Coop's Corner: Rural Life

Friday, October 27, 2017

Rural Life

Wednesday evening I took a quick ride to Red Wing on the sidecar rig, knowing full well that it might be awhile (months??) before the weather and I could cooperate on Satisfying/Fun Conditions again. It was a dinner ride, cool but wonderful.

As the day's temperatures get cooler and the hours of sunlight shorter, I've been spending more riding time closer to home. These roads were not only the ones my brother and I started riding on 50 years ago, they were also the roads we drove farm machinery on, hauled hay over, accessed fields for crop work, etc.

As I've already mentioned to some of my riding friends, down at the far end of this distant cornfield there once stood a one room schoolhouse. My mom attended that school through the 8th grade and once the small neighborhood schools consolidated (and buses appeared), the schools all closed. In this neighborhood, that meant that everyone attended in Red Wing.

That building was moved to a neighboring farm, desks removed and soon thereafter used as a chicken coup. During the summers that my brother and I helped mom's brothers on their farm, we helped the chicken coup neighbor clean the chicken manure out of the building that our mom attended school in. Butch's guidance and stories made the work a lot more interesting and fun than it may seem to someone that wasn't there.

Besides this view which I thought was attractive in more than one way, a recent story that Eric had sent reminded me about the old school, the way the roads ran before being widened, straightened and leveled. That story had to do with the Armistice Day Blizzard, the anniversary of which was recently remembered and talked about in the area press. It was Monday, November 11, 1940, a blizzard that took too many by surprise. The Flower Valley School was let out early, mom was 11 and the neighbor with the chicken's helped her get home. Mom's shoe was lost on the way and most likely still out there somewhere.

The above photo was taken in Section 11, on the edge of the first "E" in Creek on this topo, looking north. This USGS Topo map was downloaded from the government site and is the 1950 version.

This morning we woke to a new white coating on the ground; the white coming and going all day with blustery winds, warmer ground temperatures and fluctuating air temps.

I had some shopping to do and was anxious to get out into the weather (using the van) this morning early. I drove up the Bullard Creek Valley and stopped, did a U-turn and pulled over in Section 10 near the "Y" in Hay to take this photo. This is that valley, the white area adjacent to the "Y" on the map above.

It was still snowing albeit lightly;it had let up quite a bit when I stopped for this morning's photo. Difficult to see, the sheep all have snow on their backs. In late November, 1972, I was plowing this now-harvested soybean field beyond the row of trees. It had been dark for hours, my goal obviously to finish the field that evening before heading back for our 10PM dinner during harvest time. Late, maybe 9ish, it had started snowing. I kept on plowing and even without a cab, actually stayed tough 17-year-old comfortable. The amount of heat blowing back from the Minneapolis Moline's inline 6 cylinder plus the tremendous heat generated by the transmission and drivetrain mass directly below my feet kept me feeling less cold than you might imagine. I finished and managed to get the tractor and plow home without running off the gravel roads. Home, chilled and hungry but very proud and happy that I'd finished what I'd been sent to finish.

This is what I was piloting, my favorite tractor of any I've worked with.....

My view....

And what I was doing that night....in corn stubble not unlike this YouTube gentleman, 'making it black.' I didn't have a cab though.

Now 6PM and the current radar.....

For the official record, there was no riding done today, October 27, 2017.

6 comments:

TrobairitzOctober 28, 2017 at 10:05 AM
This really makes one realize how spoiled and how much we have come to rely on weather forecasts. As much as we complain they are wrong, we can get the hourly on our phones, tablets, and laptops. Wow.
ReplyDelete
Replies
JasonOctober 30, 2017 at 9:39 AM
TPT has an amazing documentary on the Armistice day Blizzard. http://video.tpt.org/video/2259507195/

Is that a Moleboard or a Moldboard plow? Don't see too many of those anymore with conservation tillage and all. - That's the extent of my rural knowledge but as a true Twincitian I've fished that purdy little creek more than a few times.

Love the family history and seeing the old schools on the topo. Makes me think about all the teachers that worked there, one in every valley.
ReplyDelete
Replies
David MasseOctober 31, 2017 at 9:43 AM
My experience with rural life was limited to roughly four years from grades 3 through 6. We moved to the suburbs in the '60's and I attended a red brick 4 classroom schoolhouse along with all the local farm kids. Those years gave me a glimpse of farm life that is a treasure all these years later.

Your post brought me back in time.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)