(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 summer of 1988)

Like a lazy snake, sunning under the hot summer sky, the Mighty Mississippi River winds it way under the sandstones bluffs of Red Wing, Minnesota.

A boom-town in the 1870’s, Red Wing thrived on the flow of grain spilling sown from northern Minnesota and the Dakotas.  Riverboats, steamed by, billows of smoke streaming across the mighty waters.  In the richly –appointed halls and lounges of the St. James Hotel, traders bought and sold wheat and corn for shipment down the river.

As the railroads expanded their steely grip on the nation, the importance of Red Wing as a trading center slipped.  The once-grand St. James and the fabulous city opera house declined into second-rate status.

Until 10 years ago, Red Wing, like Boone and hundreds of other Midwestern cities and towns, was slowly losing its businesses and citizens.  Citizens of Red Wing traveled the 50 miles to Minneapolis and St. Paul for shopping entertainment, much like Boone residents travel to Ames and Des Moines now.

Then civic-minded Red Wing citizens, with the help of the Red Wing Shoe Company and other businesses and investors, decided it was time to turn the town around.  One of the first projects was to restore the St. James to its original grandeur.  Its brass accents shine and the dark woodwork glows with new life.  From the huge windows in the elegant dining room, patrons watch the massive barges make their way toward the gulf.

Folks come from across the Midwest to enjoy the sandstone bluffs and historic home of Red Wing.  A burgeoning bed-and-breakfast industry is doing well.  The City Opera House where Garrison Keillor broadcast a few of his episodes of his “Prairie Home Companion,” will re-open later this year, completely restored.

An entire city block of historically significant buildings is being restored to reflect its original appearance.  New buildings have sprung up, but city officials, mindful of history, have made certain that they blend into the city-scape.

The revitalized downtown, parks on the riverfront and on the bluffs, and a can-do attitude has brought Red Wing millions of tourist dollars.

There’s a lesson here for Boone.  History and tradition run deep here.  Where grain and river trade built Red Wing, railroads, coal and agriculture built Boone.  Beneath those modern facades in downtown Boone lurks a century’s worth of architecture.  Under the brambles and brush of Boone’s rural country-side hides the remnants of a rich coal-mining and railroad industry.

The Ledges and the quiet beauty of the Des Moines River Valley are natural wonders that rival Red Wing’s sandstone bluffs and the Mississippi.

The key to success in Boone is the same as it is in Red Wing- forward thinking leadership with the initiative to formulate a plan and the tenacity to follow through.

The Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad, Marnie’s Birthplace and Ledges State Park are steps in the right direction. But Boone needs a plan to pull its tourist attractions together.  This spring’s leadership conference was a step in the right direction.

Leaders needn’t think small.  A Des Moines River Convention Center maybe the catalyst Boone County needs to become the largest tourist center in the state. With the right attitude and enough planning, tourists could be flocking here from Des Moines, Fort Dodge or even the Twin Cities.

The pieces are all here.  Boone just needs to put them together.

 (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 summer of 1988)

There was something pretty special about it.

My wife, Mary, and I spent July 2 in Hillsboro, N.D.  We were there for a wedding of two of our close friends.

We spent Saturday cruising up the Red River Valley to Hillsboro, a tiny town located midway between Fargo and Grand Forks.  The heavy soil of that area holds water like a sponge.  As we descended over the rim of the valley, the effects of the drought could scarcely be seen as thousands of acres of green wheat fields spread out before us.

It’s flat there.  The only thing that interrupts the fields are the exit ramps on I-29 and the power poles that march to the horizon.  Here and there, farms break the patchwork of the fields.

Hillsboro and its Crystal Sugar beet processing plant appear on the horizon miles before it’s time to turn off the highway.  We rolled into town about 5:30 p.m., giving us a little time before the 6 p.m. Wedding.  We found Our Savior Lutheran Church on a tidy side street.  The grass was mowed, the bushes trimmed and the door open to catch the evening breeze.

The church seemed fairly old with recent additions.  The dark pews were worn from use.  The Scandinavian influence in the area was as evident in the church’s soaring beams and carvings as in the voices of the family and friends who gathered there.

The families of both the bride and the groom have their roots firmly planted in the North Dakota soil.  In a cliché, they both came from “sturdy stock.”  Fathers wore similar happy expressions softened by years of weathering in North Dakota’s summers and winters.  Mothers also wore similar expressions-a mixture of joy and panic.

It was a nice wedding, as weddings go.  There was a scampering flower girl and some problems with a stubborn unity candle.  We noticed one groomsman had brand-new cowboy boots.

The little touches were nice too.  The bride had made her own dress.  It was complimented by a Norwegian wedding crown- a family heirloom.  There was Norwegian wedding cake and lefse at the reception.

After the wedding, the party moved out to the family farm.  Children fished chilled pop out of the stock tank.  A elderly three-piece band, an accordionist, a guitar player and a drummer, played polkas and waltzes near the garage while couple twirled on the concrete floor.  The red sun sunk out of sight behind the tractors and implements that had been lined up solemnly for the occasion.

It was a traditional Midwestern rural wedding.  So down-to-earth, yet so uplifting.  What made the wedding special?  Was it the wheat waving in the breeze?  The dust hanging over the gravel road?  The sun setting on a little Norwegian church?

We had come to see two people who belonged together pledge to stay that way.  We shared their day.

It was also reminiscent of what Mary and I went through on a July Saturday two years ago.  The elements were there- family, friends, and solemn vows- the things that count.

Eric and Nancy will face problems.  They’ll fight and they’ll make up.  It’ll happen whether they stay in North Dakota or move on to someplace like Iowa.  In the meantime they’ll grow.  They’ll grow in love and they’ll grow closer to friends and family.  That’s what happens to “sturdy stock.”

 (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 1988)

I still have a little grease on my knuckles.

When the weather was nice last week I decided to be macho and change the oil in my pickup.  A lot of folks change their own oil all the time, but not me.  I usually take it to a handy mechanic and say, “change the oil and check things over.”

So I pulled on a pair of blue coverall, making me look like a pseudo-mechanic, and went to work.

It’s not like I’ve never done any mechanic’s work before.  I changed oil and did simple repairs on all kinds of farm equipment when I was back home.  I even managed to do an engine overhaul while I was in high school shop class.

Maybe I’m getting soft.  Here I sit, day after day, building sentences and paragraphs and tuning up the press releases that come across my desk.  The most mechanical thin i’ve done since I started my writing career is to hang some blinds in our last apartment.

I miss doing that kind of stuff.  It was a spring ritual at home to coax all those motors to life after a long winter of idleness.  We’d squirt oil and gas into the cylinders through the spark plug holes and pour gasoline down through the carburetor.   Then we would have to pull the tractors around the yard until they started.

So there I was, socket wrench in hand, coveralls on, ready to play mechanic.  I plopped down on the garage floor and wriggled under the truck.  My coveralls quickly picked up the dust that has been coating the floor for 20 or 30 years or so.  Our garage is rather dark so along with the socket wrench, I carried a flashlight.

It’s one of those fancy rechargeable lights. 

It went out as soon as I needed it and it wouldn’t come back on.  There I was on a dirty garage floor, in the dark, and as I soon found out, with the wrong sized socket.  I had two others in my pocket, but they wouldn’t fit the oil plug either.

So, I wiggled back out from the darkness under my truck, through the dirt and rummaged around in my tool box.

As a young boy I wanted a tool box just like my dad’s.  Now I realize that is exactly what I’ve got.  On top are some spark plugs that I replaced about two years age.  Under those is a distributor cap.  There is a frayed battery cable in there along a set of points and a condenser.  Mixed in with all these things is my scant collection of tools.  Underneath all of those things are some unidentifiable parts and pieces.

Mixed in with all that junk was the socket I needed.

I found it, got back under the truck, and drained the oil.   I was feeling pretty self-sufficient about then.  I managed to change the filter without much incident.

I was pretty proud of myself.  Just like back on the farm where we’d change the oil on all the tractors before spring field work started. 

While the oil was draining out of the engines we’d sit around and laugh at the stories about a guy down the road who drove his tractor without refilling it with oil.

By the way I did remember to put five quarts of oil back into my truck’s engine.  I may be out of practice, but I’m not a complete idiot.  Now the only problem is that I have grease, oil and dust all over those nice clean blue overalls.

Back home it didn’t matter.  I’d wipe my hands on my coveralls or my shirt.  “I’m working hard, Mom won’t care.  Clothes are washable.”

My wife cares,  “What am I supposed to do with these?” She said while holding them up with two fingers.

Anyway, I had fun.  It was just like being at home again.  Almost.

 (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 1988)

Every farm has a “Tractor form Hell.”

I give you as an example my father’s Farmall “Super MTA” with the “TA” standing for “ torque amplified.”   According to the operator’s manual, the torque amplifier was designed to provide extra power when needed without having to use the clutch or gearshift.

Nifty idea.  It rarely worked.

The tractor was the farm “loader tractor.”  To the uninformed this means simply a tractor with a front-end loader.  Not so.  To those with a farm background, “loader tractor” means  “a Tractor we must use everyday, but rarely functions properly.”

“Super MTA’s” did not come equipped from the International Harvester Company with power steering.  The added weight of a front-end loader made the tractor extremely difficult to steer.”

So dad scavenged a power steering unit from a junked Farmall 400.

I remember well that cool evening when we clustered around the pickup truck.  Dad pointed to a greasy object with hoses and levers protruding.  “What do you think of that,” he said with pride in his voice as the thing oozed oil.

“Neat, dad. What is it?”

He looked at me in obvious disappointment.  How could his eldest offspring fail to recognize a power-steering from a Farmall “400?”

“It’s a power steering unit from a “400”, he would say.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Put it on the loader tractor.”

Now I was impressed.  Up until then it took two of us to steer the loader tractor and then the job wasn’t easy.

The unit was installed and the hoses were connected.  As if by magic, the steering wheel could be turned with a single hand.

But then the hood wouldn’t fit over the unit.  The hood was necessary to keep dust, feed and hay from building up on the hot engine.  The answer?

A hammer.  We pounded the hood down around the unit until we could get the hood clips clipped.  It didn’t look good, but it worked.Those years of sitting in a junkyard, didn’t do that power-steering unit any good.   We soon found that it leaked oil.  The oil would leak out and down onto the engine where it would smoke and smell and cause the engine to overheat.Try as we might we could not get the connections to stop leaking, so we settled for the next best thing.  We washed the tractor about as often as we put oil into the hydraulic and power steering system.

 (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 1988)

Hi. My name is Tom Jirik.

I am a polka-holic.

It all started years ago.  My folks were both heavily into polkas and waltzes.  They called it “Old – time.”  They listened to Frankie Yankovic and his Yanks, the Six Fat Dutchmen, the Jolly fishermen, Polka Padre, Nebraskan boy al Grebnik and of the unforgettable Whoopie John Wifart.  I had no choice but to listen along.

As the oldest child, I had no older brothers or sisters to warn me of the dangers of polkas.  By age 5, I was hooked.  Time and time again, I warned my youngest brothers about the dangers of polka music.  “Listen to hard rock bands like AC-DC or KISS,” I would tell them.  “You don’t want to wind up like me.”

As a third grader, I totally lost control of my craving for polkas.  I had a small 48-bass accordion and took lessons from a nun, Sister Cecelia, who was 150 years old if she was a day over 20.

She tried to disguise the music, but it didn’t work.  Two months after starting lessons, I noticed that the song I was learning, “Vegetables on Parade,” sounded a lot like the “Too Fat Polka.”

I’m certain that Polka-holism is a hereditary disease.  My grandfather on my dad’s side was playing in a polka band by the time he was 15.  On my mother’s side, a great uncle was a Swiss yodeler and accordionist from a young age.  Destiny dictated that I too would become a polka-holic.

When I was in my early teen-age years, I went to my first polka concert.  Myron Floren was playing at the county Fair.  I still have the autographed album and tattered publicity photo.

When I was in high school other student musicians were experimenting with electric guitars and synthesizers.  Me?  I was polishing my new Italian-made Iorio electric accordion.

“Learn to play like Myron,” my dad would say, “And you’ll have the best accordion money can buy.”

I took lessons off and on for 5 years.  My parents always held high hops that I would become a well-known accordionist like Myron.  Every time he came with Lawrence Welk, they would hail me into the room so I could watch his fantastic performance.  Flashy rings!  Ruffles shirts!  What a life.  What a showman.

I never achieved accordion fame, but my father still holds out hope.  Nearly every time I talk to him on the telephone he asks anxiously, “Are you still practicing your accordion?”

I feel guilty when I have to lie, so I practice now and then.  I still don’t have control of my polka-holism.  Sometimes I just have to pull out my polka tapes and records and listen to them.

I strap on that big heavy accordion.  It feels good, hanging on my shoulders like an old friend, ready to sing to me.  When the whole world’s against me I turn to my accordion… and polkas.  Polka-holism almost got my brother, John, too.  He started playing tuba in grade-school.  But he’s kicked it now.  I don’t think he’s Oom-Pah’ed in more than a year

I wasn’t so lucky. That big accordion sits in the closet even now, waiting for me to pull it out and limber up the bellows.  I’ll always wear my watch on my right wrist instead of my left because on the left it hinders my accordion skills.

Sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed by polkas, I dream about becoming America’s next polka king.  I’d buy a big fancy Cordovox, the best accordion money can buy.  I’d have a tour bus and a whole band dressed in liederhosen to play Oom-Pahs in the background.

And after a concert or dance, we’d sit back-stage and clink our beer steins together in a toast to polka-holism.

 (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 summer of 1989)

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.

 (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 March 16, 1988)

From seventh grade on I was one of those performers.  I played a baritone horn in the Mahnomen High School Band.  I started out with the rest of the beginners in “C” band.  Then as we got better or played louder, (I’m not sure which) we advanced to “B” band.

With our move to “B” band we graduated from “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” to real and real easy John Philip Sousa marches.  Once we started playing real music, I realized the glamour instruments like the trumpets, flutes, and trombones played all the good stuff music.  The workhorse instruments, like baritones, had the privilege of playing things like “counter-melodies,” and “movements.”

Those of us who played baritone were not impressed.  But as we got better and even louder, we baritones occasionally got to play little melodies here and there.  That kept us happy and we all stuck it out and eventually made it to “A” band.

Our band director, Mr. Kuhn, tried to teach us by example.  He was a proficient performer with most of the instruments in the band, but picking up an instrument to demonstrate was too time-consuming and inconvenient.  Instead he would mouth the proper sounds.

Ta. Ta, taas for the trumpets, Pa, pa, paaas for the baritones and wa, was, waaas for the trombones.  It was pretty humorous.

Will directing he would leap about on his podium screaming out all of his bizarre noises.  Any casual observer would have committed him to a home for the infirm on sight.

Any student who learned how to play an instrument from Mr. Kuhn knows his unorthodox methods worked.

The high school cheerleaders wanted to put together a dance routine to one of our tunes.  They came in and set up a tape recorder in front of the band next to the director’s podium.

When the tape was played back, we were amazed at Mr. Kuhn’s stunning mouth performance of “Star’s and Stripes Forever.”  It was unfortunate that the recording was ruined by all that muffled band noise in the background.

When there wasn’t snow on the ground, the band practiced marching.  We practiced marching with horns and we practiced marching without horns.  We practiced bumping into each other while turning military-style corners.  Consequently, most of our horns received as many dents on the streets as most cars in town.

The dropping of horns upon the pavement was sternly frowned upon, but happened with surprising frequency.

We marched in performances about three times each year.  We would march for the home-town crowd at the Annual Rice Days Festival.  This celebration is similar to Pufferbilly Days, except there are no trains, only beer.  We were their kids so they had to clap.

We marched on the football field at homecoming.  We performed dazzling marching maneuvers, usually in the rain or the snow, while everyone else was at the concession stand or in the bathroom.

Finally we went on the road to another town to march in a civic celebration.  Usually on the hottest day of the year, we would get all snazzed up in our flashy maroon and gold wool uniforms, pile into a stuffy school bus, drive for an hour, then march on the sweltering pavement for a mile or two.

Boy, did we have fun.  A flute player or a coronet player or two usually succumbed to the heat and fainted during these “death marches,” but as far as I know there were never any fatalities.

Daaa,daa,da,da.  Daaa, da, da.  Daaa,da,da.  Baaa, baaa,ba, da,deet, dot, dow.

For those of you who never had Mr. Kuhn as a band director, that was the tune form “Good Night Ladies, I’m Going to Leave You Now.”

 (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 on March 23, 1988)

What about the moms out there?

Here we are saluting the working women and nobody has mentioned the moms.  You don’t have to wear a business suit, a hard hat or a uniform to be a working woman.

Those moms out there get out of bed early, get the kids off to school, was the clothes, clean the house, cook the meals and do all the other stuff that moms do.  It looks like hard work to me.  Yet, all to often, i’ll meet women who will tell me, “I’m just a homemaker.”

Just a homemaker?

Running a family has to be as challenging as running your own business.  The end product is certainly more important.

Those of you who are working up a lather because you think that I think that all women should stay home and be homemakers, hold your horses.  If a woman wants to work outside the home. That’s fine with me.  She should be allowed to have a fair shot for any job she chooses at a fair wage.

Moms work hard.  They accept heavy responsibility.  They do a good job at what they do.

What I’m trying to sayis,”why should a mom be penalized, chastised, and looked down on for wanting to be a full-time homemaker?”

I can’t think of any good reasons, can you?

I didn’t think so.

Speaking of working women, what about all those farmer’s wives out there?  Lets give them a little recognition too. Many farm wives have assumed a partnership position on the farm.  These working women are another group that is largely ignored.

They handle sizeable sums of money with ease and expertise.   They fix fences.  The chase cows.  They drive tractors.  In some cases, where a husband works off the farm, they do the majority of farm work.  In many more cases the farm work is shared equally.

Again, these hard workers are often ignored when it comes time to salute “working women.”  Not only that but laws regarding divorces, and ownership of farm assets virtually refuse to admit that farm wives exist.  Under some of the existing laws, farm wives have very little control over the farm or very little chance of maintaining a piece of that farm in the event of a divorce.

Most farm wives, like my mother, combine their roles as farm partners, off-the-farm workers and mothers.

“As soon as I get off work, i’ll run out to John Deere and pick up those parts, stop at the store and buy groceries, pickup the kids at school and take Margaret to dance lessons,” Mom would say.

“O.K.,” dad would respond.  “While you’re in town, could pick up that tire at the co-op and could we have supper early tonight?   I have a meeting.”

Mom would get it all done without a second thought and we would take it all for granted.  For those of you who know a mom, a farm wife or a farm wife/mom, don’t forget to salute them once in awhile- preferably more than once a year.

(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 summer of 1988)

Ever since I started college way back in 1982 i’ve been washing my own clothes in some form of pay washer or another.  In Boone, I spend at least two hours a week at the Duds and Suds Laundromat down in the Alco Mall.

I see more of Duds and Suds owner Jim Haleen and his family than I do of my won family up in Minnesota.  His Laundromat is a little different than those we took pictures of last week.

I think the magazines are newer.  There is somebody attending the place all the time and when you buy pop and candy it’s from a person and not a machine.

Jim says those old fashioned touches will be the wave of the future.  “When somebody rebuilds a Laundromat these days, they rebuild like this,” he said.

Jim said he gets to meet many of Boone’s newest residents through his work at the Laundromat.  Many new arrivals don’t have a washer and dryer so they come to Duds and Suds.

Let’s face it, doing laundry at Duds and Suds is pretty posh.  I toss my clothes in, grab a soda, plop down in a couch and watch a big-screen TV.  What a life.

And Haleen and family are trying to make it even better.  They’ve moved the snack counter and added a drycleaning and laundry service.

When I lived in the forms at college, you had to trudge down into the dungeon of a basement to the washers.  The university obviously felt that three washing machines for 2,000 men was more than enough.  Consequently 3 a.m. Was a good time to wash.

When I lived in Bismarck, N.D., I used to carry my laundry for two blocks to the nearby Laundromat.  If you liked dark, smelly steambaths, the place was great.

In Algona, we finally got our won washing machine.  A shiny 1963 Speed Queen ringer-washer.  It was the first washing machine my parents ever owned.  We dragged it out of the basement at home, cleaned it up, shook the dog food out of it and hauled it to Algona.  That was the life. We still didn’t have a dryer, so we’d wash clothes in the basement, run them thru the ringer and hang them up to dry on the make-shift clothes lines stretched down there.

It was convenient and the humidity in the house was always comfortable.  Damp jeans were a problem though.  Fortunately we always wore our clothes before they started growing any mildew or mold.

By the way, the dog food was up inside the washer near the motor.  The mice were using it for a pantry.

I guess, all told, washing clothes at Duds and Suds every week isn’t all that bad.

We don’t have a big-screen TV at home and I wouldn’t argue if they brought back the Beer either.

(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 summer of 1988)

We were quite a team. I have a brother named John who is five years younger than I am.  For years we worked side by side together on the farm.  You’d be hard pressed to find a more amicable pair.  “John, John, those feed pails are too heavy for you.  Allow me,” I would respectfully say.

“Oh no, Tom.  If I’m ever going to be as big and strong as you, i’ve going to have to work hard.  Besides, you need a rest,” he would cheerfully reply.

We almost always got along this well, but we were a model of brotherly love when we baled hay.

When i first started helping with the baling, we pulled a hay wagon behind the baler.  While I drove the tractor up front, somebody back on the wagon stacked the bales as they came pooping out the back of the baler.
As I grew older, thanks to modern technology, we towed this tiny trailer behind the baler called an accumulator.  It accumulated  (hence the name) eight bales into a neat little package and spit them out the back.

Dad drove the baler and accumulator while John and I drove around the field to pick up these neat little stacks.  We picked up the stacks with a tractor with a grapple fork.  I’d work the grapple fork while John skillfully drove another tractor with a pick-up wagon in tow.

After the first hour or two, I could pick up the stacks “on-the-go.”  Occasionally a misplaced bale would fall out of the package and I’d run it over with the tractor.  It was not a pretty sight.  A smashed broken bale messed up a whole load and caused stress and inconvenience for everybody.

As diligent as he was, John was never attentive enough to warn me when these bales fell off the grapple fork.  He should have been paying attention.

The sun beat down.  The temperature went up.  Tempers grew short.

The whole process was intensely boring, so to liven things up. I would wave directions in the air to John.  If I could direct him into the optimum position for loading bales we could speed up the process.

At this point my normally intelligent brother became a complete idiot or he was purposely ignoring my directions.  If I waved my arm around in a circle twice, pointed to the left and then to the right, you’d know what I meant, wouldn’t you?

Eventually our hand signals degenerated into brotherly hayfields warfare.  We’d shout obscenities at each other over the sounds of the tractors.  When this failed, we took turns looking disgusted and angry at one another across the hayfield.

Once in a while we even got down off our tractors and got into a shoving match.  Then dad would have to stop the baler to referee.  If there’s anything that makes dad angrier than having to stop his baler when he the sun’s shining, I haven’t found it.

Once we got a trailer or two loaded with hay, it was back to the farm for the reverse process.  John would give directions as I unloaded the hay from the wagon into an open-sided pole barn with the grapple fork.

Being a kindly big brother, I gave John the easy job.   All he had to do was to warn me the bales were crooked, if the fork was too close to the rafters, or if the tractor was too close to the support poles.  Meanwhile he was supposed to give directions to me so that the resulting stack would have a nice taper up to the roof.

I had the tough job of running the tractor.

If john behaved like an idiot in the field, he was a lunatic on top of a hay stack.  Where did he learn to wave directions like that, anyway?

Sometime during all of this a huge chunk of our haystack would topple over and we would have to re-stack it by hand.  In a nice brotherly way I would climb on the top of the haystack and tell him what he had done wrong.
“You @#@%**@.”  Weren’t you watching that stack?  Were you sleeping @#@@*#sleeping?”  I would scream at the top of my lungs in a brotherly way.

“Where’d you learn to drive a @#%**@tractor?”  Didn’t you see my signal, you ##@%)(#, he would yell calmly in reply.

We were hot and sweaty.  We were covered with scratchy hay dust.  We were tired.  Yet we still took time to talk nose to nose, red face to red face, brother to brother.

It was a touching moment when John tried to push me off the top of the haystack.  Not one to shrink from physical displays of affection, I punched him in the arm.

With tears of happiness in his eyes, John kicked me in the shin with his work boot.  We sure loved each other.

I loved him so much I slapped his face and broke his glasses.

What a team.