Three Stories

[wdfifteen]

Paul's posts about Mr. Curtis reminded me of men I have known who had a strong impression on me for one reason or another. I dug up three paragraphs from the stories and I'm posting them here.

“To the account of Brown. Mistu E. Brown.”

Mr. Brown had a charge account at the hardware store where I worked when I was 16 and 17. He would come in occasionally and buy something and ask me to charge it. I can hear his tenor voice to this day, “Please charge this to the account of Brown. Mistu E. Brown.”
Mr. E. Brown was a short man with skin the color of polished walnut. He always wore a spotless white shirt and dark tie under pressed OshKosh bib overalls with the cuffs rolled up and pressed. His shoes were highly polished round-toed black oxfords. Always.
He carried himself as a proud and gentle man who would brook no nonsense from anyone.
I went to Mr. E Brown’s house once. He lived alone in a house outside of town on a well -groomed half acre. I was there to install a water heater. Everything from the mailbox to the laundry room was immaculately cared for. While I worked, Mr E. Brown sat a table cracking and eating walnuts and talking. He said, “I needs to eat these here nuts because I don’t eat no meat. I just eat nuts and rice. I don’t eat no meat so I gots to eat a lot of nuts.”
After 50 years I look back at Mr. E. Brown with respect and admiration. He lived an unpretentious life, but was quiet and proud, with a sure-as-hell sense of who he was. I never knew his first name, but he is one of the men in my life that I have striven to emulate.

[wdfifteen]

Warnie Webb

Then there was Warnie Webb. Webb was 60 years old when I worked for him at the age of 17. I did farm work – tractor driving since I knew how to do that. Warnie’s two greatest loves in life were Allis Chalmers tractors and drinking whiskey with the men at the grain elevator office. He loved to brag about his tractors.
I first met him at the age of about 10. I would ride into town with dad and, when I could slip away from him, hang out at the grain elevator office. I was fascinated by the men in the office and the things they talked about. The office smelled wonderful. There were bags of sweet feed stacked inside the door which gave the room an aroma of molasses that mixed with the smells of horse liniment, bag balm, and tobacco. Yes, wow, the tobacco. On winter days Warnie would fire up the pot bellied stove and start pouring cheap whisky into little glasses. The guys would gather round and the stove and talk, sip whiskey, chew tobacco, and spit on the stove.
Warnie had a voice like a foghorn and it carried a mile. He would stuff wood in that little Warm Morning stove until it fairly danced, occasionally spitting tobacco juice on it to see how hot it was. He would fire a jet of juice at the stove and if it vaporized on contact, he’d bellow, “She’s a haawt now boys!! Then slap his knee and knock back a whisky. I didn’t sip whiskey or chew tobacco but I listened to the talk. That’s where I learn that girls have periods and a lot of other truths and myths about sex – at the age of 10, in the office of a feed store.

[wdfifteen]

More about Warnie

Warnie was a farmer of sorts and loved his Allis Chalmers tractors. You could tell his favorite because it was the one with the most slip hooks, grab hooks, chains, brackets, and junk welded to it. He welded up a 3-point hitch, 4 row cultivator that must have weighted 4 tons and married it to the back of an Allils Chalmers WD-45 When you lifted the cultivator, it stayed on the ground and the front of the tractor raised in the air. His solution to that problem was to stack bags of feed on the steering bolster of the tractor. This is the rig he sent me out on to cultivate corn early one June day.
Even with the fenders down you have to go slow cultivation young corn – like 3 or 4 miles per hour. Allis Chalmers are the quietest tractors made at the time, and the puttering sound of the engine in the hot sun worked like a lullaby. I spent the afternoon just barely conscious enough to stay between the rows and I spent most of the afternoon drifting in and out of dreams. This couldn’t go on forever, could it? No. I came to the end of one row, snapped up the lift lever, and the front of the tractor rose majestically in the air. In my stupor I didn’t think to hit the throttle until I’d plowed clear across the end rows and deposited the front of the tractor on the fence.
Warnie was no doubt in town in the feed store office getting drunk and telling stories so I had time to get out another tractor and drag the WD-45 back to earth. I concluded that the problem was the feed sacks had rotted, sprung leaks and dribbled cow feed across his field. After acquiring a few new bags of feed and using the cultivator to erase the evidence I was back to snoozing my way across the fields. Warnie never had a clue.

[asphaltgambler]

Great stuff! ^^^^^ Keep 'em coming!

[Scott Douglas]

YES!
Please do.

[herr_oberst]

You have a gift, Patrick. Not just the writing but the observation as well. (It's probably part-and-parcel of the process, but....those are three terrific stories, leaving the reader wanting more)

[wdfifteen]

Thanks guys. I've been going through my stuff and deciding what to pitch and what to keep and I run across old editorials a lot.
When you're on a deadline and wracking your brain for the required 800 words sometimes something happens that gives you a gift to get started on. I bought a used Mercedes once and the PO had the the navigation system set to speak French. So that set me off on this little story of "true" life (sometimes you need a little fiction to better tell a truth):

I used to be pretty much in tune with any engine-powered vehicle that I operated. I could tell if a tire was low by the feel of the steering. I could tell if a spark plug was going bad or the points were closing up by the way the engine sounded. If the engine was down on power, I would listen at the exhaust pipe for the sound of a valve that’s burned or sticking. I’ll bet it’s the same with most of you who read this magazine. You could say our engines and vehicles speak to us.
I got a new car the other day. It speaks to me, too—in French. If it’s like the car it is replacing, it’s telling me a door is open or a tire is low or service is due, but I’m not sure because I don’t understand French. My last car spoke to me in English. It told me every time a tire lost a little air pressure or the fuel got low, which I found insulting. It was as if the people who made the car assumed anyone who would buy a car like that wouldn’t have the sense to operate the thing. I like to operate my car all on my own, thank you. I have faith in my competence, even if the people who designed my car don’t.
I could change its language to English (or German or Japanese) I suppose, if I got out the 2-inch-thick owner’s manual and looked up the instructions on how to do it. But the car was speaking French to me when I got it, and I kind of like it. I like the soothing voice of the woman who lives in the dashboard cooing to me in French when I leave the driver’s door open. You might ask how I would know the driver’s door is open if I can’t understand the language of the woman who is speaking to me. (Well, you might not ask this because as a reader of this magazine you probably have some sense, but the people this car was built for would be totally baffled). The secret is I do it the old-fashioned way; I pay attention to the cold draft and the sound of air rushing past the weather stripping.
Cars, trucks, and tractors speak to us if we listen and know the language. I remember as a kid watching an old master mechanic stand next to my dad’s John Deere 50 and listen to it tell him what it needed. Sometimes if the message wasn’t clear, he would plug a vacuum gauge into the manifold and interpret the nervous bouncing of the needle like a voodoo priest examining chicken entrails to discern what sickness it had and even predict its future. (“Gonna burn a valve if we don’t get that carbon out of there.”) Machines spoke to him in their exotic, nuanced language in which two sounds that seem the same to the uninitiated could be the difference between a loose wristpin and a bad rod bearing. I was fortunate enough to live in a time when the old language was still spoken fluently, and I picked up a little myself—not much, but enough to get by.
We are losing touch with the language of our vehicles. When I take my car to a shop these days, the mechanic plugs in a scanner, and the car sits silently while a computer decides exactly which part to replace.
New cars actually speak the old language, and you can hear it if you aren’t distracted by voices from the dashboard. I don’t find the French lady any more of a distraction than any other passenger, so I let her croon away while I pay attention to the car. When the fuel gauge gets low and she speaks, I imagine she is telling me how handsome I am or what a great job of driving I’m doing, and I make my own mental note of the gas situation.

[DavidI]

Excellent stories! Your wordsmithing is outstanding.

[herr_oberst]

Peter Egan would love this writing, I'd wager.

[Zeke]

Bump for this thread. You must find more. Or write some new recalling those days.

[Seahawk]

I was going to write this earlier in Patrick’s thread about addict or invalid: You have the opportunity to write about what you and many others are going through.

You have a gift, one that could help others if you write about it.

This is important stuff...I know a lot of folks that would benefit from your insights.

[oldE]

WD, Your story about the Allis Chalmers sitting up reminded me of this.
Growing up on the farm, Dad had two Massey Ferguson 35 diesels. In addition to all the other equipment, there was a Massey brush cutter. This machine got used hard. I remember walking into our shop one day and noting the snapped off final drive of the machine sitting on the bench. I would hazard a guess the blade encountered a rock or a chunk of tree with an attitude and the shaft snapped like a carrot.
The shaft wasn't the only part which failed to withstand the pounding of chopping down alder bushes. Eventually the side skirts were beaten out. "No problem!" Said a welder friend of my Dad's. He fabricated new side plates from heavier guage steel. Well eventually the top deck needed the same treatment, then the strut for the tail wheel and finally the hitch to attach the whole (now over built) shebang to the poor little Massey.
I remained quite unaware of the effect of all these modifications until one afternoon when my father suggested I should take the tractor and bush cutter to the field by the river and cut the grasses and weeds growing there.
No problem, thought I as I climbed aboard and fired up the old Massey. Into gear give it a little throttle and ease out the clutch and... Sweet Dear Lord! The front of the old tractor pointed to the sky and refused to come down.. I wasted little time getting the clutch back in but had to lower the cutter to convince the front wheels they really did belong on the ground.
The trip to the field, the whole process of cutting grass and weeds and return to the yard were all accomplished by never taking the weight of the implement on the three point hitch.
Speaking with Dad about my experience he allowed he should have warned me about the effect of the weight of the modifications, but since they had been effected over several years, he just adapted to each one as the machine got heavier.
Years later, we were reminiscing about the work he had done with the machine and he confessed to a predicament he got into while mowing a steep hill.. part way up the hill was a fire break and each time he went up the hill and went over this feature, the front end of the tractor would bounce up. As the hill got more steep, the 'hang time ' increased and eventually the front end refused to come down at all. The tractor sat there with its rear wheels slowly turning but would not climb up the fire break. My father said he knew it couldn't go over backwards as the hitch was strong enough to support the tractor. His solution to the problem was to shift quickly into reverse, back down the hill and finish that part of the slope by mowing up elsewhere and mowing down that section.
He confessed he had never told my mother.

Best
Les

[74-911]

Patrick,

Please keep posting the good stuff like this, I can relate to most of it and I know others on this forum who read it will also. I really enjoyed reading it, you definitely have a gift for writing.

[masraum]

More stories!

Les, also a good story.

[wdfifteen]

Thank you all for being so nice.

Zeke, I might write something new one of these days. It not as easy as it might seem.

It’s hard to get started without inspiration – which is a misunderstood word relative to professional art.
I was listening to an interview with a song writer on NPR just this morning and the interviewer asked her what her inspiration was. She said, “There’s nothing as inspiring as a deadline.” That’s very, very true.
I’ve related this here before, but I was at a writer’s workshop with P.J. O’Rourke when one of the people there asked him what he does to get over writer’s block. P.J. said (paraphrasing here), “Professional writers don’t get writer’s block. Professional bus drivers don’t stay home from work if they don’t feel inspired to drive that day. Their job is to drive, so they drive the damn bus. When you are a writer, your job is to write, so you get off your ass and write.”


Writing was part of my job for 35 years. I no longer have any deadlines, and writing is no longer my job. So, at the moment I’m lacking inspiration.

I have 35 years of monthly editorials though. I’ll go through them and see what I can find. Here is one that I think I posted here (or somewhere) before.

The Trip Home

A few weeks ago I took a route home that follows a narrow, meandering country road. It’s not my usual route and it takes me a few miles out of my way, but sometimes I like to slow down and just look around when I drive and you can’t do that on a busy road. I came across an old barn with a fence out front that had a crude sign tacked to it that said, “STRAW.”

I’d seen it a hundred times but it so happened that I needed some straw, so I turned into the driveway, assuming the sign was telling me there was straw for sale in that barn. I was taking a chance here. That dilapidated board could be the remains of an old sign that had said “STRAW for sale,” or it could just as easily have once said “STRAW BERRIES,” or “No STRAW for sale here don’t ask go the hell away.” But it just said STRAW, which left all possibilities open.

I got out of the truck and walked out of the sunlight into the barn and stepped 50 years back in time. That barn looked and smelled exactly like the barn on my grandfather’s farm. It was a quiet as a church. Streams of sunlight knifing through cracks in the siding illuminated the dusty hand-hewn beams that supported the hayloft. Burlap bags of feed sat on the floor and empty bags were slung over a wire strung between two beams. A few chickens scratched at the floor and a cat lounged on a sack of feed. The barn had the mellow scent of uncrowded, unhurried animals and the hay and grain stored for them for winter. My grandfather had half a dozen Jersey cows that wandered in and out of the lower level of his barn, which added their own distinct smell. It was a warm, mellow aroma completely unlike the sharp smell of animals kept in confinement. This barn had that aroma. There had been cows here once.
The grainery was built against the north wall. It was a couple of small rooms with walls made of smooth, tight boards that contrasted sharply with the crude structural beams and rough siding. In my grandfather’s barn the grainery had held oats.
My grandfather would have put a sign on his fence that said STRAW. He liked to visit and too much written information discourages conversation. A cryptic sign left all possibilities open and invited the curious to stop and get the rest of the story. “You got straw to sell?” “Yep, oat straw from last year. It was a pretty good year, not too much rain right at harvest you know…” and off they would go on conversations about farming and weather and happenings at the church.
I noticed there were no oil stains on the floor of this barn. My grandfather’s barn had never had a tractor or gas engine or electricity in it, so the acrid smell of gasoline and oil had never mixed with the soft aroma of animals and grain and hay.

A figure wearing a white shirt and bib overalls appeared in the doorway.

“You got straw to sell?”

An hour later I stepped out of the barn into the bright May sun to the hammering sound of a diesel and the sharp smells of asphalt, crushed limestone, oil, and gasoline. They are so much of my life so much of the time that I barely noticed them before. The radio in my truck blasted an advertisement at me that ended with a man spitting out details so fast I could not have followed it if I cared to. These days every surface and every sound are grasped as opportunities to sell something. Life is sharp and fast and loud in 2013 and I long for my grandfather’s quieter, softer life.

[Seahawk]

Excellent.

Mr. Curtis was over yesterday picking the garden with my wife...he approves

[wdfifteen]

I'd like to meet Mr. Curtis some day.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

I'd like to meet Mr. Curtis some day.

He met John last week. It was so much fun...I’ve told John he can have the SB gathering here.

We’ll see.

Keep writing Patrick.

[smadsen]

The Great Woodland Hills Train Wreck

In the early 1970's I had gotten myself elected to the California Sports Car Club Board of Governors, the Los Angeles Region of the SCCA. There at the monthly meetings I was befriended by Lindley, an older member of the group. Lindley was born in 1903 making him in his early 70's. I was 25. His SCCA membership card was #6. He'd been around a while & knew the ropes.

Lindley liked trains, so much so that he had bought several, including one narrow gauge British locomotive built in 1900 that had served time in the Philippines pulling a trolly for 70 years.

He had some friends coming over next Saturday and they were going to try to get it running, but somewhere in the intervening 70 years the owner's manual had gone missing. Would I like to attend the festivities?

On the appointed Saturday, I showed up at the ranch in Woodland Hills. It was apparent I was invited because I was the only one who wasn't 70+ and there is a lot of physicality involved it getting a steam locomotive going.

Not to belabor the details, but you pretty much fill the water tank, start a fire, and watch the big pressure gauge. All accompanied by a lot of kibbitz, opinions & chatter.

Anyway, there was a half mile of track that led down to the entrance of the ranch. The loco started rolling slowly, at a walking pace, up hill, making all the appropriate noise & smells. A gaggle of old men, some walking, some riding followed.

All was well on the up hill, but the Bandini hit the Windmere when we crested the 3-foot summit in front of the ranch house. The loco began to pick up speed, even when the throttle was shut down. Much screaming and thrashing of arms ensued as the loco plowed through the chain line gate at the end of the driveway (the rails had been thoughtfully laid down the center of the 1/2-mile driveway).

The loco came to rest in the middle of Oakdale Drive after pulling out about 100 feet of fence on each side. The fire department showed up & everyone stood around looking at this site, a dripping, hissing, smoking, dirt cloud in the middle of the road. Traffic backed-up both directions. The police guys had never been to a train wreck. Everyone was confused.

About then boiler hit max pressure and the blow off valve blew steam all over the assemblage. A blue-haired matron in her Cadillac put it in rinse to get away before the explosion and certain death and smashed into the car behind her. A swell time was had by all.

That sealed it for me. Lindley & I became buddy's and co-conspirators in many other adventures, some actually involving race cars, and another, slightly less conspicuous train wreck until he passed in 1984. A story for another time.

[wdfifteen]

I found another one of my old editorials. This one brings up sad memories.

A Lesson in Courage

I sat in the dentist’s chair, waiting to have a filling replaced. I don’t mind visiting the dentist so much, but I hate when the procedure requires a Novocain injection. The prick of the needle and that crunching sound it makes as it is pushed through my flesh just about takes me out of the chair.
As I sat there, helpless, watching the dentist prepare the needle I thought of our brave little grandson Brody, and what he was about to go through.

A few weeks before, Brody’s mother Erin noticed that his right eye looked tired. Within days he lost muscle control in the right side of his face. He still laughed and played with his older brother Gage and twin brother Connor with gusto, but he had a crooked smile, and his eye wouldn’t close by itself. He had trouble running in a straight line.
The doctors diagnosed his problem as “embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma,” a type of childhood brain cancer that is as mean and nasty as it sounds. The doctors said that with weeks of radiation therapy followed by a year of chemotherapy they might save his life. Brody’s future looked grim, filled with months and months of painful tests, hospitals, needles, doctors, and nurses. The adults around him were terrified, but to Brody the symptoms were a mere inconvenience. He was happy, full of life, and without fear.
The Saturday before the treatments were to begin, we took the family to an antique tractor show where our magazine had set up a display. Antique Power’s booth was just inside a massive building where we had a great view of the perfectly restored John Deere tractors on display.
It occurred to me that the boys might enjoy a ride around the show grounds on one of tractors if only I could find someone who would let three rambunctious boys get near its perfect paint job. I caught up with Tom Crawford and asked him if there was a way we could make it happen.
Tom smiled. He was more than happy to oblige.
When the boys walked into the building their eyes grew as big as saucers at the sight of all those shiny tractors. I asked if they would like to take a ride on one, and three little heads bobbed up and down enthusiastically. You could see the curiosity in their eyes as they scanned the rows of tractors. Which one would they ride on?
Their eyes got bigger and bigger as Tom led them to the biggest, meanest looking tractor in the building - his John Deere model 80 diesel! They clapped their hands over their ears when the John Deere’s pony motor started its high-pitched roar, and the boys edged a way a bit when Tom closed the compression release and the big diesel started hammering. They were going to ride on this?
Brody was wearing his best crooked smile as the they drove out of the building for their tour of the show grounds. There wasn’t a dry eye in the group as we saw how happy he was, bravely riding that big noisy tractor. Brody was having a great time, and we all knew he might not have another good day for a long, long time.
They were gone for quite some time before they returned to the building. Tom had let each one of them sit in the seat and drive, so they returned as veteran tractor men.
I had not seen the boys so happy and excited for many weeks. They all wanted to do it again soon and thanked Tom for his kindness without the usual prodding from their mom.
Tom was extraordinarily gracious and as patient with the boys as a grandfather. He had not known how important it was to give a few minutes of happiness to a brave little boy who was about to embark on a very bad year.

I saw the dentist coming at me with his needle. I thought of the courage of a little boy facing that noisy monster tractor, facing a year of doctors, needles, and worse, and I thought to myself, “I can do this.”
Please pray for Brody and Tom.
Heck, you may as well say a prayer for my dentist too, if you’re so inclined.


As it turned out, our grandson Brody never did have another good day. He passed away from brain cancer in 2013, a few weeks after his 8th birthday. This picture accompanied the story in the magazine.