Went out to the country yesterday to see a man about replacing some clapped out 100 year old windows I just happened to have brought with me in the car. It was almost an undercover operation with my host and guide saying, "there, turn up that lane and drive slowly towards the house." We did, and a young man with 6 kids and a beard came out of the house to join us at his workshop where we discussed replacing ancient windows with ones just like them made out of whatever worked and negotiated a price of about $100.00 and pickup date and then we went to a giant produce auction where farmers came in from the surrounding county and townships to sell produce to eager buyers. It was a hoot.
It was on the drive back to his place from the auction that I learned that this old coot (a couple years older than me) and his wife, have a barn dating back to the Civil War on their 40 acres farm and in that barn are a Model A and two Model Ts. Oh sure, he has 6 tractors and any number of other farm implements in there too and he and his wife race each to the riding mowers to mow the grass around the house and the pool and the orchard.....
We stopped to drop something off at a friend's farm and watched as a zillion little kids and some older kids gathered up the horses and climbed onto the flatbed to trundle down the road a piece to their 12 acre pumpkin patch where they all jumped off and started to load pumpkins and get them ready to send to market. It was a scene right out of those books you read 70 years ago stuffed with cherubic children having a sensible good time.
The funny thing of course, our friend down there isn't really a farmer, he's a chemical engineer and professor and also works on and off as a consultant to some companies hereabouts. I had thought Victor Davis Hanson was unique but there are a lot of men like him still around.
Things like this never happened to me in California.
5 comments:
Sounds like an awesome day :-)
Living in an area with a lot of Amish families is all that keeps my faith in humanity alive.
It really was.
It was eye opening and fun.
Miles away from the window guy I'm talking to another young man with many kids working on the pumpkin packing and we are talking about his woodshop and he mentions he is looking to knock down the burnt remains of his shop because he is alive to the danger of having all of his structures connected. Yeah, there was a fire that burned down an entire homestead. Nobody killed but they lost the barns, the house/s the kitchen, workshops, etc and when I asked how big he was going to build the new one it was, "oh, as big as Peter's" which informs me that he crossed that 10 mile gulf and helped build Peter (the window guy)'s workshop. Yeah, they make it interesting.
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