Some humorous aggie stories live as family lore down through the decades. Some of the best out-of-the-past aggie stories emerge when old-timers gather and start retelling stories from their family histories.
This is one such story. As told, it happened back in Woodson County, Kan., long before the invention of the chain saw. The family involved had moved from a poor farm in Riley County to a different poor farm in Woodson County, hoping that a change in locale would bring a change of fortunes.
The farm needed some pasture fencing and, luckily, (the new residents thought) it had a half-mile of 4-wire barbed wire fencing that was deemed recyclable. But, it had to be moved from one location to the pasture location.
The family owned a clattering old F-20 Farmall tractor and that mechanical marvel wuz put to use moving the barbed wire. After all staples in the posts were removed, the farmer hooked one end of a half-mile long strand of barbed wire to the drawbar and headed off to the pasture site.
Now, the fence movers and builders thought they had a stroke of good fortune on their side. Right on one of the interior corners of the new pasture a good-sized tree wuz growing and the fencers figgered on using the tree as a sturdy corner-post. So, they wouldn’t have to dig a hole for the corner post by hand in the rocky ground.
When the tractor driver arrived at the pasture site, he pulled the barbed wire across the base of the tree and headed for the other end of the new fence a half-mile away.
Oops! When he retraced his route, he discovered to his dismay that the taut barbed wire pulled across the base of the tree had worked like a saw and had cut the tree almost through. It certainly was ruined as a corner post.
Not only that, to add more misery, the tractor-move had also ruined most of the barbs on that strand of the fence.
So, in the end, the story went, the fence builders dug the corner post hole by hand and moved the rest of the barbed wire by tractor, but much more carefully.
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Another humorous aggie story is of more recent vintage. A friendly rural neighbor volunteered to help an aging friend replace a water pressure tank at the friend’s home. The pump wuz located in the old root cellar in the basement of the home. Needless to say, the root cellar wuz a tad musty and leaky.
When the friendly neighbor went into the cellar, he found the old water pressure tank held up off the damp floor with cinder blocks. The blocks were positioned with the holes vertical.
So, when he lifted the old tank from its cinder block perch, he wuz more than a bit surprised to discover that the holes in the cinder blocks were filled up with creepy-crawly garter snakes that were over-wintering in the comfortable cellar.
After his initial shock, the helpful neighbor donned leather gloves and removed the snakes and relocated them to an outdoors site. He then finished the job of replacing the pressure tank.
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This past week wuz “milestone” week for Nevah and me. On Jan. 30, both she and I celebrated birthdays. I headed around the sun for the 83rd time and I’ll only say that Nevah has circled Ol’ Sol fewer times than I have. And, Nevah shares the birth date with an identical twin sister. Another coincidence: Nevah and I have the same wedding anniversary date. 😉
The twins didn’t get together for their birthday. It wuz too cold and snowy. However, our local family did treat us to a delicious birthday meal at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan.
I passed another significant milestone last week. The first column of February marked the beginning of my 53rd year of continuously writing this column. That’s more than 2,500 of them. That’s a lot of typing of both true stories and figments of my imagination. The Good Lord willing, I’ll keep hacking away at the task every week.
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For our birthday, our daughter and son-in-law gifted us with one of those new fangled bird feeders equipped with a camera to take pictures of birds eating at the feeder and then identifying the bird species on our smart phones.
We haven’t gotten the feeder operational yet, but plan to tomorrow when the temperatures go up and all the snow melts.
We don’t get many bird species at our current feeder because we don’t have a lot of trees near us. But, I’m sure we’ll be pleasantly surprised at the birds that eat at our new feeder. In fact, we were surprised during the cold weather by a bird species we’d never seen before. It wuz a white-headed Junco. We gets lots of regular ol’ Juncos every day, but the white-headed one wuz a newbie.
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I’ve started traveling in style back and forth to coffee at the Old Geezers’ Gathering in Riley. I bought a used Polaris Ranger and my son-in-law finished fitting it out with mirrors, turn signals, a horn, tie-downs, and an alert light on the roof. It’s also got a cab and heater.
It’s a fun ride.
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Well, I’ve stumbled to column’s end again and it’s time for this week’s words of wisdom. They are: “Cell phones bring far folks close and put close folks far.”
Have a good ‘un.
