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Word Gems
What is a man but the sum of his thoughts?

A Personal Statement:

Grandpa's Farm:

 

Places In The Heart 

 

 

October 8, 2008

Sometimes, when I have trouble falling asleep, I let my imagination take me to this peaceful setting - and I walk in this pasture, as I did when I was a boy.

But this evening I’m not dreaming. I’m really here, this special place, which, all of my life, I have affectionately known as "Grandpa's farm."

It is Wednesday, October 8, 2008, 6:59 CST. The sun has just dipped below the horizon. I had been marveling at the radiant autumn colors, the prairie ablaze, painted with warm earth tones. The colors seem more vivid and intense than I’d known - or have I just forgotten?

My car is parked on the small rise where a house and farm buildings once stood. A couple of hundred feet to the south, just half an hour ago, I took the above photo. Beaver Creek meanders through the pasture, once a feeding ground for Grandpa's dairy herd. And I’m recalling just now, I think it was Dad who once said, that this farm site was considered to be the most picturesque in the area – at the moment, I can easily believe that.

Someone once said that you can wander so far from home that you'll never find your way back. I suppose that's what happened to me. I have been gone for a long time, 40 years, an absence punctuated only by rare and short visits. Until age 18, I had never travelled outside North Dakota, even though the South Dakota border is only 30 miles away! How strange that seems to me now.

I have among my possessions, back in Ohio, a small smooth stone. Twenty years ago I picked it up from this very spot, and it’s been with me ever since.

      “For your people love every stone …

   and cherish even the dust”

 

                                                   Psalms 102:14

There’s a story about the ancient Jews, conquered by the Babylonians, and taken hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem. While living far from their homeland, these captives, in their prayers and worship, as expressed in the words above, remembered with great affection the land of their fathers – even to the extent that the rocks and dirt of that ancestral place would be precious to them.

The original Hebrew word translated into English as “cherish” denotes the most tender of human feelings, the kind reserved for a small child or an injured pet.

I understand that sentiment - because some of the people who helped me the most in life, who loved me the most, once lived and worked on this small piece of real estate. And as I look around myself, the visions of so many past activities and human interactions come flooding back; and these images, for me, sanctify the ground on which I now stand.

Grandma Becker, the whole family would immediately agree, was the heart and soul of this farm, this family home. And when we today visit this bucolic setting, we all sense that something important happened here. What happened here? What are the enduring effects? It’s like a great star going super-nova, shattering and exploding, leaving nothing of its original self – but sending out blasts of shock-waves forever, a gargantuan ripple-effect, reaching out to the ends of the universe. That’s Grandma's legacy, what she set in motion. Right now you’re thinking that these words are mere poetic hyperbole, but you’ll think differently as her legacy unfolds here and in future articles.

Grandpa & Grandma Becker, 1953

During the 1950s, all of Grandpa and Grandma’s children, my aunts and uncles, and their growing families, would come here, virtually, every Sunday for a meal and family fellowship. This was a big production. This would mean, at minimum, on slow days, twenty people; and, if we all showed up, quite a few more - later, as the family grew, a lot more.

My Aunt Helen and I were recently discussing this, and she commented that we really didn’t appreciate the workload placed upon Grandma – all executed in a somewhat primitive farm kitchen – as she pulled off a major Broadway musical production like this every week. “Well, it’s Sunday again, here we all are again!” was our attitude back then – ha, ha! Grandma did this for a long time, until she couldn’t do it anymore.

But I will tell you, as a matter of fact, that all of us who experienced this remarkable family ritual were transformed by it – and 50 years later we still, so frequently, talk about those wonderful and warm Sunday family get-togethers. What a treat they were!

As I look to the north, a few miles away, I see myself on a tractor, the old John Deere, Model R. I am 12 years old, and it is close to 7 PM. Grandpa has come to check on me to see how I’m doing. I stop the tractor and prepare to dismount to greet him, but as I do, my pant-leg, somehow, becomes entangled in the hydraulic-control lever situated on the left side of the seat. I am an athletic person, and I don’t fall easily, but now I fall off the back of the tractor – I am hanging, dangling, upside down, like an animal caught in a jungle snare.

I am lucky that there are no moving machinery parts where I fall. Grandpa, of course, rushes over to help me. I am more embarrassed than injured, having now fractured my “grownup-workingman” image with Grandpa – but it was fortunate that he was there. [Editor's note: several of my classmates, during my youth, were not as lucky.]

Just west of me, and a little to the north, across the field, I’m looking at the site of the old one-room schoolhouse. It’s gone now, destroyed by fire, I’m told, just a few years ago. I am 5 years old – it’s 1956 – and Alice and I are walking across the field for that little white building. Alice, only 7 years my senior, is the youngest of my grandparents’ children - I guess that makes her my aunt, but she’s really my sister and dear friend in life. I still lean on her.

Wayne & Alice, 1954

I had spent the night at Grandma’s house, and now, to my joy, this bonus - I could go to school this day with Alice! and the next day, too! This was good stuff. I must have been very excited about this adventure because the memories are still quite palpable to me.

And I remember entering that little school with Alice – and the teacher, a pretty young lady, made me feel so happy. Immediately, I was offered some crayons and paper, and I set about my work. And, wonder of wonders, the next day, my very own artwork was hanging on the wall, alongside the papers of all the big kids – well, I just had never been so proud in all of my long life!! ha, ha!

Another tremendous highlight of those two days was a unique science class – we all walked a short way down the gravel road to Beaver Creek where we took specimens of various aquatic flora and fauna – more great and good stuff! What a wonderful time!

• Editor’s note: I have enjoyed myself recounting for you this small adventure of my life; but, for me, I am also reminded of the present tawdry condition of American public education and how far we’ve drifted downstream in the past 50 years. The current state of affairs, one that serves teachers’ unions above the highest-and-best for students, is well characterized by past president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker: "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren." I myself am a certified teacher and have also studied the methods of the great teachers of the past, and I will tell you that we have lost much ground since the days of the neighborhood one-room schoolhouse. Think about this: Children were once offered the opportunity to be with one teacher, possibly, for many years - an opportunity tantamount to private tutoring as students’ personal strengths and weaknesses could become evident and well-known to that one teacher. Such insight, for the teacher, would make available a learning environment wherein each child might progress at his or her own rate. Some 4th grade children will, or could, be reading on a high school level; and some will quickly speed through arithmetic up to algebra or beyond. Such is the mystery and dignity of each child, each one uniquely endowed with God’s own creative abilities. Our present restrictive, one-size-fits-all educational system needs major reform, the existence and continuance of which survives for the benefit of bureaucracy, not students. The whole notion of “grades” is an artificial and unhelpful construct, something designed by school bureaucrats to create an assembly-line, mass-production approach to education, without regard to what's best for young minds. But I digress, my apologies.

As I look east, less than a mile away, across Grandpa’s pasture, I see the remnants of a farm that once belonged to Aunt Anna Mary. After her passing, my cousin Randy, Alice’s son, but like a grandson to Anna Mary, assumed stewardship of it. I immediately think of the first time in my life that I earned a wage. I am 15 and Anna Mary asks me if I will retrieve and stack the bales in her hayfield, for which effort she will pay me 5 cents per bale! I quickly agree.

I am laughing now as I remember a funny scene from Dumb And Dumber. The two stooges, as I recall, proclaim their incredulity: “You mean you’ll pay us dollars if we do this work.” They couldn’t believe their good fortune, and neither could I – to actually be paid real money, that I could spend, simply by lifting a few hundred 70 lb. bales! What could be easier!

Just east of my parked car, only a few hundred yards away, I can see part of a field once tended to by Dad and Uncle Joe. I am 16. It’s 9:30 PM. My cousin Tom and I are on one of the big John Deere tractors planting wheat. We are talking, and I am enjoying being in the company of this kindred spirit more than I can say. We are talking about important subjects, future plans, things happening in the world during the late 1960s, new ideas, ones that will soon change my life forever. Strange, but this is one of the first meaningful conversations of my life. And I can feel the fog in my egocentric adolescent mind beginning to lift.

Tom, Uncle Joe & Dad, 1969

Over the years, I have received many emails from Word Gems readers, thanking me for producing this site; sometimes, thanking me in terms more generous than real. And I am asked about my background, where did I come from, and who am I.

That latter question is one I often ask myself. I've been many places, around the world twice, studied many things; but, in the end, my elemental sense of identity revolves around none of that.

Psychologically, in the deepest part of me, where I am tonight is where I live... it’s what I am... I am my father's and grandfathers' son... my grandmothers', too... at heart, I am a North Dakota farmer; maybe, even a pioneer farmer.

By this, I do not mean that I wish to start plowing again (though, a part of me wouldn't mind) - but, in my remaining time here, I hope to grow to display some of those heroic attributes of fortitude expressed in my farming community; in that spirit, I'd like to contribute something, even, if required, in the face of adversity. Yes, I think I finally know what I want to be when I grow up.

That’s how I want to face the future – but I can't forget that it all started here on Grandpa’s farm.

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