(Tom Jirik’s columns orginally published in the Boone Today)I’ve never been afraid of storms.

I found lighting illuminating.  Thunder filled me with wonder.  Rain never dampened my enthusiasm.  And coping with wind was a breeze.  Tom Jirik was no weather wimp.

Things are different now.  I own a house.

Now rain sprinkles and the rolling of distant thunder sets me quaking.  A dark cloud passing overhead is enough to give me nervous twitches.

When the rain comes down, I scurry up to the attic to check for leaks.  Is there water coming in around the chimney?  Is that a leak back in that dark corner over there?  Maybe I should get a flashlight and check the crawlspaces?

During heavy downpours, I’ve been outside peering up at the eaves.  Are the downspouts working right?  How are those gutters holding up?  It’s tough to tell when the sun is shining.

After that I scamper down to the basement.  Are the walls bulging and cracking from all that water pressure” What about the sewer” Will it back up this time?  Where is that trickle of water coming from?”

Lighting is terrifying.  It sounds as if every bolt is seeking out our roof and chimney.  The lumber in our house is at least 75 years old.  A lighting strike could turn into a roaring bonfire in a matter of seconds.  Are those smoke detectors working?  Sniff, sniff.  Do I smell something burning?

But wind is worst.

During high winds, the house moans and groans like a beast possessed.  I think of the tremendous stresses placed on those structural timbers.  Will they hold?  And what about those shingles?  Are they still on the roof?  Or are they flying across town?

My new-found paranoia about the weather would be bad enough in a normal year, but this year’s weather has been unusually fierce.     It’s been almost more than a man can bear.

My wife, Mary, remains unperturbed.

Lighting flashes, thunder crashed, the wind slashes, the rain comes down in buckets and Mary seems oblivious to it all.

“How can you just sit there?”  I scream as I pace in front of the window and watch the rain tumble down.  “Our house is in danger!”

Mary stops reading and peers at me over the top of her book.  “Our house has been here for 75 years,” she says.  “A few rain drops and a gust of wind aren’t going to knock it down today.”

It’s tough to argue with logic like that.  She’s right and there’s no denying it.  Our house is in no immediate danger.  It’s built to withstand the rigors of Iowa weather.  I sit down and begin to relax.  I begin to think everything will be O.K..

Then Mary says,” I think it’s hailing.”

“HAIL!!!” I respond.  “Did I hear a window break?  Our shingles are old and brittle.  Hail will smash them to bits?  Oh no?  Not Hail!!!”

(Tom Jirik’s column orginally published in the Boone Today)Don’t take visiting for granted.

I’ve found that visiting isn’t as common or universally accepted as we might think.

Midwesterners are visitors.  We love to talk about the weather, our families, our friends, our latest car problems, what streets are being repaired and politics.  You name it, and we’ll visit about it.

As a kid, one of my family’s favorite pastimes was to go visiting.  We didn’t go to the neighbor’s for coffee or for a barbecue or for dinner.  Mom would call up the Truatners, the Bachens or the Reviers to find out if they were home and then we’d “go visiting.”

Of course when we visited or when somebody visited us, there was coffee or Kool-aid and we’d have a little lunch at the end, but the primary purpose of those social calls wasn’t eating, it was visiting.

How did all this visiting get started?  My theory is that life on the prairies and in the forests of Midwest was pretty solitary before cars, television and radio came along.  I suspect the early residents found visiting to be one of their only forms of affordable entertainment as well as a source of social stimulation.

Today that tradition lives on.  We’ll talk to anybody about anything.

My cousin’s husband made his first trip to the Midwest recently from eastern Pennsylvania.  It soon became evident to the rest of us that the concept of “visiting” was completely foreign to Ross.  Apparently, visiting isn’t a part of the social fabric in Pennsylvania the way it is in the Midwest.

He grew restless and bored as our breakfasts grew into three hour visiting sessions.  As the rest of us spent afternoons chatting in the living room and our evenings visiting on the porch, I could see Ross’s attention span beginning to waver.

But before long, he was getting the hang of it.  He began to jump into the conversation with anecdotes from work and childhood.  He told us about the house his parents lived in.  We coaxed a little bit out of him about life in Pennsylvania.  He even made a few observations on politics.

We kidded him about his lack of visiting skills and he took it like a good sport.  We told him the ability to take a little ribbing now and then is essential to being a good visitor.  He was no expert, but for a novice he did alright.

Even so, his unfamiliarity with Midwestern propensity to visit came shining through bright and clear on one of the last days of his stay.  As we were speeding down the road we passed three pickup trucks parked along the highway.  About five farmers were leaning over the side of one of the trucks, talking up a storm.

Ross’s jaw dropped as we zoomed by.  “Look at that,” he said with amazement, “They even stop to visit along the highway!”

(Tom Jirik’s columns originally published by the Boone Today)

My Fourth of July memories will always be accented by the odor of hay and sweat and the sound of roaring tractors.

Such is life on the farm, where my father annually promised,” If it rains, maybe we’ll go to the lake.”  It doesn’t sound like much of a promise, but when you’re a farm kid, you take what you can get.  Dad would have been very unhappy to know how hard we prayed for rain.

But most years, it didn’t rain and we made hay while the sun shone.

Preparations began early.  The baler needed to be greased.  Tractors needed to be fueled and their oil and water levels checked.  Bale elevators needed to be put in place.   Sometimes I’d be sent out early in the morning to make the rounds with a side-delivery rake to “tip” the hay and hurry the drying process along.

Making hay was a big effort.  The entire family was involved along with a couple of neighbors and a hired hand or two (not always easy to find on a holiday).  We needed a tractor driver for the baler, and one or two bale stackers on the “rack.”  Another tractor driver helped another bale handler unload hay onto the elevator that ran into the barn.

As soon as the dew began to evaporate, dad would be out checking the windrows.  If the hay was too wet or “tough,” the bales would be heavy and the hay would plug the baler.  Wet bales could get moldy, or worse, heat up and cause a fire.  If the hay was too dry the leaves would fall off and much of the nutritive value would be lost during baling.  Dad would repeatedly wring handfuls of hay in his hands or bunch a windrow up in his arms until he pronounced it “fit.”

That’s when the action started.

If I close my eyes on a hot summer day, I can still hear the baler with its giant plunger slamming back and forth, packing the hay into bales and shoving them out the back.  Each stroke caused the tractor to grunt with exertion.

Periodically, the knotters would trip and giant needles would plunge through the bales-in-progress, drawing the twine tight and tying off a bale with neat little knots.  Each time the knotters activated they tripped a little bale counter.

If the counter ran through its numbers twice, indicating 2,000 bales, it was a very good day.  That meant 2,000 bales wrestled from the back of the baler and stacked on a towering load.  Once at home, all 2,000 bales were pulled from the load and sent up the bale elevator.

Breakdowns, bad weather, a late start could keep us from the 2,000 bale mark.  It was hard, hot, dirty work, but satisfying too.  It was nice to look up into the barn and see all those green bales packed away for winter.

At least it seems satisfying no. Back then, it was a dirty job that needed doing while the rest of the nation was enjoying a national holiday.

So, even now on the third of July, I pray,

“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray, dear Lord, the hay to keep.
And if it rains before I wake,
Thank you, God, for the lake”

(Tom Jirik’s column orginally appeared in the Boone Today)A local landmark is gone and if the city of Boone has anything to say about it, it will never be back.

At the city’s direction a construction company has excavated, rocked, packed, tiled and paved the life out of that little whoop-de-do on South Story Street.  That was some nifty bump.  Every year in late winter, the hump would rise up out of the road to give local drivers a wake-up call.  Then would slowly settle back down.

That old bump has been around for so long it became something of a landmark.  It had the topography of Pike’s Peak, the regularity of Old Faithful, and the action of the Indianapolis 500, only on a modest, Iowa-size scale.

Now only smooth pavement remains.

According to City Engineer Dale Eschliman, the history of the hump goes back about 30 years, when a culvert under the bump was first installed.

“Apparently, the dirt that was put in place over the culvert was more susceptible to frost that the dirt in the south-bound lanes,” he said.  Before long, the road began showing the effects.

About 10 years later, two 40-foot panels if the road were removed so the situation could be repaired.   As soon as the panels were removed, we had a two-week period of heavy rain,” Eschliman explained.  “There was pressure to get the job done and open the road, so concrete was poured directly over the dirt.”  With all that moisture sealed under the road, the stage was set for the bump’s annual appearance.  It was an annual event that continued for 15 years. 

Three years ago, the city tried again.  Holes were bored in the pavement and then filled with lime.  The lime was intended to slowly leach into the dirt under the road, and stabilize it. 

The theory was good, but in reality, the holes in the road only allowed more water than ever to saturate the ground under the pavement.  This year, the road never did settle back down.

A repair plan was made, detour signs were erected and the city crews prepared to go into action.  But the city’s fight with the road wasn’t over yet.  City crews were scheduled to get in and fix the problem on Monday. July 11.  The weekend weather had something to say about that.  On Monday, city crews were too busy coping with the flood emergencies to worry about the bump.  The project remained on hold.

Finally, the city decided it couldn’t wait any longer.  J&J Concrete Construction was called to handle the job.  Forty feet of the roadway was again removed along with the dirt down to within a foot of the culvert.  Tile lines were installed to channel water away.  The chasm was filled and packed with crushed rock.  Eleven inches of concrete were used to seal the job.

Rather than close a lane at a time, the city chose to close both northbound lanes, detour traffic, and do the entire job at once.  The repair took less than a week.  “Safety-wise, we felt that was better than diverting traffic for two weeks,” Eschliman said.

For now, the road is smooth and traffic whizzes across the patch with nary a bounce. Is the twenty year saga of Boone’s bump over?  Is this local landmark lost to history?  Dale Eschliman and the City of Boone certainly hope so.

But only time will tell.

(Tom Jirik’s Columns Orginally Published in Boone Today)I’m not very familiar with sisters.

I’ve had one for the past 13 years, but she was still in diapers when I headed off to college.  Consequently, Margaret and I haven’t gotten to know each other very well.

Margaret has been a bit of a paradox to me.  She’s never been at all like my brothers.  She doesn’t care for sandboxes.  She’s not one for cops and robbers.  And even though she’s a teenager, she isn’t showing the least bit of interest in tractors or trucks.  Instead she’s inclined toward frilly dresses, dolls and shopping.  I’ve never understood her very well.

All of that was supposed to change recently.  Margaret spent a week in Boone and then another two weeks on a car trip to Spokane and back with us.  Our three weeks together were supposed to be a learning experience for both of us.  She was supposed to learn what her older brother was like and I was supposed to learn what it was really like to have a younger sister.  (My brothers warned,”You’ll be sorry!”)

And it was a learning experience.  I learned that she was very modest and she practically died of embarrassment when she had to change her clothes in a tent.  I learned that she has a fiery temper when she threatened to “bury you on that hill with Custer if you don’t quit teasing me!”

I learned that she is very knowledgeable about wildlife as she endlessly, but accurately pointed out and identified various birds and animals along our route.

I also learned that she has a very unique perspective on life.  She thinks catch-and -release fishing “must be like a near-death experience for those fish.”  She would like to be a mountain climber one day “except that I’m afraid of heights.”

I learned that Margaret is a great tourist.  She was awed by the “world famous” Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D..  She was very impressed by Wall Drug and thrilled by Mount Rushmore and Devil’s Tower.  She was fascinated by Yellowstone’s geysers and amazed by the Grand Tetons.  But the highlight of her trip was the ride through the window at McDonalds.

“I want to go to the drive-through at McDonalds,” she announced when we asked her where she wanted to eat one evening.  “Mom and dad never go through the drive-through.”  So we took her through the drive-through for some McNuggets and fries.  “Oh, that was so much fun!” she cried gleefully.  “Let’s go to a drive-through for breakfast.”

What did I learn about her from that?  I learned that I still have a lot to learn about 13-year-old sisters.

(Tom Jirik’s columns originally published in the Boone Today)The temperatures and the humidity both crept toward the 90s this week.  Although it’s only early June, and summer won’t officially start for another two weeks, the dog days are back.

I hate the heat and I despise the humidity.  Every Minnesota-born pore on my body seems to pour perspiration and all my ambition has already left on summer vacation.  But I have found solace from the heat and humidity.

I’ll never own or live in a house again that doesn’t have a front porch.

Mary and I sit out there in our lawn chairs sipping cool beverages and watching the world go by.  It’s heaven I tell you, pure summertime heaven.

The neighborhood kids stop to visit and regale us with the antics of local bunnies and squirrels and tales of other kids down the street.  We greet neighbors as they take their evening walks.

As the sun goes down we are greeted with the spectacular view of a vividly lit western sky over the rooftops of our across-the-street neighbors.  Other nights we watch as thunderheads move in from Greene County, swirling and building in the sky above the city.  If the rain is gentle and the wind’s not too brisk, we’ll weather the storm on the porch.  It’s thrilling to watch the clouds lumber on as the lightning flashes and the rain washes summer’s grime from the neighborhood.

Even on the hottest, stillest, most humid evenings, there seems to be a cooling breeze playing gently across the porch, allowing us to comfortably watch the fireflies in their nightly pyrotechnic display.  As the evening grows dimmer, we watch in awe as the bats dip and dive among the trees and houses.

On the perimeter of Boone, new houses rise from the mud and dust.  I suppose these future homes are all filled with the most modern conveniences and built with the latest techniques, but nearly of them lack porches.  Where will people gather to watch the comings and goings of the neighborhood in years to come?  Where will they pause to feel and hear the pulse of the community?

Decks and patios are popular, of coarse, but lack the up-front charm, character and utility of the porch.  Decks and patios insulate you and hide you from the rest of the world.  They reside in privacy-fenced backyards or on top of intimidating and uninviting stilts.  Somehow, they’re just not the same.

Nope, I’ll take the porch any day.  It’s right up front, where the action is, but somehow sheltering and relaxing at the same time.  The wide steps say, “come on up and sit awhile.”  I like that.

Like I said before, it’s heaven-pure heaven.

(Tom Jirik’s columns originally published by the Boone Today)We’ve been uptown and now we’re ready to get down home.

Mary and I have spent all of the past week in downtown Minneapolis at a convention.  We’ve stayed in one of the swank downtown hotels.  For our eighth wedding anniversary on Tuesday we dined at one of the city’s elegant restaurants.  We visited the many unique shops and enjoyed some of the city‘s unique night life.  We listened to the street musicians and sampled some wonderful cuisine at sidewalk cafes.  We saw things we had never seen before.  I never knew there were so many places that you could wear an earring and I never knew how many colors you could dye your hair.

It was fun.  We had a grand time.  But we’re not staying.

As the old saying goes, “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

A cup of coffee will set you back a dollar at least at the convention center.  A can of pop takes a similar crack at your pocket book.  You don’t want to know how much our elegant dinner and hotel reservations cost.

One-way streets and impatient drivers make getting around downtown challenging at best and hazardous at worst.  I’ve nearly been rear ended, broad sided and backed into.  A one day parking fee?  Nine bucks.

Then there are the interstates.  We’ve been on I-35, I-494, I-35W, I-35E and I-94.  We’ve also been on cross-town, uptown, and downtown freeways.  Sometimes we were on them intentionally and sometimes not.  They were all crowded with speedy drivers, huge trucks and construction zones.  When we weren’t being rushed along at 70 miles per hour, we were creeping along at 30 or less.  We soon found that you don’t just hop in the car and go someplace.  Every trip is a lengthy adventure. Now the car is parked in the driveway for free.  We have a splendid view from our front porch.  For a nickel’s worth of propane for the grill and a dollar’s worth of hamburger we’ll have a wonderful dinner in the casual, yet comforting atmosphere of our living room.

And maybe later we’ll hop in the car, fight the traffic on Story Street and sample the night life up at Dairy Queen.  The two blizzards we’ll have will set us back a couple of bucks, but what the heck.  Sometimes you just have to live a little- even at home.  Then we’ll take a relaxing drive through McHose Park.  At home I’ll pull a beer for me and a wine cooler for Mary out of the refrigerator and we’ll toast to the fact that our drinks didn’t cost $8.95.

Ah, yes.  Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

(Tom Jirik’s column originally published in the Boone Today)There will be fireworks flashing, flags flying, parades parading and vacationing this weekend.  Weather reports indicate that it’s going to be a beautiful Fourth of July holiday.

What will you do?  How will you celebrate?  I’m headed to Minnesota for my wife’s family reunion.   I’ll probably have a brew or two, over-indulge at the picnic lunch and then over-exert at the family softball game. 

Thanks to our forward-thinking forefathers, we are lucky enough to live in a country that guarantees us the freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of overthrown softballs by out-of-shape brothers-in-law.

Is this a great country or what?

Of course, not all is perfect.  There is prejudice and hate, discrimination and crime, apathy and graft.   Our government seems to lurch from issue to issue without ever resolving anything.  Candidates for state and federal office spend more time slinging mud that they do debating issues.

No, our country and its system of government if far from perfect.  But in light of the alternatives, it looks pretty good.

So while you are celebrating Independence Day this weekend, pause a moment to celebrate the memory of those who went before.

Think about those fellows who bravely put their names on the bottom of the Declaration of Independence.  Anybody who’s ever tried to fight the status quo in anything had a hint of the courage it took to stand up and revolt against the reigning government.

Think about the explorers, the thinkers, the planners, the researchers and the lawmakers who’ve given so much of themselves to give us what we have.  Even today’s “Me Generation” has an amazing number of people who put others first in their thoughts and actions.

Think too about the men and women who have carried America’s flag into battle.  Many of them, from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf War, died to guarantee that we’d be able to keep celebrating our independence.  The recent D-Day commemorations should have reminded us that freedom sometimes has a terribly high price.

But don’t think too hard.  After all, it is a holiday.  And if you are out in left field thinking deep patriotic thoughts and you miss cousin Bill’s easy pop fly, the rest of the family will never let you live it down.

So, heads up and happy Independence Day.

(Orginally appeared in the Boone Today)

Communication is a key to success in any relationship.  Especially when that relationship involves an auto mechanic.

Unfortunately, most of us can’t seem to communicate very well with our mechanics.  We seem to be speaking one language.  And none of us seem bilingual.

We say, “It kind of goes chucka, chucka when you pull away from stop signs.”

Our mechanic says. “Sounds like a fracture manifold or an oscillating injector.”

We say, “It goes bzzzlp, bzzzlp and jerks a little bit occasionally at highway speeds.”

Our mechanic says, “Or it could be a faulty ignition diode.”

Meanwhile we think, “This guy doesn’t understand what I’m trying to tell him and he doesn’t have a clue how to fix my car.”

And the mechanic is thinking, “What the heck is a chucka, chucka and a bzzzzzlp, bzzzzlp?  And how the heck am I going to fix his car if he can’t tell me in plain English what’s wrong it?”

And so it goes.

You can’t really blame the car owner.  He knows his car.  He knows when something is wrong.  And he’s doing his best he can to get that message across to the mechanic.

You can’t really blame the mechanic either.  He’s probably a trained professional.  He probably considers himself a “service technician” rather than a mechanic.  But every day he has to face people who insist on explaining their car’s problems in what sounds like baby talk.

Now, the Ford Motor Company is trying to clear things up.  They’ve developed a brochure that is designed to bridge the car owner/mechanic communication gap.

The brochure includes definitions for booms, buzzes, chatters, grinds, hisses, hums, rattles, squeaks, whistles and a host of other noises.  According to the brochure, a rumble is a low, heavy continuous sound like that made by wagons or thunder, a groan/moan is a continuous, low-pitched humming sound and a growl/howl is a low guttural sound, like an angry dog. 

I assume that ford mechanics received a similar brochure telling them what the sounds mean in language that they can understand.  “A knock may indicate an bent rotor cuff or carburetor congestion,” the mechanic’s brochure might say.  And suddenly, your car, you and your mechanic are talking the same language.

It’s a step in the right direction, but the brochure only contains definitions for 22 common vehicular noises.  Anyone with an old car or truck knows that car noises come in more than 22 varieties.

What the world needs is a comprehensive unabridged version of a car noise dictionary.  A dictionary like that would find a place in every glove compartment and would certainly include chucka, chucka and a bzzzzlp, bzzzzzlp.

(Tom Jirik’s Work Orginally Published By Boone Today)

I should have listened to my mother.  But I didn’t and now I’ve lost my childhood.  It makes me sick just to think about it.

My wonderful toys are all gone now and the worst part about it is that today they are worth a fortune.

Of course, when I was a kid, I used them and abused them.  I didn’t know any better then.  I don’t think anybody did. Except my mother.   She always said,” You should take care of your toys!”

She was right.  If I had held onto and taken care of all those toys, they would have somehow been transformed over time from trash, garbage and refuse to antiques, collectibles and treasures.  Old toys are all the rage in antique stores these days.

I had Tonka trucks and Matchbox cars, GI Joe action figures and dozens of toy tractors.  My toys spent weeks outside in the sandbox and yard.  When it was time to pick them up, I scooped them all up in jumbled armload and dumped them unceremoniously and none-too-gently in a big box.

Over years, the paint wore away and my trucks rusted, the wheels feel off my tractors and pieces of GI Joe’s uniform disappeared until he was forced to hide naked in the dark reaches of the toy box. 

Some of the toys we ” parted out” to fix other broken toys.  The very bottom of the toy box was a kind of salvage yard of broken and battered toys.  Some toys were lawnmower casualties.  Other toys were run over by full-sized cars, trucks and tractors.  We played with some toys until they fell apart.

How could we have been so silly?  Mom always told us to take care of our toys.  Why didn’t I listen?

The plastic telephone with the jingling dial that I used to call grandma every morning when I was four, is now worth $35 in some antique stores.

The John Deere 3010 toy tractor that I gave my younger brother when the wheels fell off is now worth more than $100.  (If you are reading this Mark, I only loaned it to you and I want it back.)  If I had my old Tonka dump tuck, road grader and bulldozer, I could trade them in for a new car.  Original “Hot Wheels” cars dating from 1969 sell for as high as $1500.

Mary is equally disturbed about her childhood castoffs.  A toy cat that she once had would fetch $25 or more now.  As a child she treasured a “Crissy” doll.  The last time she saw it, the doll was in nearly perfect mint condition and in its original box. “If I ever find out what happened to Crissy, somebody’s going to pay,” she says.  Today the doll is worth nearly $100.

Who knew that Mom was right?  How did she know that our childhood relics and castoffs would become treasurers and collectables?  If we had only listened, we could sell my childhood today would finance our retirement,

So listen up, kids.  When your Mom tells you to take better care of your Teenage ninja Turtles of your Little Mermaid, you’d better listen.  If you don’t, you’ll be sorry.

I know I am.