct.

Our old fences have also faced the ravages of nature and time.  Farm machinery, not hunters, have caused damage.  I guess something there is that doesn’t love a fence line.