Camping at McDonald Lake

My dad loved to fish. He would often spend the day working in the fields until just before sunset and head to the river to catch a walleye or northern. I never did enjoy the fishing as much as my dad. I suppose no one could. The mold was broken when he was born.
I said I did not enjoy fishing as much as my dad. That does not mean I had less fun on a fishing trip. Some of my antics probably disappointed my dad. I know he loved to tell the stories of his conquests to family and friends. I rarely stayed at my fishing post and caught as many as expected. Dad would flail the water until there was total darkness. Not me.
Nonetheless, I was often part of his fishing adventures. I would eagerly help load the car with our supplies. I would help get the boat into the water. One trip did not include the rest of our family. And, it was overnight. My dad and I were joined in our fishing camping trip by a family friend of my dad's. I think it was Leonard White.
This trip was really fun. Dad had made arrangements to camp next to McDonald Lake in a pasture. We were within walking distance of a regular campground about a quarter mile away. But, the campground probably cost more than we could afford. So, here we were, camped where you had to be careful where you stepped or your shoe would smell for a long time. The place had what I wanted. I could go for a stroll up into the trees and return with an armful of firewood. The lush green grass was a guarantee that a fire would not spread.
Dad went out fishing many times and left me at the campsite. Perfect with me be cause I could move about. Sitting in a boat was way to restrictive for me. I remember the pots and pans from moms kitchen. I remember the jars of produce from our pantry. This is the likely place that I learned to appreciate a personal fire. If you built a large fire, it was of little use for anything except warming one side of your body at a time. But, if you controlled your fire, you could move the fire aside enough to expose the coals. Then you could rest a pan on these coals.
I am sure dad caught many fish on this trip. I started figuring out some of life's important truths. The chief lesson was "More is not necessarily better".
KB

Oh, That Tractor

Have you ever lost a tractor? I have.
It all started when I was late to get the cows home from the pasture for milking. Most days you do not have to go get the cows, but some days, only known to why to the cows, they choose to stay out in the field. This day was one of them. We had them in a pasture that we did not often use. I was far away in the northeast corner of our farm.
To get to the spot where the cows were, you had to cross the swamp. Today I was not in the mood to cross the swamp on foot. A brainstorm. Since dad was away, he would not know that I had used the tractor to fetch the cows. After all, dad had this spot where he crossed the swamp. I had driven the tractor across that spot myself. And sure enough, the crossing went fine.
So I crossed the swamp and continued to where the cows should be. No cows. So I widen my search until I find them out in the swamp. I called for the cows, but they will have nothing to do with leaving the swamp. After a frustrating while, I chose to drive the tractor into the swamp after them. It seemed that if the cows were supported okay on their small feet, a tractor would also do fine.
The cows were slow to start moving. You know how cows are. Instead of hurrying out of the way, they just stand there with that cow look until the danger stops for them. Well, when I stopped for the cows to get moving, that was as far as the tractor would go. It was sitting there on slippery grass, but would go nowhere. Reverse did not help.
So, I shut the tractor off and followed the cows home. The milking went fine.
The next day, I went to school. As I got off the bus, returning home, my dad wanted to know where the tractor was. So I told him. He was not happy. I could see that he believed it was mired down. I tried to explain that it was not mired at all, but just sitting on slippery grass. To this day, I still can visualize the look of disbelief in his face.
Dad and Larry went and retrieved the tractor. All went fine, but to hear them tell how badly the tractor was stuck, was, and still is hard to accept. I wanted, but did not get, credit for shutting it down before I mired it.
Kayak Bandit

Many Happy Returns by KuKu

My dad was well known for his sense of humor and his pranks — and sometimes worse.

This story, however, is one of the blander jokes.

He used to tell this story a lot and, I must admit, it is better in person when you can hear the inflection in the voices. But I’ll try to type it appropriately.

When I was growing up and attending Sunday School, I was given birthday pennies once a year. Whenever a child’s birthday came on or near a Sunday, they got up in front of God and everybody and put one penny for each year (while we counted) into a special bank. Then we sang them “Happy Birthday”.

Different churches have different traditions and when my father was growing up, his Sunday School did the birthday penny offering. Then, the teacher and all the students would recite (think a little sing-song and monotonous tone all at the same time):

“Many happy returns on the day of thy birth.
May sunshine and gladness be given.
And may the dear Savior prepare you on Earth
For a glorious future in Heaven.
We thank you for the offering.”

It’s a nice, schmaltzy little poem but that ending sentence always cracked me up.

One year, when both my dad and his brother, Art, were adults, they were many miles apart and it was Art’s birthday.

My dad called Western Union and dictated a telegram to be sent to Art:

“Go ahead, sir.”
“Many happy returns on the day of thy birth.”
“Yes. ”
“May sunshine and gladness be given.”
“. . . OK.”
“And may the dear Savior prepare you on Earth”
“. . . . . .All right.”
“For a glorious future in Heaven.”
“. . . . . ookaaay. . .”
“We thank you for the offering.”
“EXCUSE ME, SIR?!?”
“We thank you for the offering.”
“We thank you for the offering?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Sir, let me read back the whole text.”

She may have thought Dad was crazy but Art didn’t. He laughed his head off when he got it.

Maybe in another blog, I’ll talk about missives between my sister and me or what my best friend, Angela (Yiker) has sent me. . .

KuKu

Faster, Faster - Oops

Living on a farm in Minnesota offers a boy all kinds of things to do. As for me, I was not limited at all. I could go over to the neighbors and hang with them. I could go upstairs in the hay loft and check out the special spot our cat always had her litter of kittens. I could go to the woods and shoot the twenty-two.
The only time I lacked freedom was when assigned to do farm work. Oh, yeah, that was almost constantly, wasn't it? I remember this one time that I was bored silly. I would carefully cultivate a few rows of corn exactly as I had been instructed. But the boredom caused me to snap. When I would come to the end of the corn row, instead of lifting the cultivator, I left the cultivator down and pushed very hard on one of the brakes. In case you are interested, tractors have directional brakes. You can step on either brakes to the left or right. Or you can step right in the middle for both sides.
So, with the cultivator down and only one brake applied, the non applied wheel would be overwhelmed and not able to make the tractor move. The tire would keep turning, but the tractor stayed where it was. In a short time, this tire would kick out all the dirt within it's reach and be spinning freely. So, then I would apply the opposite break and do it again. This time I would stop the digging as close to completely stuck as I could. A few times I got very close to really making the tractor stuck.
That is what I was hoping for. It was really exciting to be nearly stuck and work hard at regaining mobility. Some times I would have to get under the machine and shove some of the displaced dirt back into the big hole. I do not remember ever getting it stuck, stuck.
A close call would have broken the monotony enough to return to dutifully cultivating corn. Until you have been on a tractor all day, you have no idea how boring this is.
Another thing I did was discover the governor of the tractor. There is a throttle for the tractor within hands reach of the driver, right? Well it does not go straight to the carburetor. It first goes to the governor. The governor senses how fast the engine is turning and constantly adjusts the carburetor to maintain the engine speed. The manufacturer determined what the maximum rpm should be. There was a stop at this speed on the throttle.
One day while bored, I became very aware of this principle. See, if I stepped on the brakes, the governor would advance the carburetor enough to maintain the same speed. You see where I am going with this? Why couldn't I perform the function of the governor? I stopped the tractor and stood beside the engine with it running. Sure enough, I could advance the carburetor by moving this one lever toward the driver.
At this time I did not have any string with me. The next trip home, I found a piece of twine and carefully tied one end to the lever and the other end near the driver. I headed off to the field. When I got about a quarter mile away, I reached over and put that tractor into 'Steve Overdrive'. Man, o' man, was I moving along now. I went from the usual twelve miles per hour to at least sixteen, I suspect. I was enjoying this so much, that I did not see the dust cloud from my dad coming. He passed me and slid to a stop in the middle of the road. I stopped too. He walked to the side of the tractor, pulled out his knife, cut the string, tossed it to me, got in the car and left.
I never did that again!
My dad understood this phenomenon about cultivating and me. Only a few years ago, I was telling him about some of this, and he was already aware of what I was telling. He even reminded me of some things I had done without me first confessing. It seems he knew about it all the time.
Kayak Bandit