(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)

Some of us envy the easy life that farmers lead.  A farmer has no boss, no clock to punch and no crops to tend in the winter.

Tractors and combines with climate-controlled cabs add some luxury to what used to be dusty, noisy uncomfortable jobs.  And those tractors and combines are bigger and faster than ever before.  A farmer can harvest more acres in a day than his grandfather could harvest in a week.

“How nice it must be to enjoy the solitude and fresh air for farming life,” we think.  Sometimes we laugh and say,”That’d be the life.”

Think again.  Boone County’s farmers deserve better from us.  We are very selective in what we see and remember.  If you’ve watched closely during the last few weeks, you noticed that life is not easy down on the farm.

It was difficult not to notice the combines, trucks and tractors that seemed to be in every field and on every road in Boone County during most of October.

No matter when you looked, farmers seemed to be on the move from early in the morning to late in the evening.  Those kind of hours are not for people who enjoy sleeping in or like to relax and watch an evening of television.

At the same time, you would have noticed that repair shops and implement dealers were especially busy.  Harvest’s pace puts a stress on machines as well as their operators.  Be glad that the drive belt on your lawnmower doesn’t cost $170.

A week ago, we drove through north central Iowa.  As the radio told us about the rain that would move into the area on Sunday, we watched as combines and tractors crawled through muddy fields trying desperately to harvest the rest of this season’s crop.  It was late on a Saturday evening, but lights blazed on either side of the highway as farmers struggled in the darkness.

Three weeks ago, and ice storm knocked out electrical power for thousands of Iowans.  For many it was merely an inconvenience.

It meant no hot showers, no television and a difficult time keeping the house warm.

For farmers, it meant finding alternative ways of feeding and watering livestock while electric feeders and pumps remained silent and useless.  The ice meant struggling to maintain proper ventilation and temperatures in livestock confinement buildings.  Failure could have meant the deaths of hundreds of valuable animals and a devastating financial loss.

Those with tractors-powered electrical generators were more fortunate.  But those tractors needed to be monitored and fueled.  Generators are seldom powerful enough to operate all the electrical equipment on the farm, that means rationing power to each job individually.  Morning chores stretched to fill the entire day.

There’s no denying that farming can be rewarding as a business and as a way of life.  That’s why some farmers will do almost anything to keep farming.  But that’s not to say that it’s an easy life-style.

In Boone County, many of us have farmers as friends and neighbors.  We all rely on them for the health or our local economy and the food we eat.

They deserve our respect.

Mom was always very active in the community.  One of the organizations that she poured herself into was Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL).It seemed like every Sunday was a meeting or a fundraiser, or some event that Mom was helping to coordinate.

The county fair, the annual craft sale, the various food stands and other functions run by volunteers to raise money for the cause usually had Mom and sometimes some of us kids in tow.

In her effort to end abortion, Euthanasia, and capital punishment, she was not alone.  There was usually the core group of people dedicated to making things happen and a wider range of people that could be counted on to supply labor or material as needed.

The activities were political in nature - not necessarily supporting any one candidate, but always the same list of priorities.  Working through the system to get the people elected that would support the agenda, doing letter writing and lobbying as needed, and making sure that people were thinking about the issues and seeing the dissenting view from conventional thinking.

It was a moral issue for Mom.  A child became a living, breathing, human at conception.  Ending it early was morally wrong.  A person on the verge of losing their life due to sickness and disease might still have thoughts, might still encourage others, was still a living, breathing human being and ending that life was unfair to that person and unfair to those that might come in contact with them.  An inmate on death row was still a human being - their thoughts, their actions, their repentance or lack of repentance might make others better people…and in the end, they are a living, breathing human being - and ending that life was morally wrong.

It was a moral issue that turned into a political issue.  Our legal system stated that a woman has the right to take the life of her unborn child.  Our legal system says that the state may take the life of an inmate.  The only way to change it was to push the system for a change.

It was a moral and political issue that was also deeply spiritual as well.  Mom’s sense of right and wrong had their roots in her faith.  She prayed about it.  She knew where her faith said she should stand on the issue.

In the end, she hated the thought that her beloved country law of the land supported and legalized the things that she abhorred.

But in the end, she never lost faith in either one.

The Lord said, “Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

Our Constitution guarantee’s “The Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

But in the end, the two cannot be separated; the two co-exist in our souls, in our hearts, in our minds.

In the end, many of the social, and moral, and ethical issues of the day are driven by our conscience and our beliefs in right and wrong that come down to us from our Christian traditions.

Just as Cyrus, the king of Persia, was anointed by God to do his work, though he did not know God, and St. Paul tells us that we were chosen, though we were not chosen by our choice alone, so we must follow our hearts, our minds, and our souls to do the work of God here on earth.  We must discuss, argue, and discern to find his way.  We must vote, we must speak out; we must be active participants in our political process.

Mom didn’t know how her fight was to end, and she knew that she was just one little part of a very big effort and movement - one that she won’t see completed in her lifetime.  But she fought anyway.  She moved forward driven by the Spirit to change our world for the better - to make our world a little more Christ like.  She gave of her time, her talent, and her treasures to help bring His kingdom a little close to us.

If that is not rendering unto God, what belongs to God, I don’t know what is.

New York, New York:

The city of New York sent a Minnesota man packing today after almost four days of conventioning in the Big Apple.

“While we appreciate the man’s coming and visiting our great city, we truly feel it is time for him to go.” Said a New York spokesperson. “Like Franklin said, after three days, fish and visitors start to stink.  And quite frankly, Mark was starting to get on our nerves.”

“The guy was like the Iowa whistler,” stated one vender, “He put on a clean pair of bib overalls and a twenty dollar bill in the front pocket and he never changed either one.”

The man was taken to JFK airport about 9:00 am eastern time Friday to send him back to the city of St. Louis Park, MN.

The City of St. Louis Park issued the following statement: “While we appreciate the curtesy that New York has shown, would it have killed you to take him for another couple of days? I mean com’on.  We live with this guy for, like, the other twelve months out of the year.  Come on New York, have a heart.”

The man was reported to have a good time while in New York.  His stay consisted mainly of meetings, eating, and drinking heavily until the wee hours of the morning.

(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)

I sing.

Sometimes I sing in the shower.  I almost always sing along with the radio in the car.  I used to sing on the tractor to break up the monotony of tedious trips up and down the fields.  Barns are great places to sing.  The acoustics of a near-empty haymow seem amazingly similar to those of a concert hall.  As long as I’m alone and I don’t get caught, singing’s great fun.

I’m not alone either.  I know you do your share of singing too.  I’ve seen you.  I pull up at a stoplight next to you, look over and there you are.  You’re likely to be bouncing in your seat with your lips sticking out in your best Mick Jagger pout.  Your windows are rolled up but I can tell what you’re singing, “Jumpin’ Jack flash!  It’s a gas! Gas! Gas!”

I can tell by watching your lips.  And don’t forget, it’s on my radio too.

Why do we do it?  I suppose we have music in our hearts and rhythm in our souls.  I guess that’s why it’s so darn hard to keep the music inside.  We’re just singin’ fools.

Some of us have secret fantatsies about making it big in the music business.  Admit it, you’ve dreamt about those adoring fans screaming your name in a packed auditorium.

Now somebody’s found a way to cash in on our music fantasies.  Some nightclubs have invested in a music system called “Karoake.”  The system allows you to get up on stage in front of a microphone, bright lights and an audience and sing your favorite songs.  Giant speakers play background music and vocal while a video screen prompts you with the lyrics.

We had our first taste of this new form of entertainment during the weekend jaunt to Iowa City not long ago.  The system gave some people a chance to showcase talent that’s been hidden and repressed for years.

Who would have thought the computer programmer at the next table could sing Sinatra almost as good as Old Blue Eyes himself?  And we would never have guessed that the quiet woman by the door could belt out a version of “Blue Bayou” that might move Linda Ronstadt to tears.

For others, Karaoke is another opportunity for them to make drunken fools of themselves.  Those guys who sang “Elvira” better not drop out of college to pursue a full-time singing career.  And the guy who tried to sing the rap tune moved us all to tears.  Some of the singers were so bad it was hilarious. Some of the singers were so bad it wasn’t funny.

As for me. I never made it on stage.  My throat was feeling a little sore that evening and my voice was kind of raspy.  (See my column, “Men aren’t wimps about summer colds,” July 20.1991 for more information.)

But next time I’ll have a go at it with gusto.  I may try Sinatra’s “New York, New York.”  Or I might give my rendition of ” Wild Thing” by the Troggs.  If I have my cowboy boots on I may try a little “Forever and Ever, Amen,” by Randy Travis.

In the meantime, I’ll be practicing in the shower, the kitchen and in my car.  So, if you look over when we’re stopped at the stoplight and you see me singing, feel free to join in on the refrain.

It goes like this, “Wild thing!  You make my heart sing!  You make everything, groovy…”

“To paint or not to paint - that is the question.  Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of a disgusted conscience of youth, or to take up the phone book and dial a painter.”First of all, my apology to Mr. Shakespeare, who at this point in time is spinning so fast in his grave you could wrap him in a copper coil and use him to generate electricity, but in all fairness, like Mr. Hamlet, I too am very conflicted.

Growing up, if you couldn’t make it, fix it, or replace it with something out of the scrap heap, you really needed to seriously think about if you truly needed it or not.  If you did need it, was there a broken one somewhere on a neighboring farm you could buy and fix?  Was there an auction sale where you could buy something at less then cost?

We weren’t cheap, we just never wanted for waste.

Part of it was my Dad’s upbringing during the Great Depression.  If you needed something, you paid cash.  If you needed something done, you either did it yourself or you really didn’t need it done - with the possible exception of surgery…

That carried through to our upbringing - and lets face it, my folks had five kids to feed, cloth, and educate. Ultimately, that frugality was passed on to the next generation…or at least to me.

There are times when I may seem a bit more frugal then necessary…or as my friend Jed likes to say, I’m tighter with my money then a cat on the back of a bull (if you have ever seen a cat on the back of a bull, you would find this reference extremely funny - the more the bull bucks, the tighter the cat clamps down, which makes the bull buck more, which causes the cat to put its claws in even tighter, which causes the bull to buck even more, which causes the cat to…you get the picture…).

In college, I studied economics, the last of the hard sciences where things are concrete and cast in stone.

One of guiding principles in economics has to do with the proper allocation of resources and specializing.

If I am a commodity trader, I should specialize in commodity trading and let other people clean my house, paint my garage, and manage my money.

Outstanding theory…except for one thing…I’m cheap.

The house that I live in now requires some work.  The first task was replacing the landscaping out front.  No problem I thought, I will hire someone to do that work…until the estimates started coming in…

I decided how hard would landscape block be to put in, I’ll just make sure to make sure that I get someone to paint my garage, because how expensive could that be….

Once I got the estimates, I figured how hard could it be to paint my garage….

The frustrating thing is, I do have better things I could be doing.  Reading up on the economic collapse, writing about something extremely entertaining, preparing for a full day or commodity trading tomorrow…

But nope, I’ll be painting my garage.

I hear ya Hamlet, I hear ya.

“I think it is a bad idea.”After a full day of tailgating, football, alumni meetings, and a great supper, my good friend from college, his wife and I were finally driving towards their home where I was staying after fourteen hours visiting, drinking, eating, and meeting.As the day was starting, we had discussed the idea of waking up a group of friends from college for breakfast at five o’clock in the morning.  A tradition that goes back in my fraternity family for almost fourteen years, an early morning breakfast, was going to live on this homecoming.

(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)

Come Boss! Come Boss!  Come Boss!

Calling the cows is a tradition that’s as old as milking cows.  If you have a good voice and the wind is right, you can call the cows home from almost a mile away.

At our farm, we used to call our cows with an old Dodge.  We started out by driving out in the pasture with the old car.  We’d circle around behind and honk the horn to get them headed home at milking time.

Before long, we could just drive by on the road near the pasture and honk to get them headed home.  Later, we just honked the horn in the yard.  Once the cows began associating the horn with milking time (and feeding time), they never had to be retrained.  The new cows picked up the idea from the old cows and the entire herd would come when we honked.

It was a lot easier on our lungs and the cows didn’t seem to mind at all.

The only time we had trouble was when we junked the Dodge and dad bought a new car.  For a few weeks the cows seemed confused by the new horn, but they soon caught on.

Now Japanese researchers have improved on that tradition.  At an agriculture research farm, they’ve given each cow a beeper like those worn by doctors and busy business people.  With a little training, the cows figured out that when the beepers go off it’s time to come home.  Imagine that.  You don’t have to wait for cows to come home anymore, you can have them paged.

In related cow news, big city crime is spreading to the farm.  A dairy herd in Pennsylvania was the victim of a drive-by shooting last month.  Several cows were killed and several others were wounded when gunmen opened fire as the herd was grazing in a pasture.

What has the world come to, when people start to taking pot-shots at innocent cows?

Just as people barricade themselves inside their homes to avoid crime, soon our cows will be hunkered down in their barns to avoid barrages of bullets.  Maybe researchers will need to design bullet-proof vests for the dairy industry’s top producers.

I can just see herds of Holsteins capering off to the pasture outfitted in flak jackets and little bovine beepers.

I guess it’s true what they say.  Agriculture is becoming more and more complex every day.

In addition to the standard barn and farm chores, there was a number of household chores that we graduated into.  Starting when I was six, one of my jobs was throwing out the garbage - the left over scraps and coffee grounds from Mom’s kitchen that would get thrown back into the woods.When I was eight, I added burning the papers to the routine.  All of the burnable refuse was put in the garbage and burned as needed.

I can remember one cold winter day, I was out burning papers.  It was cold.  To get to the burning barrel we had to walk past the area where we worked on equipment.  On an old barrel was a jug of oil.  As I was walking back up to the house, I walked over and tried to pick up the jug of oil.  The cold brittle plastic broke in my hands and oil ran everywhere.

I was scared.

When I went back into the house, I told Dad that I found the oil jug broken.  He asked me if I had touched the jug.

I said no.

He got angry.  He knew that an oil jug wouldn’t break by itself.  He also knew by my face, by my body actions, that I was lying.

The oil was not the issue.  Lying was.

I had a choice.  Tell the truth or lie.  I chose poorly.

When the good Lord made man, he gave them the gift of free will.  What has to be so frustrating to the Lord is the number of times that we chose poorly.

In the gospel, Matthew tells us that the Lord compares heaven to a great wedding feast where the people that are invited chose not to show up - or worse, beat and kill his servants.  They are given and choice, and they chose poorly.

As a result, others, perhaps the less of society, get to enjoy the banquet in their place.

Free will.

How many times do we face decisions in this life and choose poorly.  In small things.  In big things.

How many times do we reject the Lord in our lives.  In our thoughts, in our words, in our deeds.  We fail to follow his path, his way.  We chose not to come to the wedding feast.

My father had a very gentle answer to his young son who was obviously very upset - about the spilled oil and about being caught in a lie.

“I’m not upset about the oil.” He said, “I’m disappointed that you chose to lie instead of telling your father the truth.”

I learned my lesson that day about lying…but I pray that I’ve also learned my lesson on making the right choice in His plans.

(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)I’ve never enjoyed competitive sports.  I only competed when I had to and avoided them whenever possible.  I don’t even watch them much on television.  Bowling’s O.K., but I don’t watch that on television either.

I was a wimp in grade school.  Games of “Dodge ball” and “Red Rover” left me terrified.  Things were even worse in high school.  I was a certified nerd. (I have a membership card, taped glasses and a pocket protector to prove it.)  And even worse, competitive sports became required as part of my education.

Football, basketball, wrestling, volleyball and badminton were part of the daily routine in my physical education classes.  I tried to become a conscientious objector, but my burly phys-ed teacher would hear nothing of it.  “You’re going to play and you’re going to like it.,” he would say.

He was half right.

Finally in college, I escaped the social demand to compete in contents of physical fitness. I completed my collegiate physical education requirements (one credit each for bowling, ballroom dance and swimming) without much trouble and left the world of competitive physical fitness behind.

Most of my friends, realizing that careers in professional football, baseball and wrestling were unattainable, finished their educations, found jobs and settled down to live life in suburbia like me.

I’ve made some adjustments myself.  I enthusiastically cheered for the Twins in the World Series this week (I even had one of those “Homer Hankies”) and i’ve been to a Cyclone basketball game or two.  I bowl competitively occasionally.

Still, I’m pretty wimpy where competitive sports are concerned.  But at last, my wimpiness no longer makes me a social outcast.

Then came the American Gladiators.

Each week Thunder, Nitro, Gemini, Ice, Laser, Gold, Zap, Blaze, Diamond and Malibu face off against normal (but well-muscled) people from next door.  They pummel each other with pugil sticks, shoot each other with tennis ball cannons and try to knock each other off of a 30-foot wall.  Just for fun.

More than 250 Iowans showed up at the try-out in Des Moines recently.  Four men and four women won the chance to go up against the Gladiators on national television next month.  The “games” will be televised from Des Moines.  I’ll bet Veteran’s memorial Auditorium will be sold out for the event and thousands more will watch on television.

No matter what you do, you can’t get away from the American Gladiators.  You’re forced to endure the television show, the toy “action figures” at your local toy store.  Your neighbors long for the chance to compete with them in “Breakthrough and Conquer.”  There’s no escape from the American Gladiators.  It’s like being sentenced to phys-ed all over again.

I’ve watched the American Gladiators a time or two.  It was goofy, silly and fun.  It wasn’t nearly as far out and ridiculous as professional wrestling or as boring as golf.  But the fanatics have taken it much too seriously and sucked all the fun right out of it.

Will I watch when eight Iowans compete next month?  Will I cheer for the home-state gladiators as they try to gain fame and notoriety to their Iowa by attempting to defeat the Gladiators?

Nah.  I’ll be watching bowling.

I met Ryan late in my career at NDSU.  He was coming into FarmHouse Fraternity as I was leaving it.  He was transferring in from Bismarck State College as I was wrapping up my exploits and getting ready to move on.Ryan became the good friend of my good friend and our paths continued to cross.  As Ryan moved through his classes (the same major as mine) and the organizations (many of the same ones as mine), I watched him grow and become a better and better leader.

Ryan also dated a very good friend of mine which meant that as I spent time with her, I had to spend time with Ryan as well.

Ryan was a worker.

In addition to his course load and many organizations at school, Ryan was active in state level politics.  Student government.  Student representative on the state board of higher education, internships with the governor’s office - Ryan could do no wrong.

It was fun, exciting, and a bit humbling to see Ryan in action.

Then, one day back on his folk’s farm, Ryan was burning down an old building.  An accidental back draft from the blaze left him with burns over much of his body.  I was working in Minneapolis at the time, and went to see him.  It was tough to see him laying there in the hospital.

But the same Ryan was there.  Yup, he was burned and scarred and hurting, but the same guy was there underneath.  He laughed at my jokes, kidded with his girlfriend, grinned through the pain.

Ryan had a long recovery.  The scars took some time to heal.  But it didn’t stop him.

It didn’t hardly even slow him down.

Law school, clerking for state and federal judges, chief legal council for the Governor at twenty-eight - not bad for a farm kid from north central North Dakota.

Trips to China, Cuba, Latin America - advising the governor, working with that state Senate and House of Representatives - working to make the state and the nation a better place to be.

Friday night was the big alumni dinner where I saw my friend, Ryan Bernstein honored as the “Horizon Award” winner for someone out of school ten years or less and making a significant impact in their profession and the world.

Ryan fit the bill - and it should be fun to see what the next ten years bring.