1958 red-barn non tilt cab Ford grain
trucks are not, necessarily, best suited for making tiny angel wings. The lack
of brakes, smell of gas—unburnt and otherwise, and the musty dust of grain
spilling over the side do not fit the heavenly palaces of thrones and harps. Angel
wing manufacturing is better meant for heroes, meadows, and mountain tops, but
sometimes the world makes do with what it has and tiny angel wings are made by
1958, Ford, grain trucks.
The
elevator isn’t far. Only ten or fifteen miles worth of washboard gravel
roads that don’t clean much but “spare” parts from a vehicle. A registered trademark
of local county highway departments maintained in such a way as though trying
to collect spare change from each passerby. Even though, the obnoxious grain
trucks work hard to pound the road into a flat, drivable surface. A road where
only the middle can hold which means frustrated cars pile up behind, but it is
only a couple of miles, only one car and cars can learn to wait even if the occupants won’t.
There
is something about a crisp fall day. Dying leaves and dried out cornstalks
covered with a light frost feigning the smell before a rain. The one smell
humans have been trained by time and need to want. Mix that with the primal
smoke billowing out of a combine top. Sultry grain laden cobs escorted by
gathering chains up the snouts through the feeder house and into the thresher.
There kernels separate from the cob, stalk, and leaf. Stripped of a summer’s
kinship. The act of harvest, clattering to wake, more so than horseshoe
certified coffee, the inner child of most any a person. Here, almost rekindling
and discovering humanity. Not unlike the climatic kill at the end of a hunt.
But more so the hunt one has for themselves.
There,
in the cage located on top of the combine, behind the small, square, glass box,
cab, kernels wait to ride in the 1958.
The
truck is now just about into town. It’s almost lunchtime and time for grandson
to stop off at grandmother’s for noon meal, but first the truck will make one
more stop at the elevator.
Grandson’s
seven going on forty-two as most youngsters do. He’s learning about writing,
reading, counting and taking daily briefings on running the world. I worry that
his education removes him from the world and I hope our times can help him to
see the world not as a math problem or as information to be explained from a
distance in an essay, but as a story to take part in. Sometimes I let him stay in
the field and run the combine, but I like his company, even though it is not a
fortune 500 company ha ha, and questions which pass on a little of his youth to
me.
Driving
through most grain elevators is like getting to visit the local zoo or is the
local zoo. As the truck mounts the scale next to what appears to be an oversized,
half-packed, cardboard, moving box of a building, square plate glass windows
reveal the contents. Hiding behind or in front of the packaging a few creatures
appear trapped. Others, delighted, appear to want me to tap the glass and
applaud them. The difference between a person stuck in a job or caught in the
idea that their life has become something seep out of each character in the
moving box clay mache.
Now, this is not to demean them. Most
of the time, the people who work there are folks who can’t find a job anywhere
else. Just trying to survive. Each person caught between what they are, what
they want to be, and what they have to be. Unable to fit the whole person,
unable to fit where they are.
Kinda like me most of the days of my
youth and even longer. Even after or maybe because of the great war. It took me
awhile to figure out where I fit in with the world. And most days I would say I
still don’t, but that don’t make surviving any easier. There still is other
people.
I might say I like the farming but I
really only interested in watching the barley seed, for a barley seed in the
soil is like a kitty patting your arm with curling claws as it purrs.
And people think I joking when I say I
like watching grass grow.
Not to say there isn’t any intrigue in
other crops such as camelina, corn, milo, wheat, soybeans, vetches, birdsfoot
trefoil—that one’s fun to say—and so on. A person could spend all day talking
about the potential value and timing of nitrogen inputs in soybeans, the
mysterious role of silica in plant development, how the level of boron impacts
yield and water usage, the practice of companion cropping, row width options—especially
the African elephant alternatives, the allelopathic yet soil building effects
of a couple of years of vetch—how the land becomes a weird green desert that a
person can feel with their eyes from the road. and, often when I run into,
sometimes literally,
Dusty, name not description, a larger
operator down the road, description of operation and operator—in every sense.
We do. During the week he will often pull up next to me as I pass in the 1958. Starting
the conversation mid-sentence, as though continuing the previous or as if I am
just interrupting him thinking out loud, fussing about how the new tractor,
delivered only a week ago, is going to need new seals, a rubbery bit not the
animal. It would be interesting if he had seals to pull around a 1500 bu. grain
kart.
Not to change the subject—but as I do,
when digging down to find bedrock, which they didn’t find, for the foundation
of the new conversion damn, a number of years ago, various ancient ocean
fossils were discovered. No seals. Most of the fossils discovered were smaller
forms of marine life. There was a little
bit of hop’ a lal, but when the water was still water after the conversion, it
kinda subsided. Though, it did allow a few folks to harness their inner child
and go back to being the kid chasing the water stream with a stick. As most
adults, they like to call it a job and pretend to use maths and have fancy
organizations, but it’s like me trying to say that farming is a real job.
Adults, if a person can call em that, just get bigger, not always better, toys.
The toys are upsized and the language
describing one’s role in the community is filled with rhetorical flourishes,
but this is just because the current society don’t have oral traditions to pass
along and maintain the myth of adulthood; instead, the narrative of maturity
has become dependent upon biological and chemical markers. Words or formulas
make something new, maybe related or more interesting, but they are not the
person.
But back to the seals that need
replaced on the tractor not in the local zoo. When I mention the alternative
approach, which I have been doing for the last three years on a 1970s JD 4520,
of continually adding oil he starts waffling on about warranty, costs, hired
hands—is there something beyond right and left? If a person had three hands
would there be right, left, and hmm? Would such an addition allow the thought
process to be more complete? I might even finish a thought—and the fact an
almost ½ a million dollar tractor ought to, well, work. In response I like to
point out how tools often take after their owners—maybe he’s a little leaky
around the seals—at least that’s why I think my equipment don’t work at times and
letting a tractor take a nap is a lot easier than fixing it. Sometimes it
works. I know it works for me, the operator.
But here Dusty gets to the real point
of the conversation, not only is he trying to avoid having to help the hired
hand tag a calf, but he’s been on the internet again. The death nell of any
civilized thought. And he wants to talk about hand dug wells. Like most people,
even Dusty, whose voice I don’t mind, only has about three or four stories in
their bones. But that’s ok most folks can’t tell the difference or forget.
One story to remind us we are human and
two to help us forget.
But the stories a person tells about
farming has changed quite a lot over the years. It would appear. Transitioning
from planting rye in the middle of corn rows, after the hiller has went through,
with a one row drill and an unruly, lazy, stubborn ass. To driving a tractor,
who thinks I am an unruly, lazy, stubborn ass, but in the end it is still about
seeds, soil, weather and patience. But, even in these thoughts, at these
conversations, I still feel I don’t fit.
The long lost days of soil whispers
like me who could get an orange tree to produce in a February blizzard, which
often don’t contain snow except your neighbors’, have long been replaced with
scientist conducting tests.
Not too far down the road a feller from
England farms a plot. Well, not really, but a flunkie sends him soil and tissue
sample results and he tells the flunkie what to do based on the info provided.
The days of watching a plant dance in a lightening storm as it jostels to get
closer to the nutrients released from the air by the thundering light,
trembling roots drinking cold ground water on a hot summer’s day, burnt leaves
blushing green with a side-dressing of anhydrous ammonia, even the physical testing
the dirt with a foot or hand or checking the plants health by how the color
changes throughout the day all replaced by a sample and a lab test.
In a way, robots are not taking over
jobs. People, in general, are becoming robots. Like the ever evolving corn
plant, what a human is, is dramatically changing and maybe that’s a good thing.
At least now there might be a formula. But it’s not the old Aristotelian
formula: what a person is, what a person needs to be, and what a person needs
to do to be what they are supposed to be; rather the form is more creative, in
a way compelling. No longer are what a person is and what a person needs to be
known variables; instead, these variables are discovered by what used to be the
unknown variable which is still an unknown variable…and you thought the smoke
coming out from the door seals of the 1958 was from the engine.
Whatever
the case, when I peer into the window as they take the grain sample—yes I’m
still at the elevator—I feel like an orangutan looking out from my cage across
the way at the, at the I shouldn’t say monkeys should I. There really isn’t
much they doing as they only have one bin to dump the grain in, but I figure
its best to entertain em a little. Make them
think what they doing is important. Besides it sets a good example for the
grandson. And, they sometimes make the mistake of letting me know that what I’m
doing might have the slight possibility of being important. Some people like to
be in the zoo or at it. I am never sure which.
Currently,
there is not too much of a line. There was some harvesting earlier. Lot of
folks, bigger operators, got their work done. Kinda in that middle ground where
it’s a little wet, a little dry and, based on the season length I planted, for
some of us, just right. So, I can hurry up into the elevator. Bounce up onto
and over the cement floor. Lining the dump gate with the grate.
Here
is the problem. Tires don’t prevent a vehicle from moving when the brakes don’t
work. They’re round you see. And so, when two of them are pointed downhill. That
means two of them are downhill. Further, most brake boosters, if a person tries
to use em, work off the engine’s vacuum which means at idle the carburetor,
lacking air, starts shutting the engine off rather than keeping it running. Trying
to hold an old truck in place while also needing to release the clutch to raise
the truck box does get a little tricky. The scowl on the over-napped, elevator
hand smoking his cigarette next to the no smoking sign and holding his thumb
high in the air as if thumbing for a ride don’t help much either.
But the old elevator don’t care. Years
of neglect graffiti the walls. Absent of traffic with the noon whistle. The quietness
can be felt but not seen or heard. The ever unrelenting grain dust mixing with
cigarette smoke and unburnt fuel vapors. The sun reaching the halfway point
helped by the dust and smoke pushes away any last primal scented stirrings of
rain. Kernels removed from a golden field, orphaned from the parent plant now
abandoned for a few dollars. Each corncob worth at most a measly penny. The
truck box, now emptied, prepares to move forward.
It doesn’t surprise me that angels
don’t go crunch like a pop can when you roll forward too quickly. When you
forget and don’t realize the side door is open. Not really open, more so
cracked in a way that don’t fit.
I have been beating around the bush. I
hate to get to the point. Part of it has to do with the speed of the old grain
truck but it is more so a habit of old folktale story tellin that’s been a part
of my life as long as I can remember. The TV hasn’t been around here much as nobody
needed it to farm. So, most folks still know how to tell stories. Even the
story of my birth was more so about the weather, whether or not the cows got
fed, and if tractors would ever replace horses, oh and by the way there was a sale
on blue cigars down at the general store. There is a difference between a story
about the corn that grew three ears over night and one of um was mine, and the
words that describe healthy plant growth. Stories don’t really talk about what
they talk about. It’s not because the story don’t realize it is important or out of some sense of false humility or
pride or what’n all. It’s more of a matter that words are words and a story is
a story. A person don’t want to taint the purity of a good story with words.
Culturally, explaining something with
words seems to be the worst one can do. I know I hate it.
Part of it being the simple recognition
of existence when I try to sit clear on the park bench. It worries me that some
people actually take the time to remember what I say that I’m there in the room
with them. Thes’y ought to know better. But more so it’s as though they are
trying to take ownership of it. To own the moment and have it as their own. A
special present only opened in narrative so the world can see what is theirs.
In a way stories are like farming. I
have never grown a corn plant, soybean plant, milo, wheat, vetch, pumpkin, or
even a barley plant; instead, each seed I give to the soil. Gifting the soil
with a gift that has been given me. Not holding unto the gift, but passing it
on. I let go. Stories are not to be held unto with words but a moment when the
pieces of an event come together and press into a person something that grows.
Let me get to the point. You remember
the grandson that I was taking to the grandmother. This little, young feller
was the one who cracked the door open, climbed out and when I drove forward,
become the one who did not go crunch like a pop can.
Like I said, it was not much of a
scene. More like a mafia killing in an abandoned wearhouse. There is no sound
in moments like this. The rattling dryer, rumbling truck motor, shovel—scrapping,
elevator hand, and even one’s own heartbeat silence. It doesn’t do any good to
try the cast-iron, finger—pinching, mechanical john deere jack, Even backing up
is a moment too late. Truck tires do not need to drive far to turn a rib cage
into a bruised sack of broken bits spilling out onto the ground.
And one movement becomes every moment.
One event becomes the story, the words, a narrative that can’t be silenced.
You can’t see the angel wings at that
moment. Nor, do you hear any bells. The horn didn’t even need to ring out like
a 340 ton Liebherr coal truck out at Black Thunder indicating direction before
movement. But it don’t matter. A bell is not needed for an angel to earn wings.
Angels only leave when their wings are ready. I have been told. If only the rest of us were ready.
For most readers this is what the story
will be about. The story will be about the events and feelings and blah, blah,
blah, blah. People will start to blubber, make up memories about past moments,
and imagine future events. I hate to sound cynical but after years of listening
to folks repeat the right words, sit in the right seat, and pander to the right
moments. I don’t have much time for the nonsense show. There ain’t no meaning
in it. During the war, a person didn’t go visit a psychologist between deaths. They
tried to stay alive. A person realized they were a part of the world and not
something the world would wait on hand
and foot. And maybe that’s what wrong with me. But I don’t want my feelings to
be tossed aside with words either. Made sense of and defined. I don’t want to
package the moment; rather, I want to leave it there, on the ground, unwrapped,
raw, and still living. To hold unto by letting go.
And now I know I will never fit.
I think there is a part of death the
evolution of the human has missed out on. Some cows, when she loses her calf to
the winter cold, a coyote, or my incompetence as a midwife, will keep trying to
return to the scene even though the calf has long been removed. Some cows, the
better ones, will even refuse to come to the tractor and feed wagon. The cow
knows where she last seen her child. I used to think it was because the cow
didn’t know any better, but now, in part, I think she’s trying to say:
“good bye. I love you, My dear little one.”
And while she knows the child is gone,
she also knows the child is still here.
And like most important things in life,
like a fool trying to tell a story, there’s too many words. So over time, she
has learned to return, waiting patiently for her little angel to hear, feel,
touch her heart. To stay in that moment and not sweep it away with words.
Stubbornly, pawing the ground at any suggestion of relocation.
But
I can’t stay in the moment pawing the ground and snorting. There’s too much
polite pandering in society. People reaching out. Not to help a person, but to,
as the saying goes, rub the tummy and pat the head.
The local church folks want to do
something. To make a person feel better. But churches are more so a local
social club meant to help the neighbors get to know each other better, mark the
classes and provide a never do well with employment. Churches, like words, have
lost the function of marking with meaning and community.
Not, to say I don’t believe in
religion. I believe very strongly in eating pizza, drinking pop, and once a
year—outside of the good woman’s sight—smoking one good cigar. But just as
words in a narrative, what a person believes a person holds dear, loves, they
don’t expand it out into a religion, it doesn’t become an advertisement but a
way of life. It is not rhetoric in place to make what a person says sound
right, but what you need to be right.
Days
pass and I have to return to the harvest. Such is the efficiency of farm life.
An animal raised to be killed and eaten. A crop planted to be harvested. A
human born to be worked. I see Dusty driving up the road. He stops as I pull up.
Today I am not interrupting any thoughts or waiting for a conversion, but like
the old cow returning to the scene, I am
listening to our bones. This moment, the moment of every moment, is not a
moment of silence but a moment without words.
A new sign now adorns the elevator. Not
flowers or memorial stones, but a tattered, hand written sign, that mockingly
blames, do not let riders exit the truck.
