So there we were, fourteen eighteen and nineteen year olds, three camp staff, and one hundred and ten campers, in the middle of the Northwood’s, ten miles from the nearest town, one hour before breakfast, in a completely modern facility, with no water, no air conditioning, no lights, and no cooks.

It was going to be an interesting day.

About 7:30, with campers now starting to make it up to the main conference room, that the cook walked through the door…disheveled and obviously very tired.  I was very glad I had gotten that shower at five o’clock this morning.

“Where have you been?”  I asked.

“I’ve been trying to cut my way in with my chain saw since about five-thirty this morning.  I walked through the fallen trees for the last two miles.” He replied matter-of-factly.

Uh-oh.

There was cold cereal for breakfast that morning.

The sessions started on time that day at leadership camp, the campers unsuspecting of the damage done outside (well, except for the two campers that had their cars smashed from falling trees).

The only complaints came about the showers…or lack of showers.  About ten thirty, the camp staff came into the conference room to address the students.  As soon as they could get to town, they would pick up biodegradable soap so that people could wash up in the lake.  Toilet paper would be provided for those that had to go to the bathroom…we were lucky there; there was still thousands of trees still standing…

As my mind drifted back to the memory of the wonderful shower I had in the early dawn hours, they concluded their speech by saying, “hey, no one in this building got a shower this morning, so we are all in the same boat.”

I felt just a little guilt…but not much.

Throughout the day, the temperature outside, and inside, continued to rise.  It was turning out to be another scorcher with temperatures climbing almost to ninety degrees and humidity continued to be high.

Through it all, the campers were real troopers.  As the temperatures in the building rose, spirits never wavered.

When the road was opened and the trees cleared, fresh drinking water was brought in and contact, all be it irregular, with the outside world commenced once again.

At the traditional end of camp banquet, the normal big meal was replaced with, you guessed it, cold sandwiches and about everything out of the refrigerator that could spoil.  Eat up campers…eat up…

Sitting next to one of my fellow state officers, I was a bit alarmed to see her face go white and a look of fear cross her eyes.

“Steph, are you ok?”  Another fellow state officer asked.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Steph replied…setting down her sandwich…we found out later the spot of mold on her bun had lessened her appetite.

Batteries powered the dance that evening until we broke for the campfire…where the dark didn’t matter.

When we pulled out of the facility the next afternoon through banks of fallen trees, still with limited power (a generator had at least brought back flushing toilets and drinking water), we knew this would be a camp to remember for a very long time.

A reporter for an ag newspaper, The Land (http://www.theland.com/) had perhaps the perfect quote from one of the camp staff, and while I don’t remember it exactly, it was along the lines of: “There was no lights, and they didn’t complain.  We fed them cold food, and they didn’t complain.  We made them go to the toilet in the woods, and they didn’t complain.  They didn’t have showers, and they didn’t complain.”

It was a remarkable group of campers and state officers that year…even if one of them did cheat and get the last shower of the 1995 FFA State Leadership Camp!

(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) 

This is a magic time of the year.

It’s easy to miss the magic when the temperature reaches nearly 100 degrees and the humidity saps your strength.  All you can think about is air conditioning and the nearest lake or swimming pool.  But there’s magic out there if you know where to look.

Next time you take a ride in your car, take a look at the fields along the road.  How did that corn get so tall so fast?  Wasn’t it just poking through the soil a few days ago?  And look at those soybeans, their long, bushy rows stretching out to the horizon, when did they get so large?

It’s magic.

It’s not the mystical kind of magic, done with smoke and mirrors.  It is the simple, day-to-day magic worked by Mother Nature and largely ignored by the rest of us.  It happens every year.  Seeds get planted.  Fertilizer gets spread.  Herbicides get applied.  Then we wait for nature’s magic.

The farmer’s job is done for now.  There’s not a lot he can do now.  He can cultivate or spray to keep the weeds and insects at bay.  He looks to the sky for rain and prays that hail and wind do not knock his crops flat.  But most of what happens from now until harvest is beyond his control.

But it happens.  The corn seems to grow six inches a day.  The beans soon turn from tiny shoots to bushy plants.  Soon tassels and silks will appear on the corn and blossoms and pods on the beans.  Why and how does it happen? We can only wonder and admire the magic of nature that brings us a crop each year.

Even last year, when the sun burned down from the end of May until the middle of September and hardly a drop of rain fell during the entire time, nature gave Boone County a crop.

This year, there’s not an extra bit of moisture in the soil, but so far nature has been providing from above.  The crops look good and their only salvation has been the timely rains that have fallen on Boone County.

Will it rain enough to sustain the crop all season?

The cynic would bet against it, but those who tend nature’s magic, the farmers, believe otherwise.  They must.  If they didn’t believe that nature would provide, they would not be farming.

I met one such believer last week.  He was a retired farmer who had watched season after season of crops grow to maturity.  As we talked he looked up into a crystal blue sky.  There was not a cloud in sight and the temperature hovered around the 95-degree mark.

Had I asked, he would have been the last to admit that he believed in any “magic.”

But as we talked about the corn and the beans and the subsoil moisture and wondered if the rains would come in time, he turned his gaze from the sky to the withering grass beneath our feet.  Then he looked at me and smiled.  “I think it’ll rain.  I really think it will.”

(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) 

The screen door slammed against its frame as a skinny boy in ratty tennis shoes, patched jeans and a T-shirt stained with grape Kool-Aid shuffled out.  A rock caught his attention.  He drew back and gave it a solid kick.

The rock bounced across the gravel, kicking up puffs of dust as it tumbles down the hill.  The boy followed, eager to give it another kick before it could come to a complete stop.  After three kicks, the rock bounded off the driveway into the tall grass near the faded red granary.

The boy walked carefully into the grass, searching for the rock.  But it was quickly forgotten when a field mouse scurried toward the granary.  The mouse made a narrow escape into a hole near the building’s foundation.   After some prodding with a stick failed to flush the mouse from its burrow, the boy kicked some dirt down the hole and headed toward the barn.

Inside, it was cool and dark.  Tennis shoes slapped against the damp concrete, where buckets of milk and milk machines were washed twice a day.  The boy bent to drink directly from a faucet.  He knew the coldest water on the farm poured from that faucet in the dark corner.  And it always tasted best right from the faucet.

The boy picked a wide broom and began sweeping the dust and straw from the wide alleyway in the middle of the barn.  First it was only a chore, but soon the broom became a bulldozer and the boy commenced building roads and trails.  “Vroom!  Vroom!” He muttered to himself s the broom brushed side the clutter of the morning milking.

When the alleyway had been fully converted to a wide superhighway, the boy abandoned the broom and climbed the ladder to the haymow.  He clambered over bales and lunged over mounds of hay in his imaginary battle with evil Nazis.  The enemy was soon running in terror before the hero who was wielding a rifle that looked suspiciously like the broken handle of a pitchfork.

He collapsed on a bed of soft hay to catch his breath.  He used his hands to cast shadows in the sunlight that beamed through the windows so far above.  That’s when he heard the quiet mewing of baby kittens.

Cautiously he approached a tumble of bales.  He peered down a crevice between the bales.  The farm’s familiar mother cat peered back at him.  Five tiny kittens milled around her, tumbling over themselves in their infant awkwardness.

The boy watched in fascination.  He knew better than to touch the kittens before their eyes were open, the mother cat would certainly abandon them if he did.  So he watched silently until the mother cat began to become restless.  The   boy also knew the cat would move her babies if he became too much of a bother.

So he clambered down the ladder and bounded out of the barn.  The sunshine was so bright for a moment that it made him dizzy.  He squinted and blinked his eyes until he could see again.

He climbed aboard a nearby tractor.  He plopped down on the big seat and firmly grasped the wheel.  First it was a giant battleship and he was the captain.  He barked orders to his sailors as he guided the food shop through enemy line and rough seas.

Then the old Farmall became a race car and the boy became its fearless driver.  It was a dangerous race filled with crashes and hazards, but somehow he managed to emerge victorious at the finish line.

Then the tractor was a tractor again and the boy was a farmer just like Dad.  He concentrated on keeping his corn rows arrow-straight as he worked diligently to finish planting before the approaching thunderstorm poured out its rain on the thirsty ground.

The job was finished just before the rains came and just as he mother called him for supper.  He shuffled across the dusty gravel back he house.  The screen door slammed against its frame again as he disappeared inside.

Miles and years away, a newspaper columnist toils away at a word processor.  Outside, the summer sun beats down on emerald lawns and gently swaying trees.  From inside the air-conditioned office, the writer looks out the window and wonders whatever happened to those grand lazy summer days of his boyhood.

 In the alphabet soup of the National and State FFA (former known as the Future Farmers of America), the Minnesota Leadership Camp (or SLCCL as it is know, which stands for State Leadership Camp something something), was a fantastic experience for young people who are junior’s and senior’s in high school.

Unfortunately, my first experience came as one of councilors, a role that I received when I had the honor of being selected for the Minnesota FFA State Vice President.

Never having experienced the camp as a camper left me a bit in the dark as the other state officers talked about the wonders of the camp in the deep woods of Northern Minnesota - I was told it was a wonderful place, rustic, yet completely modern.

Driving from the plains of northwestern Minnesota to the trees to the east (and south - turns out the north woods of Minnesota to those from the southern half of the state are just the deep woods to those guarding the North Dakota border).

Driving in through the tall trees along the winding state highway, then the winding driveway, all through a forest of tall pine trees, gently waving in the breeze - I will admit, I was awestruck.  I had traveled through this part of the state before, but there was beauty in the trees that hugged the road.  Walking into the entrance of the facilities, all of the reports were correct.  It was fantastic.  A large conference room with two large wings of rooms - one for boys, one for girls, fanned out on each side.

The first day was prep work for the fourteen of us state officers and two camp directors (state officers the previous year).  The small staff on site helped us get acquainted with the inner workings of the facility (where the kitchen was, who to talk too about the air conditioning or the bathrooms).  On Monday, one hundred and ten campers showed up, ready to learn about leadership and team work.

I will admit, the weather the first several days at the camp was darn near perfect, highs in the eighties, gentle breezes swaying the pines.  On Tuesday, you could feel the humidity levels start to rise and the afternoon heat got up to the upper eighties and low nineties…no worry for us in our air conditioned comfort.

On Tuesday night, a series of thunderstorms rolled through the area, causing us to loose power for about twenty minutes just as I was getting out of bed about five in the morning (once a dairy farmer, always a dairy farmer).  The worst of it passed just as I managed to wrestle the windows shut in the main conference room.

At least the heat and humidity should subside, I thought.

I thought wrong.

The day dawned hotter and more humid then the previous one.  The air conditioner worked overtime.  Students had to be herded outside and down to the lake to get them outside of the air conditioned comfort of the lodge.

Maybe another storm tonight we state officers mused to ourselves - that would break the heat and humidity.

Sure enough, about four the next morning, the sound of distant thunder woke me from my slumber.  Soon I could hear the howling noise outside the open window in the room where I was in charge of about fifteen juniors and seniors.  Shutting the window, I rushed upstairs to shut the windows in the main conference room…just as we once again lost power.

I was wrestling with the windows, trying to get them closed and fighting with the wind as I stopped in my tracks….the rain was coming near horizontal through the room…I could hear a constant cracking nose outside of the windows.  The trees outside the windows seemed to be laying on their sides….tornado!

As I rushed out of the room, one of the college students that lived on site came out of their room, the weather radio wasn’t going off, so she advised me not to wake anyone (would just cause unnecessary panic…and no one wanted one hundred and ten panicked high schooler’s at four thirty in the morning.

The storm had blown itself out by five, and I proceeded to shower and prepare for the day.  Standing in the warmth of the water, thinking about the potential disaster that had nearly befallen us…

Walking upstairs to greet the cooks about six, I was surprised to find the power still out, and no cook to be found.  Usually the staff of two greeted me happily as they prepared for the first meal of the day.

About seven, people were stirring around.  Still without power.  Still no cooks.  Now, seeing the damage outside our windows.  Downed trees as far as the eye could see.  Cars squashed in the parking lot.  The heat and humidity rising…with no air conditioning, no fans, no refrigeration, no radios, no phones, no water…like any completely modern facility…everything ran on electricity!

 I’ll admit, sometimes growing up, it was a little strange.  In my graduating class, I had about four other kids whose grandparents graduated from high school at about the same time as my Dad.  Yes, grandparents that graduated with my Dad.

Not getting married until he was thirty-five years old, and having kids for almost another eighteen years, it was easy to explain.

It was strange, but also pretty cool.

Sure, while my friends were listening to the Rolling Stones and Fog Hat while riding around with their folks, I had to be satisfied with Whopee John, Elmer Scheid, and the always popular Bohemian Polkaist, Al Grebnick.

Sure, while my friends were being told harrowing stories about their parents driving the back roads in their muscle cars during the summers of peace and love, I got to listen to stories of the Great Depression and World War II. (While technically not a member of the “World War II” generation or the “Baby Boom,” my Dad having been too young to serve in World War II, but being born in 1929, was old enough to have experienced the hardships of the home front and the ravages of the Great Depression).

In some ways, Dad is a classic stoic farmer of the Great Plains.  Growing up, rarely did I hear him complain about the weather or farming for that matter.  Prices were prices.  Weather was weather.  You did the best you could with it.  He enjoyed what he did.

In some ways, Dad is the stereotype of the backbone of this country.  He and Mom working long hours on the farm, but still making time for community, and family.  Volunteering at the church, school, and local government.

Dad also has certain amount of stubbornness.  It is like the old saying, “You can always tell a Bohemian, but you can’t ever tell him much.”  The important thing is, on the things where one should be malleable, Dad is malleable.  Where it is a matter of right or wrong, there is no compromise. 

One of the stories that I remember from my youth was when Dad did a stint on jury duty and served on case about some cows that had trampled a neighbors wheat field.  The jury found against the farmer with the cows, but rejected the proposed settlement from the farmer that had lost the wheat, “It was simple, you take the acres lost, times the bushel, times the price.”  Dad said.  The judge was pleasantly surprised and complimented Dad and the jury on the verdict.  The farmer with the lost wheat, and was betting on a new tractor, wasn’t so pleased.

As a father, my Dad could be gracious, understanding, frustrating, and mean.  We never had a curfew (but we always had to be up to milk cows), homework, a basketball game, or a date could get us out of the barn before milking was done.  He would pick us up when we lost a game, an award or an honor, but he was also always chiding us for not doing better.

He is also has a very subtle, very smooth, very, very dry sense of humor.  Driving down the road one day past a tumbled down building, he casually remarked, “Dad bought Hank and me Christmas candy there, but it wasn’t very good.”

“What was wrong with it?”  I asked.

“I think it was because it was the 4^th of July.”  He remarked.

The memory that will forever be burned in my mind is the day that we found out that Mom wasn’t going to beat her cancer.  Dad walked into the barn where I was milking and said, “Mom isn’t going to make it.  They want to put her in a nursing home.”

“What did you tell them?” I asked.

“I told them to go to hell.  I vowed for better or for worse.  This is just the worse part.” He replied.

Took her home he did.  For eighteen months, we cared for her, until she passed on with him at her side.

We are celebrating Dad’s 80^th birthday this weekend, and I’m not sure what you can get a stubborn, cantankerous, humble, strong, proud man like that.  I think all you can say is, someday, I hope to be as good a husband, as good a father, as good a man as you.

(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) 

The sun is already hot.  My jeans are soaked through up to the knees from the early morning dew.  Dew drops glisten like jewels as they cling to the single strand of barbed wire.   A sparrow perched on the wire scolds as I approach.  As it leaps to the air, the tiny wet jewels fall sparkling to the wet grass below.

I trudge along.  My tattered, hooded sweatshirt hangs from my shoulders.  An hour ago I needed it, but now I wish I’d have left it at home.  The wet grass whips across the toes of the rubber overshoes I wear over my work boots.  It makes a hollow sound.

Except for that hollow swishing, the scolding of the sparrows and the chirping of crickets, there is not much other sound.  Occasionally the staple and pliers and hammer and insulators shift noisily in the bucket that I carry.

These are the things I remember now about fixing fence.

Fixing fence- a simple name for a job that is never finished.  Rain softens the ground, allowing post to settle and lean.  Snow and ice stretch wires, pulling them free from staples and insulators.  Weeds and grass and branches brush against the wire, siphoning off the electric charge that is so effective at keeping the cows where they belong.  Wooden posts age and weather, cracking and rotting until the wood can no longer hold a staple or until the entire post just topples over.

These were the things I looked for as I swished along through the wet morning grass.

I remember the beauty of the dew drops.  I can recall stillness of the air and see the birds, rabbits, badgers, and gophers that I could occasionally spy in the grass.  I can remember looking across the fields rolling into the distance.  Acres and acres of oats and wheat and barley that were golden in their ripeness, but even more brilliant in the morning sun.

I remember seeing the barn where I started my journey around the fence.  It was a mile’s distance and I could no longer hear the shuffling of the cows or the soft whir of electric motors and the click-shush of milking machines.  But I could see my father occasionally framed in the gaping back door, peering across the pasture to measure my progress.

These visions are pleasant memories now. 

At the time, I cursed the dew for soaking my jeans.  I slashed at the tall waving grass for shorting out the electric fence.  I grumbled at my father for make me carry a pail of rusty staples around a wet pasture early in the morning.  But mainly I cussed those rotten cows for making fences necessary at all.

And not all fence fixing was done in the early-morning sunshine.  Sometimes it was cold or hot or raining and snowing or dark when the fences needed fixing.  Sometimes the barbs cut my hands and sometimes my fingers got pinched in the fencing pliers or the wire-tightener.

But now, lost in memories of dew drops and waving grass, those images are not so vivid.  And I can appreciate the necessity of fixing fence and the quiet lesson that a mundane job can teach.

A friend who lives three states away wrote a letter to me recently.  He expressed his sincere and lengthy thanks of my efforts in maintaining a friendship that had first sprouted while we were roommates in college.

The letter caused me to pause.  I hadn’t thought about the effort I was expending to maintain this long-distance friendship.  I only knew that it needed to be done-much like fixing fence.

(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) 

The U.S. Supreme Court says it’s legal to burn the United States flag in order to make a political statement.

Predictably, the country is in an uproar.  Veterans’ groups are outraged and President George Bush is calling for an amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit desecration of the flag.  Flag burning has become an emotionally charged issue that has captured headlines in nearly every newspaper.

In Boone, as in the rest of Iowa, citizens continue to fly flags with pride.  Each day Story Street presents a stunning array of red, white and blue as the twin rows of flags snap briskly in the breeze.  Schools, courthouses and other instititutions and businesses gently unfurl their flags each morning and take them in again in the evening.

There is a reverence for the flag in small-town America that is refreshing.  That reverence is missing in many areas.

While burning the flag is certainly a shocking act, the flag is desecrated each day in many places in a similar but much more subtle fashion.

Have you ever noticed how some of those big trucks stops and discount stores and other businesses fly rows and rows of U.S. Flags?  I think that it is commercialism rather patriotism that is the motive.  Often the flags are tattered, ripped faded or stained.  Is there honor and reverence in displaying the flag in such a state.

Elsewhere flags are flown at night without illumination or in the rain or snow or sleet.  Is this any less a form of desecration than burning?

As a reporter, I saw a flag nailed to barn walls and draped over tractors for “media events.”  When those events were over, campaigners wadded up their flags and casually threw them into the trunks of their cars-until the next stop.  We can only hope that the politicians who are outraged now will remember their love of the flag next time they take to the campaign trail.

As a young boy, I can remember anxiously awaiting my turn for flag duty.  I would rush to school so that my flag partner and I could carefully take the flag out to the pole, unfurl it and hoist it to the top.

Just before the end of school, we would solemnly lower the flag, being careful not to let it touch the ground, and carefully refold it onto its triangular package.  We considered it an honor to handle and display the flag.

I’ve always been appalled by those who fail to show proper respect for the flag.  Perhaps this flag-burning issue will cause some of them to rethink their actions and attitudes.

If so, perhaps Old Glory will fare a little better at the hands of her keepers- with or without a constitutional amendment.

 We were law breakers - smugglers some might say - expressing our freedom and celebrating our country’s Independence Day with illicit fireworks bought in North Dakota and smuggled into Minnesota by older brothers.  It seemed so very wrong, but at the same time, so fitting, like the original rebels of old, making a mockery of the Stamp Act - so we were defying the state of Minnesota.

Even the names and phrases sounded like something with a criminal bent.  A brick of firecrackers.  A gross of bottle rockets.  A package of cherry bombs.  A black snake pellet.  A flaming pinwheel.

Our celebrations generally started early.  Before the cows were done being milked, even Dad was getting into the act.

“Give me a pack of those firecrackers.”  He would ask, taking a punk to the fuse, he would throw a soon to be explosive pack at an especially skittish cat…never close enough to harm them, but always close enough to make them jump.

Generally, we would look for anything that we could blow a hole in without doing major damage.  On wet days, it was mud puddles, or some variation of it.  A mud dam would be blown wide open with one well placed explosion.  A mud fort miniature could have holes blown in it instantaneously as fire crackers rained down from above.  In dry years, with no mud to be found, a relatively fresh cow pie would have to substitute, but there was some trick in finding one just the right consistency.  One too fresh would leave a splatter range sometimes farther then you could run with the length of the fuse.  One too dry would not have the spectacular cratoring effect you might be looking for.

Even with thirty cows and a big parcel of young stock, sometimes those just ripe cow pies were tough to find.

Sometimes too, even though we knew the full effect wasn’t good until after dark, a package or two of bottle rockets would come out too.

One particularly memorable Fourth of July happened when my oldest brother came home for the long weekend.  Being gone from the farm and having a real job and a college education, he was longer required to help with the milking.

As us two youngest boys were finishing up milking, Tom and a small group of family were making rounds of the farm, looking for the perfect mud pile or cow pie to blow up.

At the end of the barn, we had a five gallon pail that we used when we had to dump milk from a cow that was being treated with antibiotics.  Being summer, and us kids being kids, when the cow’s milk was safe to go to the tank, that five gallon pail wasn’t always emptied promptly…which in summer meant that it turned into a semi slurry, sludgy goop.

My brother, with his fancy college education and full time adult career, decided to do a bit of a science experiment.  Taking a bottle rocket and placing to upside down on the top of those curdling plastic pail of milk, he was determined that it would make a voyage of exploration to the bottom of the pail.

Lighting it, we all jumped back, expecting a big bubble of sour milk to burp from the top…a good comedy relief from blowing up the normal cow pie.

It appeared to be a wasted effort.  The bottle rock shot downward into the soured, half solid mix, but creating little more then a few bubbles on the top of the pail.

Then we heard the muffled explosion…followed by the bottom of the pail breaking forth with a beauty, a shock, and a stench seldom seen on the farm.  Soured, rotten milk poured over the cement floor.  We stood there - in shock, in awe, in disgust.

Then we laughed.  And laughed.  And laughed.

My oldest brother took it like a man, cleaning up the mess himself, scrapping the smelling, curdling mass off the cement floor.

Dad provided the best commentary during milking that evening.  “Well, I guess that was one way to get the barn floor clean.”