Last Thursday night, I had the chance to go back to my old county fair.

My Dad was being honored (tortured in his opinion) with the outstanding senior citizen of the county.  An award that he truly believe he didn’t, doesn’t, and never will truly deserve.

“A lot more people do a lot more then I do.” Was all he would say.

While I doubt that, his threatening to avoid the awards ceremony and a quick call to my oldest brother from the county extension agent got our family into action. 

The awards were to start at 6:30 at the grandstands.  By 5:30pm, three of us kids, one daughter-in-law, two grand daughters, and a grandson were on hand to make sure that Dad made it to the fair and the family was represented.

It was strange driving into the fair.  As a kid, there are such memories about how big everything was.  The rides, the shows, the crowds, the barns, the exhibits…the memories.

It some ways, the fair seemed to have shrunk.  Fewer people, fewer rides, and barns and buildings sitting half or three quarters full.

We waited outside the grandstands about twenty until about ten minutes before the awards started. 

I did have to laugh to myself.  It looked like a scene out of Bonanza - my Dad playing the part of old Ben Cartwright, hard working, humble, being recongized in the community he loved.  His three sons surrounding him (ok we did have a daughter-in-law and some grandkids too…and none of us had guns…there was no salloon…though I do look a bit like Hoss…I digress).

The ceremony was nice.  They read a little narrative on why my Dad won the award, they presented a few other awards (Farm Couple, Ag Leaders, Outstanding Pie) and the awards were done.  There was maybe 20 people in attendance.  As Dad said later - “luckily none of them that knew me that well.”

We said hello to a few friends and neighbors then headed for the 4-H Buildings for some good 4-H stand food - burgers, hot dogs, and ham sandwiches.  All of us kids weren’t there, but it was neat to be back in the 4-H building and the fair as a family.  Looking down the table it brought a warm feeling to my chest…f course so did the heartburn from the greasy hamburger.

After supper, as a family we roamed through the 4-H exhibits, the commercial building, the barns, and the open class buiding.  Stopping to visit with people we knew as we walked through.  Looking at the cattle, the chickens, the rabbits, the pig or two. 

We topped it off with a malt from the County Dairy Board as we all sat in the open class building talking and remininscing.

“I remember working at the Ladies Aid stand frying burgers when it was 100F outside.  I mean it was hot.  Scorching.  You guys were lucky you never had to do that.  You had it SOOOO easy.”  My oldest brother Tom said.

“There there was then next year when we watched the tornado’s skip the ground to the north of here.” He followed it up with.

Getting to see tornado’s up close?  Now who is the lucky one?

The stories flew back and forth for a while.  The poeple, the places, the memories.  But all to soon, it was time for my brothers to drive back to their homes with their families.

As we were walking towards the car, the big orange end of summer sunset shone in the distance.

The fair may not be as big as it was in my memory…but the new memories are just as special.

“Well, I think I’ve got everything.  Clothes, TV, books, paper.” I said.

“OK, well, call us when you get there.” Dad said.

“Well, don’t know that I’ll have a phone working for a couple of days.”

“OK, well, find a phone if you have problems, otherwise, we’ll see you next week.”

I hugged Mom and I walked out the door.  Off to college.

My little Pontiac had almost everything that I owned.  A couple of pair of jeans, a couple of shirts, a pillow, a towel, a set of sheets, a TV, and a mini-fridge that I had inherited from my older brothers, and finally book or two to keep me company.

I was off to face the world.

It wasn’t that long of a drive as I started my freshman year at North Dakota State University fourteen years ago.  It was really only about 70 miles, but it could have been 70 light years away in my mind.

This was it.  This would determine if I was going to sink or swim in this world. 

I was going forth into the world

I was terrified.

What if I failed my classes?  What if I couldn’t handle the acedemics?  What if I turned out to me a complete doorknob and nobody liked me?  What if I couldn’t cope in the real world?  What if ran with the wrong crowd?  What happened if I got caught doing something that I knew I shouldn’t be doing and got kicked out of school…all though I really didn’t know what that thing that I would be caught doing would be but fully realized that while it may be fun but probably not worth it in the end…

Whew.

I knew I was going to have to take this in stages.

First, must find Fargo.  I had taken my mother to the hospital several times so that wasn’t difficult.

Second, must find my dorm.  A campus tour and oreintation earlier in the year helped get me to the right side of campus.  From their it was just looking for the Reed-Johnson cell block…er….dorm on the north side of campus.  A trip or two around campus and I found it.

Third, find dorm room.  A quick trip to the front desk, show some ID and the slip that said I would be rooming in Reed Hall and two keys were handed over - one for the dorm, one for the front door.  Up one flight of stairs, a quick left and a quick right, three doors down and there I was.

The dorm room was already furnished.  A metal desk.  A metal desk chair.  A metal bed frame.  A mattress.  A dresser built into the closet.

Luckily there was never a scrap drive outside of the Reed Johnson cell block or the dorm rooms would have been empty.

Finally it was just a matter of moving things in.  One trip for the TV.  One trip for the refriderator. One trip for all of my personal belongings.

Success.  I was officailly a college student.  My life was in order.  The planets aligned.  My schedule was set.  And all things were calm and orderly and in place.

I breathed the first sigh of relief all day.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Dud!  I’m your new roomate!  This is awesome!  These are my folks!  This is the first cart with all of my stuff!  Is this all the room we have?  Are you going to use all of your closet space? Mind if I put some stuff in your fridge?  Mind if my girlfriend stays for a bit?  You smoke?  Pot?”

Oh boy.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in the spring of 1989)

Of course I should have known better, but still you’d think a responsible guy could get away with an honest mistake once in awhile.  This story is circulating all over town, so I may as well tell you before you hear an exaggerated version from someone else.

To start, I’ll note that i’ve been washing my own clothes since 1982.  At first, I didn’t do them all the time.  I still relied on mom quite a little, but I gradually washed more and more often.  Toward the end of our college years, I started washing clothes for my wife-to-be, too.

She took a turn once in a while, but the responsibility fell primarily to me.  Once we were married, washing became “my job.”  She still helps out with the folding and sorting, but it’s more than a year since she’s gone to the laundromat and washed the clothes from start to finish.

Don’t interpret this as complaining.  I don’t mind washing clothes.  Mary hated it, so I do it.  It’s a compromise that works for us.

But washing clothes isn’t always an easy job.  It requires decision making ability. 

“Permanent press cycle or color cycle?”

The job also requires attention to detail.

“Where did those little pieces of wet tissue come from?”

And the ability to work fast.

“Get those shirts out of the dryer before they get wrinkled!”

So, you can see how a guy could make a mistake once in a while, right?  And I don’t make many when it comes to washing clothes.  I’m good at it and I take pride in my work.  But I slipped.  I should have know better, but I did it anyway.

I was down.  It was, as far as clothes go, my darkest hour.  You’d think Mary would comfort me and offer me support in my time of need.  Think again.

She came strolling into the laundromat, took one look at my shirts, and in a voice that echoed across the room, asked,” Where did you get those pink shirts?”  Then she laughed and laughed and laughed.

I’d been trying to hide the shirts behind my other, darker hanging clothes.  I like white shirts, but even I know you don’t keep white shirts white by washing them with new red slacks.

“How many did you dye like this?  You can buy pink shirts in the store, you know?” She boomed, holding a shirt up to the light.  Then she laughed and laughed and laughed.

“Be quiet!” I hissed.

“Why?” She asked.  Oh look!  This one matches the color of your ears,” she squealed.  “You ‘re not embarrassed, are you?”

“No, not in the least,” I said as she laughed and laughed and laughed.

We went out with friends the other night.  “Is that a pink shirt you’re wearing?” Someone yelled when I walked in.  Then everybody laughed and laughed and laughed.

From now on, I’m dry-cleaning only kinda guy.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in the fall of 1988)

“Maestro! Music please.

Ladies and gentlemen, coming down the aisle are the finest and most up-to-date fashions in the world.  Note that gigi is wearing the knatty dekalb seed corn cap designed Cal’s Cap-O-Rama in Webster City.  The cap is inspiringly complemented by the finely tailored, but functional, John Deere Jacket from Jimmy-Joe’s Jacket Emporium in Jefferson.  Under the jacket is the elegant, yet earthy T-shirt by Sally’s Shirts, Gas ‘N’ Beer just off the highway in Mount Ayr.  The silk-screened, “Proud of Pork” message lends just the right touch.  Gi Gi was pitching hay bales today so you can see her simple but stylish jeans are artistically stained and torn.  The entire ensemble is tied nicely together by the delicate but durable steel-toed boots from Bob’s Boots in Burt.”
–fashion show of the future.

Paris. London. New York. 

They’ve long been considered the fashion centers of the world.  But no more!

Have you taken a look in your local department store lately?  I think these high class fashion centers are losing ground in rural America.

Down on the farm, when winter’s winds begin to blow, we’ve always known it’s best to wear layers of clothing.  So what did we do?  We donned a well-worn jacket over a hooded sweatshirt.

It was practical and cheap.  Usually the two garments were never apart except for washing.  While the body of the sweatshirt retained its original color, the hood became faded and tattered.  Unfortunately, the hood also served as a collector of silage, dust, grain and snow.  Flipping the hood up without cleaning it first was likely to net you a hoodful of garbage down your neck and back.  But it was a small price to pay for warmth, comfort and durability.

Recently at a department store I saw a worn and faded denim jacket with a sweatshirt hood sewn in just below the collar.  It was brand new, but it looked just like the real thing.  The cost: $85!  Why didn’t I patent it when I had the chance?

Have you seen what teenagers are wearing lately?  Stonewashed jeans with gaping rips and tears in them are all the rage.  Apparently these are not defective garments.  You can actually BUY THEM AT A PREMIUM PRICE. I wonder where you go to learn how to artfully wear out jeans to sell for $35 a pair?

“No sense paying somebody to do something you can do yourself,” my dad used to say.  My new jeans were stiff like cardboard and were as blue as blue could be.  Before long, every pair acquired substantial wear and tear.  I didn’t pay extra to have my jeans worn out before I bought them.  No, I did it myself.  No training required- I was a natural.

Pick rocks for an afternoon.  Stack hay bales for a couple of days.  Wade around in manure for an hour or so each day.  Spill a little oil, diesel fuel and battery acid on them.  Before long you have jeans that any suburban teenager would kill for.
 
Unfortunately, all those jeans are gone now- thrown away or cut up for patches.  They weren’t wearing out, they were gaining in value like fine art.  If only my mother had known.  She could have saved me a few pairs so I could sell them now and but a new car.

Now I notice some of the more radical member of society are wearing big leather boots.  Telephone lineman, lumberjacks and farmers have been “in step” with fashion for years.  I wore them every day all over the farm. In the fields.  In the barn.  To the co-op.  Everywhere.  Now they’re a fashion statement.

So what’s next? Who can predict the fickle winds of the fashion industry.  New York, London and Paris must be reeling after these recent developments.  They will probably be fighting back for their share of the world fashion market

As for me, I’m holding on to all those corn seed caps in my closet.  They just buy me my first house.
 

The Minnesota State Fair was a long way from home.

Growing up, we were about 250 miles from the state fair grounds, which was a huge way to travel with 30 head of dairy cattle to milk twice a day.  In addition, those ten days around Labor Day were pretty precious on the northern prairie - it usually meant the last of the small grain harvest and maybe starting on the chopping of corn or the third cutting of alfalfa.

Plus it was the last couple of weeks before Dad’s labor force got knocked down due to the start of school, so at the very least, the last of the major projects like painting, fixing, and last minute jobs before winter took place.

It short, the timing of the Minnesota State Fair for those of us in the upper north western reaches was just flat out bad.

I would hear all of the wonders of the fair - Machinery Hill, the big old barns, the blocks of commercial buildings, and any and every type of food you could think of on a stick (corn dogs - on a stick; walleyes - on a stick; deep fried candy bars - on a stick; hotdish - on a stick; boiled tree bark - on a stick…you get the idea).

In short, the thought of visiting the Minnesota State Fair was like a thought of going to some type of mysteries land filled with strange people, strange food, and strange experiences.

Which I would find out, was all true.

Dad sold the cows about five days before graduation, which meant I could find employment off the farm for the first time in my short life.  All summer, I worked two jobs, about seventy hours a week when you threw the hours together.

By the end of the summer, I was tired.

Then like a magical letter from some wizard school, the letter came with the official seal of the Minnesota State Fair…

I was asked to volunteer at the Moo Booth located in the heart of the barns at the Minnesota State Fair.  They could arrange lodging and tickets, all I needed to do was show up and talk about milking cows.

Talk about milking cows?  Where they serious?  It really isn’t work unless you have a direct threat of two thousand pounds of beef taking a shoot at your head with a back hoof.

A quick call to the county extension office and our two very helpful county extension agents had me on the 4-H bus heading to St. Paul.

With ticket in hand, I walked to the gates with my sleeping bag and small pack of clothes.

I found the barns and proceeded to the Moo Booth.  It was a bit of a caotic affair with volunteers coming and going and literally hundred’s of thousands of people seeing the wonders of the dairy industry.

They escorted me to my lodging…the bottom bunk in one of the large dorms above the barns.  And when I say bottom I mean bottom…these bunks were surplus World War II and stacked four high in some places.

For the three days I was there, I would work about twenty hours at the Moo Booth, the rest of the time was wondering around and seeing the wonders of the state fair.  Both the ordinary - The livestock shows, the 4-H building, the lawn equipment on machinery hill, and the bizarre - the food…on a stick, some of the music, and some of the people.

Looking back it was probably one of the craziest things I’ve done - launching off into the middle of something I had never experienced, knew nothing about, and had no idea what I was getting myselt into…

And it was a darn good time.

If every I’m asked to list my heros, at the top of the list is always my parents.

My mother was a saint, growing up in some rough circumstances - losing her mother at eleven years of age, moving out of her home at sixteen, but still made a life  - and a good one - for herself, Dad, and all of us kids, and always with a sense of humor.

My dad is a pretty humble guy, but has lead a pretty interesting life.  Growing up mainly in his hometown, but also with some stints in southern Minnesota staying with relatives.  Time spent studying and living in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, a tour in Korea.

He moved back to the hometown about forty-five years ago and has never looked back.  He and Mom raised five healthy kids on his little farm and managed to instill in us the common-sense values that aren’t as common as they should be today.

Even today, he is pretty active.  He suffers from emphazema, so he has a hard time catching his breath, uses oxygen at night, and takes a host of pills.

But it really hasn’t slowed him down.

My dad is also pretty darn stubborn.  Over the years, it has served him well.  He has stuck to his guns on some pretty important issues in the community.  When he realized the town didn’t have handicapped parking, he went to the city administrator who told him there was plenty of parking in town.  So he called a friend of his who as an attorney for a local government organization.  A couple of calls later, the town got handicapped parking spaces.  But when asked about his involvement he will always say “I had nothing to do with it…but it was the right thing to do…”

His stubborness has has lead to his most recent predicament - he was nominated and won the outstanding senior citizen of our county, recognizing outstanding seniors who have contributed to the community - and he is not happy.

“There are a lot of other people that deserve it more then I do,” Dad said when he was nominated.

“Well, that’s why they have judges.” I told him.

“There won’t be any judging for me,” he said smugly, “When Sharon called to tell me I was nominated and she needed to interview me, I said I wasn’t interested and don’t call back.”

His ploy didn’t work.  He won.

But now they are having a heck of a time convincing him that he actually deserves it.

The person organizing the event is a little frustrated with him - Sharon and her husband Gene have been life-long friends of the family.  For as long as I can remember, they helped us out, volunteered for a lot of the same things, and are all around good people - and almost every bit as stubborn as Dad.

In the end, she took the end round and called my older brother to enlist some help.

Dad wasn’t happy to hear from his kids about the issue either, but Sharon won in the end.

“I keep on saying that I don’t deserve it.  I didn’t do a darn thing to deserve it.  Plus I’ve been to darn busy with the garden.  I ran some cabbage and califower over to the senior center.  I brought some beets over to the neighbors and I may have to drive someone to Fargo for a doctors appointment on Thursday - what happens if I’m not back on time.”

I know I’m biased, but in my short time on this earth, I’ve rarely met anyone that looks out for his friends and neighbors as well as Dad does.

But if they also gave out an aware for stubborness, he would probably get that one too.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  Following is one of his early writings from September or October 1986)

Editors and reporters grind their teeth when they hear that phrase or one of its many variations.  I’ve only been involved in newspapering for 6 months and I’ve heard that theme repeated more times than I care to count.

Today, I’d like to use this space to emphasize some good news that I’ve been hearing lately.

Iowa Department of Agriculture Marketing director Ed Lowe was in Corwith recently promoting his department’s plans for an Iowa Export trading company.  Mr. Lowe has traveled extensively around the world and he shared some of his observations with the crowd in Corwith that evening.

The marketing director said that to people around the world, Iowa is synonymous with agriculture.  He also noted that the people in those countries respect Iowans because of that agricultural connotation.

“In foreign countries, agriculture enjoys a respect and prestige that it does not have here.  Maybe that is something we need to look at in this country,” he said.

He pointed out that Iowa’s economy is rooted in agricultural industry and the state’s vast agricultural resources will continue to support its growth and development.  “We can try to produce computer chips here all we want, but if we ignore agriculture, I’m afraid we would be making a big mistake,” he said.

It is evident simply from observing events here in Kossuth County, that farmers have not given up and America’s heartland will never be a barren desert.

Farmers are branching out, spreading their risk and trying new ideas.  Growing up on my dad’s farm I soon realized that ingenuity was second nature to farmers.  If you couldn’t find or afford the equipment you needed- you built your own.  If something didn’t work right- you fixed it and improved it with your own hands and tools.

It appears farmers have started to ignore the “experts” who have predicted the demise of agriculture.  They are using their “tools,” calculators, computers and some innovative ideas to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and put some profit back into agriculture.

The Algona Newspapers have covered the bad news in agriculture, but that’s important too and we haven’t seen the end of it.

Agriculture has just started on a long hard road of transition.  People have gotten hurt and people will continue to get hurt by that transition.  It’s sad, but unavoidable.

In a recent ag-policy debate among agricultural debate among agricultural leaders from across America, those leaders argued and disagreed about what to do about the farm problem-just like they’ve been doing for years.

While they argued they’ve argued, I’ve covered Mr. Lowe’s speech and talked to farmers who are trying new crops and farming methods to cut costs and cater to new markets.

I listened to National FFA President Kevin Eblen tell local students that agriculture is wide open.  He said innovative, positive-thinking, young entrepreneurs are starting their own businesses and enterprises in agriculture and doing well.

He said the future of American agricultural industry is in the hands of those go-getters,

That, readers, is what I call good news.
 

Everything in my background taught me to be a rational man.  Growing up on the farm, things lived and died.  Work had to get things done.  Think through things and do the rational, right thing.

In my education, the scientific methods were drilled into my head.  Thought, reason, rational answers were behind all things.  Nature was beautiful, complex, and explainable.

Sometimes this process didn’t work so well when mixed with my families strong Catholic faith.

Even today, I suffer crises of faith.

Last night, I was at Christian music festival, which is outside of the realm of my usual comfort area.

Faith is generally a private matter.

Here were people clapping their hands, waving their arms, singing along in worship and praise.

All of a sudden, my faith waivered.  As a rational man, how could these people be acting this way?

I ran through all of the old arguments.

Think of all of the miracles and wonders over the last two thousand years that have been attributed to people of faith?

Rational me: Yup, same people that believed in dragons, believed that the earth was flat, and that the sun moved around the earth.

Think of the stories of the Bible.

Rational me: Yup, stories written down years after the fact by people that were trying to build up their following.

Think of how one man (the Son of God) changed history without leaving a small radius around his hometown?

Rational me: Not identical, but similar to the founders of most other major religions.

Think of all of the people that have truly believed and have followed the Christian lifestyle.

Rational me: Yup, but also the large number of people that allowed themselves to be caught up in Facism, Communism, Nazism, and every other major political, economic, or religiously zealous organization.

How could our souls live on as our bodies rotten in the ground?  Are we that different then mere animals?  Don’t we have the same or at least similar animal instincts?  How do we know that there is anything waiting for us beyond this life.

Once all of the arguments were made, I was left naked and exposed to bitter winds of dispair.  There was not hope.  We are but dust.

But the last refuge is always the soul.  For soul doesn’t forget.

The soul remembered the encounter on the road as the hand of God reached down and grasped my soul that cold, rainy spring day four days before my mother passed away.

The soul remembered fighting with the devil that hot summer morning when living in Champaign, IL.

The soul remembered the words spoken at just the right time when my heart needed them most, when all seemed lost, and the one passage struck home and welled up the strength so that I might go on.

The soul remembers.

I felt restored.  As the concert came to an end.  The crowd as asked to sing our national anthem, and as we did, I, like a child, or a heretic would do, I dared to ask God for yet another sign.  Not knowing the time or the place - and knowing that signs are rarely what we expect - I was resigned to be patient and sleep an uneasy sleep as doubt continued to lap at my mind.

As we drove away in the midnight hour, a shooting star, so bright and seemly so close flashed directly in front of our car.

Was it the sign?  Was it the wonder I dared to ask the Lord for?

My faith said yes.  It was not as dramatic as the other encounters.  It was nothing out of the ordinary.  It was something that can be explained by science.

But it was also something - with all my years under the clear skys of norther Minnesota, looking up and asking questions, I have never seen before.

Faith, in the end, is a difficult thing.  It is believing in the unknown.  It is rationalizing something beyond our feeble mind can understand.

But our soul knows.  Our soul remembers.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in August, 1988)

It’s harvest time at home.

Last week the combine started rolling across the barley fields.  The oats crop is safely in the bin now.  The wheat fields will be cut soon.

Harvest time is exciting.  Life seems much more fast-paced and work suddenly more important and meaningful.  Beating the weather becomes a fixation.

Things get a little tense too.  Heat and humidity makes a tough job even more difficult for men and machines.  Stressed metal gives way.  Engines, bearings and tempers take turns overheating.  Noise, heat and long hours take their toll.

My college-age brother operates the combine.  His temper is never what anybody would call amiable, but with temperatures wavering at the 100-degree mark, I’ll bet his sweaty face was twisted into a scowl for most of the week.

His favorite word in times of stress is a muttered, “Cripes.”  He packs that single work with so much meaning and emotion it’s unbelievable.

The car is out of gas.

”Cripes.”

Somebody else ate the last cookie.

“Cripes.”

He has to stack a load of hay.

“Cripes.”

This week it was a biggie.  The air conditioner on the combine went on the fritz.  It was so hot that it just refused to work.  With a final gasp it just quit.

John’s had experience with that air conditioner before.  The combine is designed in such a way that the engine blows heat from the overworked engine toward the cab.  The hot airs blasts from the engine compartment into the cab through the control panel.  Last year when the air conditioner quit. John received second-degree burns on his arm when it slipped from the armrest onto the control panel.

“Cripes.”

This summer he spent two weeks fixing hoses, cleaning air ducts and cooling fins and testing the fan.  He was determined to make sure it worked.

“Cripes.”

I’m sure he spat the word out like some kind of foul tasting bug in his veggies.  For him, being angry is more than just an emotion, it’s an art.  And nobody does it better.

At least this time he was justified.   If the temperature outside was 100 degrees, inside that cab it must have been 120.

So dad and John were getting the combining done.  In between combining and milking sweaty Holsteins, there was straw to bale and stack.  All this going on and I’m stuck here in Iowa with a rotten, air conditioned desk job.

“Cripes.”

That combine is the family’s pride and joy.  It’s the biggest piece of equipment on the place.  The combine, a Massey-Ferguson model 510, is not new, but it has low hours and has always been shedded.

By today’s standards it’s a small combine.  But when that baby rolls snorting and roaring out of the shed in the fall it makes a farm boy feel all funny inside.

About that roar.  According to the owner’s manual, the combine was originally equipped with a muffler.  Since it rolled off the assembly line some 20 years ago somebody’s made some adjustments to the exhaust system.

Now two chrome pipes peek out from the engine compartment.  The combine, not a quiet machine anyway, roars down the filed sounding like Sunday night at the Boone Speedway.  Inside the metal machine shed, the sound is loud enough to shake the bird droppings out of the rafters.

I’d bet dad’s got the nifiest-sounding combine in the country.

“The west is getting pretty dark” Dad said matter-of-factly as he took a pull on the water jug.  “I don’t like it.”

Dad sat up in the open door of the combine as we unloaded the contents of the combine’s hopper into the gravity box wagon I was pulling with the tractor.

“We’ll get one more hopper and see how she looks then.” As Dad roared the old Massy 510 combine back into full RPM’s and rumbled off down the windrows of barley.

The grain had to be combined while dry, a good shower would put us out of the field for at least the balance of the day and good downpour for maybe another twenty-four hours.  Precious time on the farm.

Part of being a farmer is watching the sky, knowing when, where, or even if the storm would hit.  If it was an isolated storm and veered off one direction or another, you would could keep on going until the dew or humidity made the grain to “tough” - wet - to combine.

It never failed on the northern plains to get at least one good thunderstorm during harvest.  And this time proved no exception.

“Get this load home and in the bin, I’ll get one more hopper and head for home.” Dad said, this time with lightening in the distance.

Rain on a full gravity box could spell trouble.  If you got moisture into a grain bin, even a little bit could spell trouble, a rotten spot in the bin could spread, or whose, if the grain got wet, it would heat up as the grain rotted and cause a fire.

Dad swung the auger back in on the combine and rumbled off as I swung the tractor and gravity box around and headed for home with the sound of distant thunder crackled in the distance.

I pulled the load up to the auger leading up to the top of the bin - being careful to line up the spout on the side of the box carefully - to close and you could run over the auger box on the bottom, too far away and you would miss it completely.  The margin of error was about six inches either side.

Then it was starting up the old Farmall H and getting the PTO going to run the auger, then crack open the gravity box.

“Come on, come on, come on” I mumbled to the grain as a cool breeze was starting to blow - the vanguard of the storm to come.

With the gravity box almost empty, I hopped up on one tire of the box and shook it, shaking loose any grain stuck on the side of the box.  Then with my big work boots, kicked the sides of the auger box - trying to get as much grain up the auger as possible.  With the gravity box empty, the auger box as empty as possible, all that was left was making sure the bin was closed.

There is just nothing like climbing to the top of a metal grain bin in 45 mph winds in the middle of lightening storm to get the heart pumping…and the mind questioning its sanity.

After raising the auger slightly so that it was no longer in the hole at the top of the bin, there I went, up the aluminum ladder, up the small ladder on top of the bin, up to the peak.  There I wrestled with the bin cover and got it wired down just as the first drops of rain started to hit.

I scurried down and scadadled for the house where Dad was already waiting (the combine just making it into the shed before the first drops started to fall).

From the safety of the porch we would sit and watch the rain come in sheets, the wind whip the trees, and the ground shake with the might roar of the thunder.

Until the storm slowly lost its intensity and moved east.  Then as the last rain drops fell, Dad looked at me and said, “Quite a storm yeah.  Well, geuss we better start the evening chores.  We’ll have some wet cows to milk tonight.”