Memories float away in the dust?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope this finds you doing well. I am pretty good overall. I am a bit frazzled. Last weekend went by too quickly. There were way too many things to do; taxes to do, son to visit, a nap to take, a sixty mile bike ride to ride. That’s right a 60 mile bike ride. There is a good reason for riding for 60 miles. I hope to announce the reason next week. I have a few more stars to align before any announcements are made. Just hold your horses, and no I am not going to quit my job and ride in the tour de france. I don’t like the French enough to spend a fortnight in their puny little country; unless it’s in the turret of a Abrams M-1 tank chasing gunless (gunless because they are gutless) French solders shouting “nois reddition.” I do not like them Sam, I am.

France not withstanding, I am pretty proud of the feat. I know that pride goeth before the fall, but tonight, I do not care. I rode 60 miles.

As promised, this blog will see the end of the recollections released and rehashed from the razing of an old barn that we had the farm. It is a good thing too. You see that pile on the ground has suddenly started to disappear. Like ants at a picnic, the folks from around southern Madison County have congregated around the skeletal remains and are carrying it off a piece at a time. And like their six legged brethren, great feats of strength and agility must have been exhibited. Those beams were heavy. I am sorry that I didn’t have a camera set up. I could have made a bundle in the documentary business; “The Scavenger Hill Jacks of Southern Madison County”, or at least sent a bill to those who wisely decided to ask forgiveness instead of permission. I feel a little sorry for the guy who stopped by and had to pay a nominal fee for a beam that will be crafted into a mantle for his fire place.

Back to the memories; Charlie was a steer that had had a terribly difficult life. His arrival to our farm was during the middle of a snow storm that witnessed 20 mile an hour winds, plummeting temperatures, and 10 inches of snow. It was the kind of snow that today, would have the Storm Team standing in the cold, talking to the drivers at the salt barn, and drawing circles on the STORM VIPER map. Back then, forty years ago, all we had was a winter storm warning icon in the upper right hand corner and three kids watching with baited breath as they alphabetized all of the school districts. “Come on South Madison, come on South Madison” Three kids trying desperately not to blink when suddenly South Montgomery, South Whitley pop up on the trailer. “Did you see it? I think I blinked. I am going to watch again.” Dr Malck was a sadistic superintendent who refused to call any school day before 5:00 a.m. He has won life’s lottery by hitting a game winning, last second, ½ court shot in the sectionals against Anderson when Hoosier Hysteria meant that you could turn those kinds of heroics into a nice life. So Dr. Malck had decided to repay life’s good fortune by having the kids of South Madison School Corporation get up early if they hoped to gold brick during a snow day.

Those were the less than ideal conditions that Charlie was born into this world. Charlie also had the misfortune of having a very stupid mother. She had an entire barn that was well bedded, out of the wind and quite comfortable. But she chose to shorten her tribe’s evolutionary prospects by use doorway for a maternity ward, where the wind, plummeting temperatures, and snow would most certainly doom her son’s chances. So that night, we watched her signs and portents of freshening. She was in the back part of the warm barn and so we went to bed sure that during the night a calf would be delivered and become part of the vast Sharritt herd.

The next evening came. Yes, evening; Dr. Malck decided that it would be good to send us out on treacherous roads to attend school the next day; evil, vile, misanthropic man. So the next evening, the kids returned from school, changed cloths, and headed out to do the chores. As we walked into the milk house, the only heated barn on the farm, we found Charlie under a heat lamp with dad rubbing his black coat briskly and preparing to tube him. Tubing is an emergency procedure on the farm when a ¾ rubber tube is snaked down the animal’s throat. After reaching it’s destination, the stomach, the free end is attached to a funnel. This contraption caused me to question my dad’s assertions, upon my arrival at Purdue, that he never went to college. Milk is then poured into the funnel for the over the lip and around the gums look out tummy here it comes trip. It is used in the emergency situation where the new born calf is too weak to take in needed nourishment; usually, because it does not have the sucking instinct. Yes, dad was a creationist not a “darwiniot”.

These were heroic measures used in dire situations and by definition rarely worked. Looking at Charlie, my cousin and I didn’t hold out much hope. Charlie made it through the night. The next day he was still with us. He lay there all sprawled out on the milk house floor, warm as toast. While he wasn’t laying there in the classic crèche repose of Bethlehem, life had re-entered the eye and there was hope. This proceeded for a month and it looked like Charlie was going to make it. A little worse for wear; he definitely had two frostbit ears. He held his head in a cockeyed manner, and he could not stand up on his own. Some infection had entered his ear during his desperate first few hours of life. That infection caused a disruption in his inner ear, disrupting his balance, making it impossible to sit upright let alone stand.

Even 13 year olds knew that this was an impossible situation. Cows have to walk around. They are quadra pedal lawnmowers. You can’t go to the vet and get a wheel chair and move them from the feed trough to the water trough. It wasn’t going to work. Dad, however, had Charlie love. Spurred on by that love and long before the American’s with Disabilities Act, he made unreasonable accommodation after unreasonable accommodation for that calf. The Sling was the first. Attached to the milk house ceiling, Charlie would be hoisted on his feet every day. Enough slack left in the contraption to allow some weight to be kept on his feet to keep his muscles from atrophying. He was left in the heated barn for two months, because “he was used to the warm temperatures and the sudden jolt of late winter or early spring cold may delay his recovery.

Every day, the tension on the sling would be adjusted so that Charlie would have to bare more and more of his own weight. Every day he would get a little bit stronger. Two months later, taking shaky and timorous steps, he left the barn. It was a miracle! His only mar was that misshapen head, missing ¾ of each ear, held down and to the right with just a bit of a tilt to the left. Those were the manifested scars of his ordeal. Less immediate but just a real was an overall lack of vigor. Charlie grew very slowly.

Two years later it was time to select our calves for the 4-h fair. At the Sharritt farm, the quality of calves for selection was often up and down. Some years, we had John Elway, Jim Kelly, and Dan Marino to choose from; other years Vince Young, Matt Leinart and Kellen Clemens. That is my point exactly. It was a Vince Young kind of year. Holding the second round draft pick and no good prospects, dad suggested Charlie.

“What, are you kidding me!? Look at that ugly misshapen head; those ears. He’s two years old.”

Two weeks ago in my blog “Where Does it Say That?”, I complained bitterly about all of the things that weren’t written in the 4-h handbook about criteria used for judgments. However, it did say that beef animals would be no more than 18 months at the time of the fair. Charlie would clock in at 30 months.

Dad was undaunted. “He doesn’t look old. Other than the head, he looks pretty good. No one will look inside his misshapen head to figure is age from his teeth. You can hold his head up straight. He has had so much time around people that he will be easy to break to lead. Look at your other choices. No I’m not kidding you. Stop your bellyaching, go down and catch him. He’s your draft pick.”

The die was cast for that cloudy, February, Saturday afternoon. My cousin,  a friend and I found ourselves in a 15 by 15 stall with a single 100 watt light bulb illuminating the gloom that came in through the open barn door and lone window on the south side of the barn. Our quarry, the three calves were standing there looking at us, Charlie in the middle.

We approached them; moving them back into the corner; my cousin and I in front, with a rope halter to slip over a head, the friend standing along side. Back, back, into the corner, we maneuvered them. Until the right angle, became the 4^th and 5^th men on our team, we reached out with the halter. It touched Charlie’s head, and . . . . he went crazy. He let out a bellow that would have waked the dead. His companions momentarily stunned by the blood curdling bellow soon woke up also and surged forward along the wall. Three calves, a ton and a half of grade A on the hoof shot forward with a crack.

Space and time being what it is and my initial position, in front of that ton and a half, I found myself pinned between Charlie and his companion along the wall, feet elevated off of the floor going for a merry 15 foot ride until the next corner got into the fray and stopped my traveling companions. With a block wall looming as a threat, some of my company stopped others turned. Since I did not have my wits about me yet and hadn’t used my feet for any of the journey, I hit the straw covered manure, landing on my back. I can close my eyes today 37 years later and see the following events clearly.

I look up and see Charlie’s head passing over me. The silhouette of his head is against the backdrop of the haymow floor 13 feet above me. I feel his right front hoof impact the ground by my left hip. His head passes out of sight. My ceiling suddenly becomes his brisket six inches from my nose as his right front foot hits beside my head and his left hind foot takes the front foot’s place beside my hip. I close my eyes as the right front lifts and is carried on to be replaced by the rear foot and then it is over.

Hands are grabbing me, lifting me, brushing the straw from my body, nervous laughter, a backing from the stall, six pairs of wild adrenalized eyes staring at one another. We close the door to the stall, locking it behind us and . . .

Memories float away in the dust.

Take care,

Roger

Where does it say that?

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine, and very thankful. You should be too. Work had an out-of-town visitor this week. The trip was an overnight event and they asked what there was to do around town for the evening. I had to think for a minute and respond “after the super bowl we are all pretty tired and just want to go to bed early and recover from these nasty measles that we contracted in our giant party for the unvaccinated.” They were left searching for context. Measles? Party for the unvaccinated? Don’t worry. They’ll get back to Oklahoma and google “measles, Super Bowl” and all will be revealed. – Google; context for the unhip with a keyboard - But I digress. Isn’t that always the case? All of that energy and focus on one moment in time and then whoosh!; the air is out of the balloon and the partygoers are left wondering what the hell just happened here.

I am thankful that I took the lovely Beverly’s advice and stuck with the series of memories that razing a barn on our farm had released. The Super Bowl party is over. We have been flipped off by someone I am too old even to know. While your co-workers were wondering what they were going to do this weekend; you were jumping for joy on the inside; savoring the next tidbit to be revealed in this blog. You really shouldn’t hoard all of this goodness for yourself. Spread it around. You’ll be amazed at the warm feeling you will have on the inside. While the city is gasping for breath, I am psyched about writing the fourth and nearly final installment of the series. 

I have to warn you though that the memories revealed on these pages are about 4-H. Oh I can hear you. “4-H; how sweet. Heart, Hands, Head, Health; Roger is going to remember all of the good things that 4-H did for him and how it made him the person that he is today.” Wrong. I want to be clear. I hated 4-H. I know it provided you with wonderful memories of working on crafts, baked goods, spending time with your parents at the fair; learning that hard work paid office in ribbons, and praise and adoration. Good for you. I am glad for you.

I learned among other things; that in order to win a blue ribbon in gardening you had to have 5 greenbeans exactly the same height. What? Where does it say that in the rule book? It does not. It says uniform. They are uniform. They are uniformly green beans; all five of the stupid things; Red Ribbon. I learned that Mr. Jeffer’s (the town electrician) son can build a circuit board where the wire is bent at 90 degree angles, the board is varnished and labeled with perfect lettering. What? Where does it say that in the rule book? It does not. It says turn the light on and the light off. There it is on – off, on – off, on – off; Participant Ribbon.

Finally and most devastatingly, I learned that peanut butter cookies are not supposed to have cracks. What? Where does it say that in the rule book? It does not. How are you to keep them from developing cracks any how? The judge actually said that you are supposed to bake dozens and dozens of the dumb things and pick the three that may not have cracked. Argh! “Aren’t they even going to eat one?” I asked my grandmother and coach. “I know they’re good. I wouldn’t have eaten the uncracked ones if I had known.”

“No dear, they aren’t supposed to have cracks.” She said; Red Ribbon.

Where does it say that in the rule book?!!!!!?

It appeared that 4-H was mainly for neat people; people who look good putting on any old thing. People who respond to a compliment about how they look, “oh this, I just threw it on.”

I learned all of that in my first year of 4-H. After the lessons learned that first year, the Sharritt family decided that what we needed was focus. We focused. We focused on showing beef cows and dairy cows. It is what we did for a living. If that Jeffer’s boy had a genetic predisposition to grand champion circuit boards, because his father was an electrician, why couldn’t the Sharritt kids benefit from the Sharritt dairy farmer genes?

So every summer from Memorial Day through the third week of July, the Sharritts would try to break 1400 pound steers and heifers to walk docilely behind a 150 pound kid on the end of a rope like they were a 13 year old lab for a walk in the park. Three problems with that; the kid weighed 150 (I really did weigh that much a long time ago); the steer weighed 1400 pounds.; and while man had domesticated beef for farm production, the beef had not been domesticated to the extent that dogs had. There are many reasons for this. The first is that if a dog messes in the house you rub his 60 pound nose in it and put him out. The dog learns to not like having his nose rubbed in feces and stops; much the same way that I learned not to like gardening, electricity, and baking in 4-H. A cow messes in the house, it is just a big mess, and since it is very hard to rub a 1400 pound nose in feces, the cow never moves on to other acts of domestication like getting a beer from the fridge.

We had every trick in the book to domesticate our cows. We tied them to the back of wagons and pulled the wagon with a tractor. We would get a short rope on the halter and hook a secondary long rope to the halter so that if they broke free its anchor point to the light pole would stop them from getting free and “fool” them into thinking that no matter how hard they rebelled they couldn’t get away from the 150 pound child. My favorite though was we bought a donkey. For the really stubborn beef cows, we would attach this donkey’s halter to the beef cows halter. The donkey being stubborn and weighing 900 pounds could set its feet and keep the steer from pulling away and over time train it to the ways of the halter.

We practiced those tricks in that old red barn. The cows tied to the feed trough with heavy yellow nylon ropes. They would be washed on the cement pad in front of the barn that sloped to the north so the sudsy water would run down over the hill making the grass greener on the other side of that fence. “Make sure to spray the cold water at their feet first because if you start up on their bodies the cold contrast on a 90 degree day could kill them.” The daily feed ration weighed out and written down so that the project book could be filled out at 11:00 pm the night before it was due. The first and second hair cuts given to reluctant recipients who wanted nothing to do with that much domestication. This accompanied by endless circuits around the barn yard; a 150 pound boy tethered to a 1400 pound cow. You know, I never did learn to get that memory out of my mind. Where does it say that?

Take care,

Roger

Certain Ambiguity or Ambiguous Certitude?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this find you doing well. I am fine. The Sharritt household is a bit on pins and needles today though. You see. I mistimed the start of this series of blogs recounting memories brought about by tearing down an old timber frame barn from my childhood. The series has stretched into the Super Bowl festivities. First hand knowledge of Super Bowl week is a target rich blogging environment.

Bev is my biggest fan. She likes the blogs that touch on memories, relationships, or peonies. Actually, she likes any of my blogs where the creative process does not include me hunched over the keyboard typing feverishly, a maniacal look in my eye, and my ears turning red from an elevated blood pressure. As fan numero uno, she believes that my best blogs stay away from ranting and should never stray into the land of raving. So this week, she has been encouraging me to stick with the discipline laid out three weeks ago. It was a good plan. And to cover what encouragement can't persuade, I suspect that Bev has been sprinkling my cereal with ground up beta blockers.

As described in last week's blog "Make Hay While the Sun Shines" the old timber  frame barns were designed to hold enough hay to keep the livestock, living on the first floor, in clover, so to speak from late October through early to mid-May depending on the weather patterns of any given year. The perfect year would have five days of hay left on May 10th. This would have given the new spring grass enough time for a good head start allowing the herd excellent grazing for the next 5 to 6 months. Every evening through the fall and winter, we would scramble up a rickety ladder and remove the summer's work one row at a time, constantly doing story problems. If it is January 10th, and you feed 10 bales a day from a haymow; the haymow has 12.3 rows left and each row has 103 bales, when will you run out? The cows had more than a rooting interest in the outcome of the mathematical gesticulations. An answer of May 20th could mean a bit of gluttony, May 5^th, however, some belt tightening.

In a good year, with good drying conditions, pulling the bales from their place released that smell of new mown hay that Jim Nabors is so fond of singing about. I always imagined that the hay was so well insulated, packed tightly in row upon row, that a little bit of the summer heat was released in the uncovering. That may have been internal body heat generated from carrying thirty pounds of wool coats, long underwear, double layers socks and Wonder bread (see Wonder . . . Bread? the December 4th blog) sacks up a rickety old ladder thirty feet. This was long before the days of thinsulate when the theories of body heat regulation revolved mainly around lugging heavy cloths around to keep you warm.

It was the loading of the haymow that provided the most vivid memories though; the most vivid memories and a life-forming lesson that has shaped me and is still one of the major forces that shapes my life and the way I see the world. If you were to look in the table of contents, the chapter would be called "Teaching the Concept of Certain Ambiguity or Ambiguous Certitude."

This lesson was taught and re-enforced each summer for ten years; taught until its lessons became part of my DNA. As mentioned, the very tip top of the haymow (capacity 1500 bales) was 30 feet off of the ground. Being mere mortals with limited strength, we used an old Kewanee elevator with a Wisconsin motor that always required two pulls on the starter rope whether the engine was hot or cold and a quarter choke to get it started. The elevator was 80 feet long. One end sitting out in the barn yard, the other disappearing into the barn, it would take the bales of hay one at a time from the wagon on the ground up to the crew in haymow, who would take the bales and deposit them tightly in their heat holding, aroma saving, storage place until winter.

The elevator would elevate (imagine that) as the barn would fill. Following the laws of Pythagoras, the base would shorten while the vertical would lengthen maintaining that sum of the squares ratio of the eighty foot hypotenuse. There was a rhythm to be maintained while loading bales onto the elevator: every five feet, place another bale on the conveyer and it would be transported to my father who would be waiting at the end taking every bale from the front edge of the mow. He would take that 50 lb bale and propel it up to 30 ft. at the feet of one of three teenage boys on the haymow crew. He would direct them where to put the next bale, admonishing them to keep the stack tight, and patiently waiting for the next row. Sometimes his hollering would be punctuated with a yelp from one of the boys, when they sank to their knee into the hole that their sloppiness left on the previous level.

He would grab another bale every ten seconds for the 20 minutes it would take to unload the 120 bales and then walk down the elevator at the end followed by three bedraggled teenage boys wondering how they would last until 6:30 that evening when the approaching dew would start to make the hay too damp to keep well in the barn. This rhythm would repeat itself all afternoon; twenty minutes to unload, ten minutes to retrieve a filled wagon from the field. Over and over, the only change to the rhythm would be to crank the elevator a little higher as the stack grew.

This barn had an unusual feature in the form of a straw loft that protruded out into the middle part of the barn when the elevator would travel its Pythagorean progress. When the barn became two thirds full the hay mow would start to become constricted by the roof. This was always the last setting for the elevator. The laws of geometry made it impossible to get under the straw loft and any higher before reaching the roof line. It was always a tight fit. In fact, if the front edge of a bale popped even a little bit of a wheelie it would hit the floor of the straw loft and if we were lucky tumble off of the elevator and hit the ground with a thud. The unlucky ones would get stuck on the elevator causing the drive belt to slip and smoke or worse cause the chain to break. Heaven help the wagon unloader (me) if the chain broke.

At the angle that the elevator went into the barn on this last set, physics took over and all of the forces of nature tried to get the nose of those bales to pop up. The elevator was so steep that Evil Kneval could have used it to jump Snake River canyon. However, dad had a plan; simply set the bale on the edge of another bale, push down on each end of the bale making a nice little bow, put the bale on the elevator with the ends down; one every 5 feet. The arch would keep the nose down. The bale would slide under the obstruction and make its way into dad’s waiting arms.

That obstacle overcome, Sharritt Farms would forge ahead for the next 360 bales with no issues or problems. Then the fourth load would come and the lesson in certain ambiguity would begin with my father its Sensei. Everyone knew that the mow would not hold the entirety of load number four. How much would it hold; 40, 50, 110 bales? It was very important to fill it to the certitude of full. That 60 bales could be the difference between May 5^th or the 11^th. The barn had to be full. Instructions to the unloader; pay attention you’ll know when its full.

“How?”

“I’ll yell.”

“Okay.” But I thought; sure you’ll yell. You are eighty feet away, there is an old Wisconsin engine screaming because the muffler was broken off last year when a bale got caught on the straw mow and fell off the elevator, there is a two foot window that is blocked by a bale of hay every ten seconds. You’re going to yell. You’re going to yell at me when I don’t hear you yell.

“How many bales do you need?”

“I don’t know. Some. Just pay attention and I will let you know.”

“More that 40; more than 80?”

“I don’t know. Just pay attention. I am certain that you will know.”

He didn’t know. I kept thinking he could have known. However, his mind was elsewhere. I yearned for the certainty of a story problem made just for this occasion. There are 5.3 rows, each row holds 11 bales. How many bales do you need to fill the haymow?

The answer, written in the ambiguity forced by his strong, but weary shoulders: May 12^th.

Take care,

Roger