Now that I am nearing almost 50 years of toiling in the work world, I reflect back on the farm quite a bit. I went back and re-read my first posting about the farm in the "Jobs of Bob" Category. It seems to have a subjective quality more so, than specific experiences and tales. I think I will add to the farm postings from time to time. It seems to have had such a lasting impact on my life. 

    From 12 to 18 years old I actually worked along side my dad on the farm. Old Uncle Art was there too. Uncle Art was my Dad's older brother. Like so many old farmers of his day, he never married. He lived in a trailer next to the tool shed. It was a neat little arrangement under the Hard Maple trees. He was a quiet, and often grumpy chap. Mom called him Weinegrief (Irish). Gramma (Mom's mom) called Art, "a pill." My mom made an effort to get him a gift every Christmas. It always ended up being a flannel shirt. Years later, Dad said that when Art was carted off to the nursing home and they had to deconstruct the trailer, they found a stack of 20 flannel shirts on the kitchen table still in the wrappers. 

    As for me, of course, due to school, large durations of this farm work was in the summers. When I first started working like an adult at 12, I was still going to the country school a mile down the road in Lima Center. We called it Lima - like the bean. Outsiders were easy to spot because they called it Leema like the city in Peru. One year I road my bicycle every day to school - even in the winter.  There is a functioning train route in the village.  It is still used to this day.  I can still remember when passanger cars would roll through. 

    During the school year there were many winter nights feeding the cows and then tossing bales of hay down the shoot from the haymow to the milking area to bolster the pile of hay for my dad and uncle to later feed the cows the next morning. There were weekends of cleaning the cafe pens. Before we rebuilt the lower half of the barn. I never thought about it much but there was a slope in the middle of the main cement floor to go to the lower half of the barn. In that end were the calf pens in those days. Later we would build a poIe barn on the side of the barn for the young animals.
 
    The calf pens had to be cleaned with a fork and shovel. To do this the manure-spreader had to be backed down the middle of the low end of the barn. I learned to back the large manure-spreader straight down the barn aisle. It had to be backed with the old wobbly-frontend tractor - my favorite old Farmall H. It was built during World War II and with fuel issues of the era, it had a kerosene convertor on it. The big wheels of the spreader hung over the gutters the stanchioned milk-cows dropped their shit in. Dropping a wheel in the deep shit-filled gutter meant an ordeal of digging and lifting the tire of the heavy shit-filled vehicle out of the mess with a jack. The first time I made the mistake Dad just left me to undo it myself. Years later in my blue-collar jobs, I could back any trailered vehicle anywhere. 

    One of the biggest backing challenges was maneuvering a four-wheeled hay wagon into the machine shed. Dad insisted his farm equipment be put inside - religiously. You see the front of the wagons had wheels that turned. You have to turn the tractor steering wheel in an unnatural direction to normal instinct to get those wagons to back up where you wanted them. I still smile to this day when I see some rookie employee or even a seasoned one, completely botch the backing up of a trailer. 

    Note: This Blog "Jobs of Bob" Category does not list the jobs chronologically - I write about the experiences as they pop up in my memory and I often revisit an older job.  Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Jobs of Bob Page  for an ordered chronology.

       Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
    (each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan) 

    Marine Lance Corporal Ryan J. Nass, 21, of Franklin, Wisconsin died Saturday, September 3, 2005 from a gunshot wound at Camp Blessing, Afghanistan. He was a rifleman in the 1st Squad, 1st Platoon, Company E, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force. The unit is based out of Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. Camp Blessing, Afghanistan is about 20 miles from Pakistan. His unit was deployed to Afghanistan in June of 2005. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sited his medals as the Afghanistan Campaign Medal; Global War on Terrorism Service Medal; Sea Service Deployment Ribbon; and, the National Defense Service Medal. At the time of his death Lance Corporal Nass was survived by his wife. Lance Corporal Ryan J. Nass was the fourth Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Afghanistan since 2001.

                              As of this blog entry's posting date:

    95,822 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
    
    9,415 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    4,391 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003. 

    1026 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

    317 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    670 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001. 

    31,762 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003. 

    5,393 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001. 

    102 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    18 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

    140 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    21 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

Wisconsin military service person special mention of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; and, icasualties.org.