Make Room for Success

I don't want to diminish your partying skills ... especially on such an auspicious evening, but try to keep up.

We are in downtown Washington, Indiana in a space overlooking Main Street. We're waiting for the crowd to gather. It could be a while.

Okay. I confess. Nothing is planned for midnight on Main Street here. Rather than blow into noisemakers and braving the showers of confetti, we're here. Rather than making certain our glasses are half full and nearby at the final minute, we're here. We usually plan a quiet evening, occasionally with friends. But tonight it's just us.

We're bringing in the new year by putting out the next edition of "Striving for Success" magazine. And doing some chores. For instance, I cleaned up the table where we have tea service in our office. I moved the printer and scanner from my desk to another nearby surface. I moved the glass beer mug that holds my pens, pencils, and highlighters to a shelf across the room. I'm getting ready. Are you?

This preparation makes sense in light of a book of instruction I have. It's called "Writing Rituals" and it's written to keep people like me on track.

I don't just like to write. I have to write. It's part of who I am. Since I'm a commercial writer, this isn't all bad. I get to channel my creativity into helping other people become successful.

I may help them explain their business. I may help them land a new client. I might persuade people to try their product or to donate money to their charity that is changing lives and helping people renew their hope. As a copywriter, I may do all that ... but not unless I'm ready.

The first ritual is clear your mind. That's the only one I'll share with you right now, but it's a doozy.

You don't just close your mind and go somewhere for a minute. You physically clear your work area. Put away things you just finished. Don't pull out things you've not yet begun, even though they're on your to-do list. You don't need anything but items that support what you intend to do right now.

Close all the windows on your desktop that aren't related to the work you're doing. Turn off any distracting sounds. Be here. Clear your mind.

So, I'm getting ready. I'm clearing my desk. I'm deleting old emails. I'm putting things away. I'm dealing with clutter. Tomorrow is a New Year. I am expectant. In 2017, Success -- in whatever form it chooses -- will come into my office and take up residence with me. I'm doing everything I can in the moment to make sure it has ample room to settle in. I intend it to stay for a long while.

Put to Use

It takes a while to find just the right place, doesn't it? That's true of ourselves and of our things as well.

Today, Joan and I have been in Washington, Indiana for just about 18 months. It has not been what we expected, to say the least. We came with abundant experience as writers and editors. That's not an especially marketable skill in a small town. So we're a bit misplaced.

Despite that, we're blessed in many ways.

Joan has met so many wonderful people. Beautiful people, really. She has been embraced and valued as a substitute teacher in the local school system. People genuinely like her. Through their eyes, I've been allowed to reassess and honor things about her that I had taken for granted.

She brings with her a newcomer's perspective. Until now, she has not lived in a small town. Small communities operate differently than towns and cities where people are more transient. More value is given to lineage here. Who are your parents? Who were your grandparents?

If you're not from here, the people asking those questions are left with fewer handles to manage how they perceive you. That's discomforting for them and possibly better for all concerned. Without those handles, we have to let a person start from scratch. Wouldn't we all like a gift like that?

For me, the homecoming -- for truly it is -- has been very good. I'm among people I know, or at least have known. Some things can change in 35 years. The reconnections are grounding to me. I have been able to participate in a variety of volunteer work and in organizations that build up our community. I have enjoyed that immensely.

One of the projects we're working on is to develop a co-working space on East Main Street. We are in the heart of what once was a bustling shopping area and the core of community activity in this town. Since then, shopping has migrated to the outskirts of town. Shopping centers carry most of the retail commerce here. Downtown is less about retail businesses and more about professional businesses.

There are a few welcome exceptions, but only a few. Soon, a major area bank will relocate to a site south of town.

So, co-working. We're creating a space where entrepreneurs and business professionals can meet, work side by side, enjoy conversation, try out ideas, and encourage one another. It will have many of the comforts of working from home, plus the benefit of face-to-face time. Working remotely can be an isolating experience. We also offer new businesses a Main Street business address and a way to separate home from work. Many people bold enough to launch a business are challenged to keep the two distinct from one another.

I mention that because we've recently installed a piece of art that has bumped along with us for quite a few years.

Joan's parents found this window in an antique store in the Cotswolds in England when they were stationed there. John, Joan's father, had a great love for beautiful things. They collected quite a few antiques during the time they lived overseas.

We had several ideas for displaying these two panes. None of them happened. I think that's because this was where they were intended to go. They have been in the US since 1971, and are only now finding their place.

You know, 40+ years is a good long while. Just ask Abraham. And they are on an inside wall. That's not what you'd expect of a window. But then, most of us aren't doing what we expected we'd be doing in our youth, are we?

I think these windows are a sign of hope and a graceful gauntlet tossed to the floor--or the wall, in this case. Find a purpose. Find a creative way to use something. Find a creative way to allow yourself to be used.

And for heaven's sake, no baseball inside the co-working space!

Not a Sheep

I need to share this with you. It's written by a Jewish scholar and I'm not a Jew. But it's good and rings true. It's about relationship between us and God. It may just transcend faith. For many, this season is about relationships. Really, isn't every season?

Rabbi Harold Kushner’s entire essay unpacks the beautiful poem that is the Twenty-Third Psalm. That’s the one that begins, “The Lord is my shepherd …”. I’ve excerpted the last section, “And I Shall Dwell in the House of the Lord Forever.”

Shepherds play a significant role in the pageantry of Christmas. They were the simplest of men, but the most in touch with their natural surroundings. Many discounted them because they were rough and not the sort to mix well in polite society.

If you had to choose, though, wouldn’t you rather be a shepherd than a sheep? Kushner encourages us to give the psalm a thorough reading. You’ll find you’re neither a shepherd nor a sheep, you’re much more.

And I Shall Dwell in the House of the Lord Forever

Of the thousands of people I’ve spoken to about my book since it was published, I’ve run across three people who did not like the twenty-third psalm and all for the same reason. 

They all said the same thing—“I don’t like this psalm because it says, ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ And if the Lord is my shepherd, that means I’m a sheep, and I don’t like being told I’m a sheep.” 

The first time I heard this, I didn’t know what to say. By the second time, I had an answer ready. I said, “First of all, this is a poem. Give me a break. You don’t take a poem literally. It’s images, it’s metaphors. 

More than that though, the psalmist’s first line is ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ That is, I am scared and vulnerable, and God is there to take care of me. But that’s only the beginning, the first line. 

Look at the last line: ‘I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ All his life experiences, all the times he’s found himself in ‘the valley of the shadow’ and was able to find his way out have taught him something about God and about his relationship to God. 

It’s no longer an abstract relationship, a theological matter of speculation. It’s no longer this passive, childlike dependence on God. It a reciprocal relationship: God does things for me, and I do things for God. And I am welcome in the house of the Lord. 

I’m not the sheep. I am the house guest. I am friends with God. He reaches out to me. I respond to him.”

*****

Through the Valley of the Shadow, by Harold Kushner, an essay in “The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World” by Bob Abernathy and William Bole

© 2007 by Educational Broadcasting Company

Beware the Helpful

I am disgusted by opportunists who borrow respect for the law, then charge people significant sums in exchange for little or no service. Beware.

Today I went with two friends to a nearby Social Security Administration office to discuss a disability claim. My friends had applied online, but not at the Social Security website. The official Social Security website for disability applications is https://secure.ssa.gov/iClaim/dib.

In using a different site, by accident my friends nearly engaged the services of a law firm. Please know this. If you are applying for disability, there is very little a lawyer can do to assist you in submitting an initial claim. By that I mean, they might stand beside you looking forbidding while the claims representative assists you. That’s it.

The result will be that a new claims representative might become nervous. An experienced claims representative might become annoyed. Neither result will work in your favor.

In the case of my friends, this law firm provided a completed Form SSA-827, “Authorization to Disclose Information to the Social Security Administration” and Form SSA-1696, the form to appoint a representative. How nice. The SSA-827 was completed online by the applicant, so the cost to the legal firm was printing and postage.

For this service, the law firm was prepared to charge my friends 25 percent of any resulting disability award or $6,000. For a pittance of ink and a postage stamp. And one neatly folded, pre-addressed manila envelope to spring the trap.

This law firm is nearly five hours away, offers nothing of value, and would never meet my friends to check on their wellbeing. Six thousand dollars.

I congratulate the claims representative at the SSA Office. She pleasantly went through the packet, discarded the needless paperwork, set an appointment to meet with a disability claims representative, and told us “Well done.” We could tell she was as bothered by this as we were.

It was apparent that this happens much more often than we think. It’s not illegal. Neither is getting your windshield involuntarily cleaned on a street corner. Both activities are annoying, but whoever is “helping” people file for disability is carefully collecting signatures that will put the force of law behind their eventual invoices. Rather than being illegal, it is despicable and detestable.

Know your rights. Know the processes to submit claims. Don’t let people you care about get taken. And thank the next government employee you meet. They’re trying to do their best. Despite some of the rest of us.

Relief: A Trip to Pigeon Forge

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016, I got a phone call  from a friend. It was about 10 o’clock at night, but it was Evan. So I took it. 

Evan said he wanted to gather relief supplies for victims of recent fires in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. He would put everything he gathered into his food truck supply trailer and take them to Pigeon Forge.  Did I think that was crazy? No, I didn’t. Did I want to go with him on Sunday to deliver the supplies? Yes, I did. Could we leave around 3:30 in the morning. Gulp. Why not?

He announced his intention on Facebook around 11 o’clock that night. The next morning, the post had been seen by 4,000 people. By the time we hit the road for Tennessee, more than 11,000 people had seen it.

Daviess County is an exceedingly generous collection of communities. All day Wednesday and Thursday, Dave Crooks spread the word on his radio stations. That day Evan received more than 40 phone calls from people who wanted to help. Lindsay Owens interviewed Evan for the Washington Times-Herald and Melody Brunson placed the story on the top of the front page on December 1. People knew of the various drop-off points and generosity began to percolate.

On Thursday, Kylie Thomas and Tony Kassissieh from WTHI-TV called Evan, then met him Friday at The Iron Kettle Restaurant in Plainville to film a spot for the evening news. I got to participate as well. Kylie and Tony were great to work with and the Daviess County relief effort got even more valuable press.

Speaking of the Iron Kettle, owner Leetha Stoll is an inspiration. She reached out to people who have helped with other out-of-state disasters and they got funds into her hands right away. She absolutely filled her SUV with dry goods, snacks, toiletries, candies, flashlights, batteries, and more. All very practical, welcome items at such a difficult time.

On Saturday, items from each of the collection points went into the trailer. By the end of the day, anyone opening the trailer door risked being buried in an avalanche of love. Blankets, pillows, gloves, water, toys, tissue … the outpouring was tremendous!

Three a.m. is a challenging time to be in motion if you’re not accustomed to it. Neither Evan nor I had slept well the prior evening as he took the wheel and drove us all the way to Pigeon Forge. We went from dark to damp to outright wet along the way. The two-axle trailer seemed to be caught up in the excitement, doing a little cha-cha movement every now and again to keep us entertained. Passing semi-trailers moved us around a little more. 

The hills of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee strained the truck on the uphill side and the brakes on the downhill side. Despite that, we arrived just fine at Huck Finn’s Catfish Restaurant in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. We checked in with Chrissie. When she heard the amount of items we’d brought, she sent three of the guys working in the kitchen out to help us transfer from our 18-foot trailer to a 53-foot semi trailer they had parked out front. That’s when the rain became more steady.

The Huck Finn’s guys got into the semi-trailer and put things into their proper places. When we were done, our contribution rounded out their most recent collection and their trailer was pretty full. 

Here’s an interesting thing about being seen doing good. At least one person stopped by and apologized for not having much, but added their contribution as well. People like to be part of something larger. And the size of the contribution was not as important as the act of contributing. We welcomed her and had her hand her items up to the guys. Her something is still bigger than nothing. And it may be just the thing somebody needs at just the right time. Why hold back?

When we were finished unloading, we were happy, hungry, and soaked. The staff at Huck Finn’s offered us dry shirts. Better yet, they offered us lunch. We were more than ready. If you’re in Pigeon Forge, please make it a point to dine with them. They appreciated what you’ve done and they took good care of us.

After lunch, we dropped the trailer at the back of their parking lot and took US-321, the main road toward Gatlinburg. It was closed three miles into the Smoky Mountain National Park, but we drove that far, then turned back toward Pigeon Forge.

Near the turnaround, we began to see that the undergrowth was burnt away and the trees were blackened. The West Prong of the Little Pigeon River divides the two travel lanes through the national forest. The blackened ground went all the way down to the bank of the stream. Seeing it, you think, “Thank goodness. It stopped here.” Not so. The Little Pigeon there is a small stream fed by a number of smaller tributaries. It’s picturesque, even in its winter decline. But it was no match for the recent fires.

Turning north again to return to Pigeon Forge, we saw evidence that the fire had been active on both sides of the stream. Evan had visited other disaster sites in the past. There, the destruction was a marked swath of natural fury. Here, it was oddly capricious.

We turned onto one of the roads leading from the valley into the surrounding hills. The residences here are a mix of the modest, the charming, and the more expensively classy. The fire showed no discernment or respect for the structures. Nor was it all-inclusive. A home on one side of the road seemed unscathed while its neighbor is a pile of scorched masonry and ashes. 

Brick veneers that fronted fine homes high on the hill are all that remains. On other homes, black marks ring the house where the siding meets the foundation. A bright orange tag affixed to the back door marks the property as condemned. What looked like a former garage was burned to the ground. The church building beside it was completely spared. 

The rain only amplified the other sensory note. The whole area we visited still smelled of wet burn. Think of revisiting the site of a bonfire the next morning. Now multiply that smell, the stench, as if the bonfire had expanded to consume your entire property. That, and more, is the sense you get as you drive past these properties. 

These are buildings, but we came to help people. An entertainer who sings at Huck Finn’s lost everything. His co-workers have been helping him in the meantime and he has continued to show up at work each night and entertain visitors. We’re told he was insured for fire and he may come out of this better than he was before. Certainly that is not the case for everybody affected. And there is still the meantime. He’ll still need to get through that.

The guys who helped us transfer items into their trailer told us that when the WestGate resort burned, 700 people lost their jobs. Their homes may be intact or only slightly damaged, but their livelihoods have disappeared. 

Imagine having been here around Halloween. Everybody would have been enjoying the celebrations. Families would have been meeting in the resorts. Staff would have been working their trades and earning their livings. None of them would have conceived of the changes that would come so soon. Life does that. It turns so quickly. I’m proud to be part of a community that is ready and willing to so quickly respond and make a difference for neighbors they have never met. 

Daviess County and friends, you are too good for words!

Reviving Old Recipes

When do things that worked before stop working? Below are two things that purportedly worked 200 years. I've included one thing that worked over 100 years ago. Some people loudly claim the latter does not work today. What do you think?

According to the following recipe, if you wanted biscuits in colonial times, this is how you would get them.

COLONIAL BISCUITS
 2 cups flour 
4 tsp. baking powder 
Dash of salt, to taste 
1/2 cup butter milk 

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Add butter (still cold) cut into 4 or 5 pieces, work into flour mixture with pastry blender. Add cold milk, a little at a time, blending with a fork (use only enough milk to hold dough together). Roll dough about 1/2" thick onto a lightly floured board, cut with a small biscuit cutter. Place on an ungreased baking sheet. 

Bake in a preheated 450°F oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until biscuits are lightly brown. 

Makes 20.

Sifting could look like sifting by hand or using a mesh screen. Your butter would probably come from a mold and maybe from a spring house where you have keep it in crockery. The milk … well, you or one of your siblings probably hunched over on a wooden stool and got fairly intimate with a warm, breathing, tail-swishing cow early this morning to collect that. Despite the lack of conveniences in colonial kitchens, that recipe worked 200 years ago and it still works today.

What if you wanted something sweeter? What if you wanted apple pie?

COLONIAL APPLE PIE
Pastry for double crust 9 inch pie 
5-6 pared sliced apples 
2 tbsp. all-purpose flour 
1 c. sugar 
1/4 tsp. salt 
1 tbsp. ground cinnamon 
2 tbsp. butter 

Arrange apples in unbaked pie shell. Combine flour, sugar, salt and cinnamon; sprinkle over apples. Dot with butter. Cover with slashed pastry and bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour or until crust is brown and apples are tender.

Note here that they aren’t telling us how to make pastry. It’s a given. Anybody knows how to make pastry. After all, it’s not like you can just go to the store and pick up something like pastry, is it?

Again, this recipe that worked so many years ago works well today, too. Just as the cook who recorded it intended.

Yesterday’s cooks might marvel at the appliances we use today. They might scoff. Who knows? But the staples that make delicious happen are unchanged. Flour, sugar, spices, fruit. They existed then, they’re here today, and they still work.

There’s another recipe from the time between colonial days and today. The “cook,” if you will, was descended from Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the United States from Portugal around the time of the American Revolution. She was born in New York City on July 22, 1849. Born some seventy years after that revolution, Emma Lazarus was American.

Lazarus was educated at home, acquiring a knowledge of Greek and Latin classics, as well as the modern literature of Germany, Italy, and France. Lazarus developed an affinity for verse at an early age. As a teenager, she began translating the poems of Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, Alexandre Dumas, and Friedrich Schiller.

In 1881, she witnessed firsthand the tumultuous arrival of exiled refugees into the United States. After returning from Europe, Lazarus was asked for an original poem to be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the building of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Though she initially declined, Lazarus later used the opportunity to express the plight of refugee immigrants, who she cared greatly about.

Her resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", includes the iconic lines that are inscribed on a plaque on the pedestal of the monument.

“… Give me your tired, your poor, 
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Her recipe may have appealed more in the late 1800s because she saw the arrival of people in exile. It was immediate to her. Maybe we need that same immediacy.

Why not try the biscuit recipe? The ingredients are pretty simple. Mix them and put your hands in. Feel the ingredients change as you help them blend. I love biscuits.

If not the biscuits, then try the apple pie. Put it together and savor the buttery cinnamon smell that fills your kitchen when you bake it. All the things that go into it somehow blend to make a whole new thing. That’s 200 years of history just waiting for your fork. And maybe a scoop of ice cream.

Food is simple but fascinating. History is fascinating, but not always simple. I like these recipes because they give us precedents. They say, “this has worked before.” It may not have been pretty while it was happening. I know my kitchen is a mess almost every time I cook. But in the end it works. My family is better for it. And who can say that something we’re putting together today won’t be seen as remarkable in 200 years.

I think that goes for Ms. Lazarus’ recipe, too.

Two Firsts, One Day

October 29. 2016

The world changes; but our perception changes more. My perception significantly shifted last week.

I headed south on Indiana Route 57 with a new perspective. The noise level in the vehicle was more than I was used to. And it wasn’t from the stereo this time.

The view through the windshield was grainier. No amount of washer fluid would remove the bug spatter. Pock marks from salt and sand had literally made an impression on the windscreen. Nothing short of new glass was going to fix this.

Above all—what an appropriate phrase—I could see much farther than ever before from a passenger seat. I was taking my first ride in a big truck.

A person needs a reason to ride in a truck. My reason was “I want to.” Because until now I never had. The driver’s reason was…

Seasonal necessity.

It’s harvest time in southern Indiana. My friend and his brother have finished harvesting corn and are now finishing their soybean harvest.

Collecting soybeans used to be a pretty rough undertaking. Early 1960s-vintage combine harvesters were open-cab affairs. It was you—the operator—and whatever was in the air.

Let me help you here. What was in the air was heat, or cold. It was intense sunlight, or rain. You probably weren’t harvesting in the rain. Still, you could be caught between farm and field. But mostly it was dust. Lots and lots of dust.

During the harvest any dust that was on the plants gets thrown aloft. When the sickle bar cuts the bean stems, particles created begin blowing around too. As the bean plants hit the auger and are driven into the machinery to be stripped and the beans are separated, all the waste that is churned up has to go somewhere. In an open cab harvester, you’re sitting in the middle of somewhere.

Mark making the rounds of river bottoms soybean field

Things have improved. It’s still not the sort of fun you’d look forward to when you’re ready to relax, but it’s better. For one, you’re enclosed. You sit in a glass box. Tempered, tinted glass separates you from most of the dust. Climate control keeps you from resembling a rotisserie chicken by the end of the day. That’s right. This ride is air conditioned. It has a radio. It has gauges galore relaying all kinds of data about ground covered, yield per acre, average yield per field, and more things than I can remember.

Amounting to a hill of beans

You may have heard that something “don’t amount to a hill of beans.” Take that with a grain of salt. A kid named Jack had only five beans and did great things. Closer to home, the price per bushel for soybeans is anywhere from $9.25 - $9.47 today. Very roughly, that is $10 for every 60 pounds of beans. Take a trip with me.

Circling the field

We are climbing the non-skid metal ladder leading to the cab of this combine. Your tour guide will be Mark. He’s been at this a while. What we’re going to do, once you reach behind you and close that door, is take a trip around the field.

Mark puts the machine in gear and we begin to move around the field. A combine is a little factory on wheels. When it is finished, you’ll have a large container, or hopper, full of shelled beans and not much else. Look just in front of us. The head, or the removable piece that goes at the very front of the combine is an impressive conglomeration of moving parts.

The head we use to harvest beans has several rows of tines set on bars attached to rotating wheels. As the combine moves forward, job one of the bars and tines is to grab and hold the bean stems and pull them into the sickle bar. The sickle bar neatly cuts them near their bases. Job two of the bars and tines is to sweep the plant cuttings further into the combine head, where the blades of an auger will move them toward a central throat. At that point, serrated bars mounted on chains pull the stems and the attached pods into the harvester.

Inside the machine is where the magic is. It must be. I couldn’t see into the machine, but the beans then mysteriously appear in the hopper like thousands upon thousands of tiny, golden brown gumballs.

Soybeans fresh from the field

The rest of the plant is chewed up and spat out the back where two spinning plates with blades distribute it onto the freshly cut stubble.

This is interesting but has nothing to do with a truck ride, does it? File it away. Someday you may need to explain to somebody where their food comes from.

Offloading

Speaking of trucks, there’s one with a grain trailer conveniently pulled just off the road at the edge of this field. We’ve gone around this field a couple of times. The combine lurches now and again where the ground is uneven. Sensors in the head, which is 30 feet across, allow it to tilt to compensate for the unevenness and most of the beans are cut off at pretty much the same height.

If you look in the convex mirror attached to the door, you’ll see a window built into the hopper. It lets you see how full the hopper is. Pretty full, as a matter of fact. So Mark is pulling up alongside the grain trailer.

He throws a lever and a long, tubular arm moves out until it is perpendicular to the combine. Don’t open the door. Beans are moving through that tube and falling into the empty bin of the truck. If you open that door while all the dust is kicking up, we’ll have tossed away 50 years of progress in creature comforts. Let’s let it settle first.

It’s okay now. Let’s go.

Pulling out

We climb down the ladder of the combine, walk a few feet, then open the passenger door, grab a handle, and climb into the semi.

Your first impression is that this is pretty high up. Your second impression is that this is not like “Smoky and the Bandit” or any of several Hollywood versions of trucks.

Understand where you are. You are perched on the spring-loaded passenger seat of a 1991 Kenworth semi with an extended sleeper cab. If that sleeper cab is used at all, it’s when the truck arrives before a market opens or the combine needs to make another round and whoever is driving the truck can grab a quick nap before getting on the road. Not often.

Everything you need to know about this vehicle is on the license tag. “Farm…Semi-trailer 78,000+”

This is not Burt Reynolds or Jerry Reed in a swanky rig bootlegging Coors beer from Colorado to Georgia. (My apology if time has rendered that cultural reference pointless.) No, this is a farm truck. It moves grain from its point of collection or point of storage to a market. Today, that market is Newburgh, Indiana.

Your tour guide here will be Tony. He’s been at this a while, too.

Swinging wide

We start slowly. It’s not a matter of caution. It’s a matter of inertia. We are moving 80,000 pounds of truck and load from a dead stop. It takes a while to get things going.

Point of information. It takes a while to start, and the reverse is true as well. If you find yourself pulling in front of a truck and suddenly applying your brakes, be prayed up or paid up. You’re probably about to have a Zen moment with something bigger than you are.

If you think Tony is spending too much time in the oncoming lane as we navigate the back roads, it’s OK. I did too. Realize that if he didn’t, our load would end up in the ditch. Trucks have to swing particularly wide to negotiate right-hand turns.

Your next impression is th-th-that y-y-you d-d-didn’t think it would f-f-feel quite like this. Aha. You have discovered that the passenger seat is not air-cushioned like the driver’s seat. Well, hang onto your dentures. We’ve got less than an hour to make Newburgh before they close. And by the way, smooth is for sissies.

There isn’t much traffic once we get on Interstate 69. It stays sparse until we approach the intersection with Interstate 64. Then, more traffic joins us heading south. Some people understand. They don’t tailgate. They stay out of the blind spots alongside the trailer and right beside the cab. They don’t dart in front of us. They give us room to change lanes when there is a vehicle on the shoulder. It was a good trip.

We leave the Interstate and travel along a secondary road until we get to our destination. Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) offers farmers several options for grain marketing. At their site, most of the area is covered with gravel. We check in at the gate, where they pull a sample of the grain we are carrying. Then we drive onto a scale. 84,637 pounds. Once our loaded weight is established, we pull forward to the unloading area.

A man with a hand radio, wearing a DayGlo yellow hoodie, dusty denim jeans, steel-toed boots, and a hardhat, squeezes against the wall as we slowly pull past. When the discharge doors are directly over the grates in the concrete floor, we stop. The attendant starts the flow from the trailers. Much faster than you’d expect, both bins of the grain trailer are empty.

We pull away as our load is moved into one of the large storage bins nearby. We have elected a Delayed Pay. They will charge us a set amount each month for storage until we tell them to sell the grain we’ve delivered. When we sell, it will be for the current market price at that day.

To confirm the amount we’ve offloaded, we drive onto a scale again and establish our empty weight. Now we know the weight of the grain, and roughly how many bushels that was.

Our last trip while we are on site here is to drive through a tire wash. Once that’s done, we turn left onto the highway and make our way back to the north-bound lanes of Interstate 69.

It’s different pulling an empty trailer. As Tony said, “It’s like taking the dog for a walk.” No big deal, comparatively. We can start and stop more quickly. The weight of the load doesn’t muscle us around.

Tony moves through the nine gears as we get up to speed and it’s smooth sailing all the way home.

Technology

After we weighed out, Tony had to pull off to one side, get out of the truck, and go into the office to collect a sheet of paper. He marked in ink at the bottom of the paper which fields the load had come from. That will give him an idea of individual yields as well as the combined average yield of all the fields he and Mark farm.

Next year, it will be even easier. All the people who regularly use ADM will get radio frequency identification (RFID) cards they can hold up to a reader. The cards will let the office personnel know who the customer is. It will automatically display their account information in the office and assign the payload to the correct customer.

Today, there can be a heavy flow of truck traffic through the facility. All the information is scanned manually, pulling a number from the truck and hoping they haven’t gotten things out of order. Truthfully, that only happens occasionally. With this new technology, it should happen even less often and recordkeeping should become more streamlined.

When we get back, Tony drops us off at home. His day isn’t over. As long as the weather holds, Mark will continue operating the combine into the dark hours. They will load this and a second semi-trailer, then cover the loads with tarps for transport to Newburgh again as soon as ADM opens. It’s a time of long hours to bring in the crops that will finance seed and chemicals for next year and tide several families over the winter until they can begin it all again.

Two firsts. One day. A combine and a truck. And some lessons in the business of agriculture.

Night Sky

Traveling by air at night the land below looks like an attempt to mimic the night sky. The expanse of blackness is interrupted. Scattered points of light shine like distant stars. 

You look for order. For neat rows. But some lights follow twisting roads, meandering or creating curlicues. Others are all but buried in foliage or stand apart--lone sentinels attached to somebody’s barn or guarding their driveway. From your unique vantage point, they appear without purpose in the landscape.

industrial sites and interchanges create streams or rivers of light. Galaxies--for they are too prominent to be constellations.

When we stand and stare at the night sky, we don’t see what a patchwork of bright spots the earth’s settled regions create. There are also voids. Sometimes parallel bands of light separated by a wide strip of darkness. Rivers, lakes, and wild places defy our instinct to keep night at bay.

But from here in the air you can see so much. It takes a nocturnal bird's-eye view to recognize the immensity of the electric web connecting us, strung from one pole to the next and punctuated by pools of light.

Can you see the colors? Cold blues … the harsh, penetrating glare of security lights around buildings and on stadiums. Warmer yellows … the pools of illumination below street lights. And the ominous, flashing red lights warning flyers like us to keep our distance. 

I nearly changed the metaphor. Rather than galaxies, I thought the stronger clusters of light could be seams of electric magma oozing from the terrestrial crust. But my eye was coaxed again to the outliers. The solitary ones. This metaphor had no place for them.

Eventually, you land. You collect your belongings, exit the building, and trudge through the same lights you’d admired from above. You find your car and prepare to drive home. You insert your key into the ignition, turn it, and everything in front of you is crisply separated from the night. 

You put the car into gear and become one of those free creatures you’d seen moving through the landscape, taking their light with them as they go. To people still aloft, you may even appear to be a firefly, flitting through their musings as their brains try to create context for such an odd perspective.

When you reach your home, you gather your belongings and head to the door. Through the window you see that somebody has left a light on for you. One more look. Before going inside, you turn to the night sky and see familiar groupings of stars in their ordered places. It’s just … right. And as you prepare to re-enter your normal life, greet your family, and rest in your own bed you wonder how you could have dared compare the human attempt with the original reality.

History Comes Alive

This article was written for The Oracle, the newsletter of the Daviess County Historical Society.

I got a huge surprise at the Daviess County Museum. My ancestors came to life for me.

Literally, that is not true. Perhaps just as well, you know? But I have seen things that connect to various generations of grandparents. And that doesn’t happen often, does it?

The following picture is an example of a wedding dress. The card reads, “Wedding Dress worn by Emma Jane Thomas. Bride of Lew Wallace Barber. October 6^th, 1886. Daviess County.” 

This is remarkable to me for several reasons. First, it’s a lovely dress. Warm tones with velvet patterning and buttons galore. It even has a matching hat. Second, it is here. One hundred twenty years later, we can see (but please don’t touch) what people wore then. It’s very attractive. Rich, even, in its own way. But not what we’d think of as a wedding dress.

A nearby sign says it was common for brides to wear the very best dress in their wardrobes for their wedding day rather than purchase a new, white dress especially for the occasion.

The third reason this is significant to me is that Emma Jane Thomas is my great-grandmother. Do you also wander through the monochromatic documents of public records, newspaper clippings, and hand-written letters to learn more about your ancestors? If so, you’ll appreciate how delightful it is to find something tangible in color. To imagine a person responsible for you being here, standing in front of you. You get a sense of size and proportion. Of style. Of … them.

If it’s white you’re looking for though, here’s my next favorite item.

The pants were worn by my great-great-great grandfather. The coverlet was made by my great-great grandmother. The sign reads, “Homespun Trousers. The linen was woven from thread spun from flax grown on the Barber Homestead in Veal Township. Note the buttons made of bone. Worn by George Houts (1791-1864) | Homespun Coverlet. Made by Aliza Katherine [Houts] Barber, wife of Aden Barber sometime in the 1830s. The flax was grown on the farm, then spun into thread and woven into the cloth.”

These items fascinate me. They are but two of thousands of items that tell stories of this area. Those stories probably link you and me. If not, you’re creating stories of your own and our tales may soon intersect. The lives we are living today are tomorrow’s history. Be thinking of what you want to hand down to the coming generations. If you need some prompts, come by the museum. We have so much to show you!