As I was reading this comment from Hardscrabble Farmer on the Lazy Teenager thread it struck me. His comments remind me of reading Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. They are so visual and plain spoken and wise. I’m looking forward to meeting our resident John Steinbeck later this week for a beer when he is in Philly on business. I can tell him how exhausted I am from working on that excel spreadsheet all day. 🙂
The past couple of days we have been making hay while the Sun shines, literally. There are several acres of hillsides too steep to mow with the sickle bar cutter, so my 17 year old son and I cut them with scythes and then rake the cut grass into windrows where it dries. These have to be flipped at least three times before we pick them up and make haycocks for the cattle. Scything is about 70% cutting and 30% honing and peening the blade so it involves extreme physicality and focused precision work with hammer, anvil and whetstone. Add to it the delicate rake work of tossing the cut grass into windrows on slopes that pitch like a 7:12 roofline and you start to get the picture.
Of all the things that we do it is the most physically draining, the most demanding in terms of straight through work- from just after the dew dries in the morning until we finally break for supper at 8:30 or so. We talk to one another off and on about books, about history, about family about his future. He is leaving in a week to backpack his way through Europe, from Barcelona to Geneva and we will miss him, but until then he works beside me harder than 90% of most adult males in our culture.
The group he is going with are predominantly the sons and daughters of the well to do. Jokingly I told him that when they sit around the alpine huts in the evening watching the last light fade from the snow covered slopes of Mont Blanc and they are gossiping about their early admission to Yale or Harvard he tell them about how he paid his way on the trip by felling oaks and then splitting them into fence rails, or digging a well by hand, or scything the steep hillsides of his family farm to make hay for his flocks and herds for the Winter ahead.
“You know they won’t believe it.” he says.
“But you’ll know it’s true.” I reply.
And this is followed by the soft snicking sound of blade against stem, in cadence, for quite some time.
The fact that so many have surrendered their lives to indolence and sloth says a great deal about the culture we inhabit. That their children follow in their footsteps is to be expected because that is the example that they set and it is all that they will likely ever know. It is not an excuse, however for those who understand their responsibility as parents, who believe in a better future for their own children, who plan further ahead than their next EBT transfer from Uncle Sugar.
After we had finished last night we took a walk into the south pasture where the cattle were grazing and studied the grasses, talked about the nitrogen benefits of the various clovers and vetches, and about his plans for building a couple of hobbity cottages along the bouldered hillsides where the stately maples grew in profusion. He sees the farm as a destination for moneyed urban types with an itch to visit the countryside for a long weekend, where they can wake up in the morning to the sound of ewes bleating to their lambs, and eat fresh eggs with yolks the color of tangerines. I listen to him talk about his love for this piece of property, about the light falling in the forest never penetrates deep enough to shake off the blue darkness inside, and even after his day how much he enjoys working beside me.
Next week when he boards his flight, by himself with nothing but his backpack and the clothes he is wearing, I will be watching him go with a small degree of sadness, but with such a deep well of pride in him that it will temper anything else. He is confident well beyond his years, bright and funny and completely fearless of the future unlike so many of his contemporaries, and he has earned his trip from the sweat of his brow, something that means more to him than he understands right now. But one day he will and it will be a foundation upon which he will build his own future.
I feel bad for the teenagers that miss this, but my son is not one of them, and he makes his parents very proud.
I apologise to TBP at large. This got out of hand and I could have stopped it. My bad. I was morbidly curious at how far Billy would go, given he previously wished genocide on Indians, but I should have called it a day.
This was a throwback thread. It reminds me of the “He Should Have Ducked” Occupy Wall Street thread. Ah, the good old days.
The funny part is that I would have been fighting against Llpoh and Billy on an OWS thread.
llpoh
Your last post …. that’s one of the reasons I admire you.
Yesterday was our youngest son’s 7th birthday. He is an early riser like myself, and from 5:30 am until the rest of the family got up we spent time together talking about his life. I told him stories about things he couldn’t remember, like his baptism at the family church and the time he decided to run away from home in the rain wearing only one shoe, things like that. He likes to hear about his life- I suppose we all do- and so after every story he would ask me to tell him one more.
I love telling stories, always have and I used to write quite a bit but I have given it up except for comments on a blog or two when I have a few minutes. Over the years I have discovered that no matter how measured, how inoffensive one tries to be, there is always someone out there that will find a reason to be upset at what you’ve said. Your pride in family is a rebuke of their choice to remain single. Your observation about the failure of some societal norm is an attack on their lifestyle choice. A funny line or a play on words is an attack on someone’s personhood or orientation. After a while you just give up and keep your stories to yourself, when someone says something you disagree with or that they clearly know nothing about you clench your jaw and grin but you don’t say anything for fear of having them take it the wrong way.
The reason I speak about my own limited experience on a small piece of land in a remote location is because like any other human being I want some form of communion with other like minded souls. I want to tell them stories, like the ones my son wanted me to tell because I know how much I love hearing the things other people have to say when they speak from experience, or the heart, or with love. I have admired the things that Jim has written here because even though his frustration with the bullshit and falsehoods drive him to put these essays down in words, underneath it there is love and truth in what he says. If he didn’t care he’d be like every other money grubbing dick out there and look out for number one, but he doesn’t. He writes things that he knows about and he puts them together in a way that anyone with an IQ on the right hand side of the bell curve can grok at first read. His righteous anger is justified and it turns into something worthwhile and meaningful and I respect that.
I was up early this morning and when I saw what this thread had become I was disappointed- not because it was originally about some comment I wrote, because clearly I am no Steinbeck nor could I ever be- but because it revealed something else that I have tried to avoid for years now. We live in a time where so much is false, so much has been perverted and maligned that its hard to know what the truth is anymore, so people assume nothing is. I enjoy the comments here because I know that every one of the people who have something to say, have a story to tell. They aren’t the labels we give them- racist, drunken Indian, disabled veteran, whatever- they are just like everyone else, just trying to tell their own particular story from their own remote location in their own voice so they can know that they aren’t alone.
After my wife and the rest of the kids woke up and we opened presents and ate breakfast, my oldest son and I headed out to do chores and then to help a neighbor load hay onto the wagons and then into the barn. It was one of those perfect Summer days, cerulean skies with fluffy clouds racing each other to the horizon. There was a breeze that kept the bugs off and even though the hay scratched and chafed with every bale we pitched, it was fun work- old men and young boys in concert, chasing up and down the field behind the baler trying to keep up. At the end of the day we headed back home for the party, my wife having made plates full of homemade french fries, cheeseburger sliders on toasted buns, pesto and wild field greens. There were balloons and one of the neighbors brought fireworks for the kids who spent their time checking out the new litter of kittens under the barn and bouncing on the trampoline. One of the fathers asked me to show him how to use the scythe in the orchard and he picked it up in no time. The phone kept ringing with birthday wishes from family and friends and we all had a few drinks to celebrate while the kids ate cake. The whole day was built around what we all had in common, what we all liked about each other, or enjoyed doing together and by the time we said our farewells and put the kids to bed and stood together in the kitchen holding each other up as much as hugging one another, my wife and I realized what a wonderful world it really was and how lucky we were to be in it.
I don’t write a lot about the things I don’t have, or the way I wish it could be if the world were different because that’s just the way things are. My life isn’t close to perfect, I ache sometimes so bad I can hardly move, but moving is what I have to do and so I get on with it and count the blessings to dull the pain and it works for me. I don’t imagine that things are going to get much better or that the world I grew up in will ever come back, but that’s just the way things are and you can only do so much, but what you can, you do.
After reading the thread this morning I thought that if we could have had all of you here for the day, everyone would have got along just fine. There would have been joking and teasing, but it would have been tempered by what we had in common, not what makes us different and I bet that as the light fell at the latest hour of the year, we all would have enjoyed hearing each others stories.
I always believed the Indian part.
You guys are too prolific, TBP cuts into my actual reading time!
“I apologise to TBP at large. This got out of hand and I could have stopped it. My bad. I was morbidly curious at how far Billy would go, given he previously wished genocide on Indians, but I should have called it a day. ” – Llpoh
“llpoh
Your last post …. that’s one of the reasons I admire you.” — Stucky
Gee, and here the first, last and ONLY time I ever apologized on here – trying to make peace for the greater good – I was berated as being a weakling…
Llpoh plays the “I’ll Be The Bigger Man” Card, apologizes and gets kudos…
Jeezus… This place is a bag ‘o cats…
Just wondering how many people here besides the admin ever read Grapes of Wrath start to finish. I have not. It’s quite a tome. Show of hands?
I have read some of it, and some of his other more political stuff. I suggest “In Dubious Battle” as a companion piece. Steinbeck might have been a communist, but he wasn’t fooled by labor organizers,and he shows how they fucked over the little guy just like the capitalist barons.
Basically, i think he called it as he saw it. Plenty of injustice to go around then, just like now.
@Eddie – I read Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men in the 8th grade, so I pretty much only understood what my teachers told me the books were about.
I should probably reread them some time.
Grapes and Mice …. didn’t we ALL have to read both in high school? I hated it. Then again, I hated every single aspect of high school.
Many years later I reread them both. Loved it.
Billy
I missed your apology. I didn’t read every single post. Me no likey them.
But, kudos to you also.
People have left here for lesser insults. Hate to see that happen again. Both of you have long memories, but hopefully grudges will die.
HF,
Good post. +1
Real fast, because I’m keeping an eye on a crew removing some black locust trees here on the property that took serious damage last storm we had. The guy ramrodding the crew is sharp enough, but I’ve learned that you have to keep your weather eye peeled and watch folks you hire if you don’t know them personally… been burned by playing it too soft in the past.
I know that most folks here on TBP are probably generally okay, and that if we were sitting around a bonfire pulling a cork, it would be pretty fun.. don’t agree with everyone all the time, and my opinion on certain things doesn’t square with a lot of folks… but when has that ever happened in the history of mankind?
Thing is, I don’t mind the insults, etc. If you can’t handle a few puny insults without getting bent out of shape, how are you going to handle things when serious shit comes down? We talk about SHTF, the economy going China Syndrome and the dollar imploding… insults seem pretty puny when compared to that. I just don’t like my family being bashed. If someone got a problem with me, well, here I am. Say your piece. But families are innocent and apart from that. They don’t deserve it. Especially women and children. Targeting them to get at someone is pretty piss weak. Which is generally why I don’t do it. That doesn’t mean I’m above getting nasty and dirty when someone else starts… that’s what Rattenkrieg is..
Anyways, been writing this off and on – running in and out trying to keep an eye on these guys… the trees they’re taking down, the wood will be a gift to my neighbor who heats his home with wood during the winter. Hope this helps him and his family out some…
Stucky,
The aforementioned apology of mine on here was quite some time ago. I got berated for it, so I have never apologized since then.. but, thanks anyways. It is actually appreciated.
The images I posted were actually pretty tame. The ones I didn’t use were… disturbing. TBP isn’t someplace that needs to see that.
Llpoh is a good guy and I respect him. Even like him some. His listening skills and reading comprehension skills need improvement, since all that appears to be lost on him, but it’s true nonetheless… I won’t hold a grudge against him or Admin or anyone else… but I sure as hell ain’t gonna forget this either…
Billy, FWIW…black locust is some of the prettiest grained and durable, ( rot resistant ,and extremely hard) wood one can mill…I once re-sawed a BL log left out in the weather for 20 years ,with nary a spot of rot.
if you have some nice saw logs, i’d be a shame to burn ’em up…makes great flooring, outdoor furniture and landscape timbers…jus’ sayin.
http://locustlumbercompany.com/?page_id=14
Billy claims I did not finish him off, he’s right. I don’t have the firepower to finish him off ever. In order to do battle with him, you must fight him on his own terms. Whoever fights with him would have to meet him on his slippery slope in the sewer. Once there, you would have to chase him through the gaseous methane-filled catacombs of the sewer of his mind into the pit of excrement where he excels in battle. Let me warn you, valiant prince, this is one dragon you cannot slay. He feeds on your anger and thrives on your hate. Scorn and rebuke are his bread and butter. Darkness and confusion give him rest.
You might follow him into the pit with determination but twenty feet down in the mire your feet can no longer find a footing or crag that isn’t slippery. Up is turned on its side and down keeps going deeper still. You try to rise but the surface is behind you and the dragon surrounds you in the darkness. You begin to feel faint, your lungs ready to cave in on themselves, the shit creeps into every opening and pore; you taste the bitter muck and breathe its goo deep into your lungs. You feel the madness of this beast seeping into your mind.
Into the pit of despair he drags you, confusing your thought with his delirium and unreason. There, he begins to twist and drag you deeper into the pit where no light ever dared enter, where reason fled long ago. I like you, says he, we could be friends, you and me. I only wish we had killed all your ancestors and kin but you, I like. I like everything you write, I only have one little quibble with this little scribble you wrote; it’s kind you see, and I don’t agree.
You can’t be the least bit kind or rational, he demands, I can’t abide reason or anything that smells of brotherly love and kindness toward your fellow man. I would rather kill my fellow man, hunt him down and skrag him like a worthless, flea bitten, mangy coyote. Those I cannot kill, I want to see with a hobnailed boot upon their face.
O won’t you be my friend and join me? We can really have some fun. We could persecute innocent people just like McCarthy done. I have some wonderful pictures of corpses and victims; a veritable charnel house stored in my computer. I have pictures of dead Indians, Iraqis, Somalis and even beheaded Americans. If you’ll join me in eternal hatred and take my vows of damnation, you too can live here with me in the depths of this pit forever.
Note to I-S,
I’m not bb. If I were, don’t you think Admin would have caught on already? Do you think he is so dull as to be fooled by a mere change of moniker? Think now, Admin has excoriated bb on many occasions, if I were bb, would he desist because I changed my name from bb to juan, as if we were playing a game of ‘red light’? bb went to harvard, i attended harvard on the border. bb drives a truck, i drive a civic, bb owns a tomcat, i have two queens, bb knows obscure history facts, i can name a couple of presidents in no particular order. I’m a beaner, born and bred on the border, weaned off the mother’s milk of tequila with jalapenos and hot sauce. I was sung to sleep with the mariachi lullaby of lost love. I was raised on the open desert, playing hide and seek among the cactus and creosote. the rio grande was my spa, mosquitoes kissed me goodnight, the stars were my baby blanket, the coyote my sitter.
He’s a bully. A clown. A blowhard, A self-important mental midget. A delusional martyr. And now, a woman beater even. Like a typical wife-beater, he blows up and then is all apologetic. I don’t fall for it so you see he projects his internal conflicts and contradictions onto me, just look at his responses in the Darwin’s Dark Night thread. I thought I was being a bit extreme on the comment above, now I see why I was inspired, if his insanity can be called inspiration, to write Billy the Dragon.
On behalf of all the guys here, I am so sorry you got treated that way, T4C. to be quite honest, the reason I defend loony bb is that he’s the only one that stuck up for me when you cussed me out. I never want to offend any woman here (except maybe SAH and Clammy but all in fun, I’d never threaten them even in jest)
Admin keeps promising to impose a minimum IQ requirement. he could also filter out the cowards.
Well, well, well… lookie here..
The fucking bean bag and the harpy. You two having fun with your little Marvel Mash Up?
I tell the cunt (not El Kabong.. he’s a cunt too, but not the one I’m talking about right now) to mind her own business, warn her off and it takes her an entire day to think up a reply – and a piss weak one at that. And of course the bitch decides that I mean to hunt her down and do her bodily harm…
Why don’t you just crawl off to your pathetic Beta male. You know him – he’s the one so desperate he was willing to settle for spoiled goods. That is, if he’s still around. I would think he’d have grown a set by now and left your ass. Geez, if I had to put up with listening to your shit, I’d stab a sharpened pencil in both ears.
That you think your reply – a reply from someone willing to lay with animals and flush their genetic heritage down the shitter by grunting out a halfbreed – that you think your reply carries any weight at all is fucking hilarious! There’s just something seriously warped and self-destructive about that. I’m sure your parents must be so proud… especially every time you send them a Christmas family photo…
@ El Kabong,
I’m a woman beater, am I? You best have a care when slinging around unfounded accusations, taco breath. See, I don’t care if you insult me. But you start accusing me of beating on my wife of 17 years? Or even raising a hand to a female?
Alright. You want to play the game at that level? Fine by me.
To be continued..
Billy said:
“Why don’t you just crawl off to your pathetic Beta male. You know him – he’s the one so desperate he was willing to settle for spoiled goods. That is, if he’s still around. I would think he’d have grown a set by now and left your ass. Geez, if I had to put up with listening to your shit, I’d stab a sharpened pencil in both ears.
That you think your reply – a reply from someone willing to lay with animals and flush their genetic heritage down the shitter by grunting out a halfbreed –”
and elsewhere he muttered some shit about family being off limits……….
Can’t help but think a sharpened pencil in each ear would do you and the rest of the planet a lot of good.