For a very long time, I've wanted to take a trip to the ranch to show Jack, where I grew up, where I was when I was his age, where my family made a connection to the land.I have told him a lot of stories about growing up on the ranch, so today was important. Behind us is the old house. It had a large kitchen. In the back to the left was a TV room with a refrigerator/freezer and an oil stove. Occasionally, we used the stove during times in early summer, when it was cold at night.
There was a couch that made up into a bed, and that was where I slept.
My parents and sisters slept in two large brass beds in the bedroom. All the beds were comfortable. My memory of summers were watching the night wind, which came out of the canyon in the direction of the spring, toss the curtains gently.
The kitchen was extremely large. A large sink was near the entryway. A wood stove was at the opposite end of the room. We only used it when nights were cold in early summer. Dad sometimes was on the ranch in the spring, and he used it occasionally when it was cold at that time. I remember staying out with him for a couple of days, and it had to be cold to "fire up" the stove. Usually, the blankets were enough.
There was an electric stove with an oven for cooking. The wood stove was something very complicated, and only old timers understood the art of baking with it. Cooking was basically like using an electric stove. You put a pan on top. At least that's how I remember it, but we never really used it for cooking, except on occasions, where there was a power outage. That didn't happen often during the summer, and when dad was on the ranch, mom had lunches for us, although I also remember taking care of dinner on the ranch two different ways.
Dad would set the table. He and I would cover the plate with a wax paper. We used the utensils, but we just threw away the paper, so we used the same plates the entire spring when we were on the ranch doing work. I'm not sure, but I figure dad only cooked when I was there, and often, he'd have me cook dinner, while dad worked on something in the shed.
My mom didn't like the whole thing of using wax paper on plates instead of just using a dish and washing it. We rinsed the utensils, and each of us used the same ones each time. We did it to save time. Dad always made sure we put that arrangement away, before mom moved out to the ranch after school was out, but occasionally we became busy and forgot. We'd catch "hell," but dad would always grin, while mom cussed us for it.
There was only one door. A small entryway was where dad had someone build a "make-shift" shower. Earlier, there was a tin tub. His family heated water to fill it, and taking a bath was mostly an outside affair after dark.
An outhouse was eventually relocated in the back amid the trees behind the house when I was older, but as a child years earlier, it was in the front of the house--not far from the cinderblock chicken coop, that my dad eventually transformed into a shed to store the grain drills.
That building is easy to see at the left in the second picture at the top. I placed another picture of it immediately below.
All of these pictures show what my family called "The Old Place." It was the first land that our family cultivated. The bottoms was a part of the farm that sometimes was under water--especially if the spring weather produced a lot of rain. Occasionally during the summer, unexpected storms would fill it too.
Wheat crops there were always thick. The yield was usually heavy. When my grandfather was alive, prior to 1956, it was a field of dry-land alfalfa. An old loose stack at the opening gate, probably about where the Interstate is right now.
Deer would come into the fields at night. Dad and grandpa would call his brothers, and everyone came out to get meat. My dad always said that deer tasted far better when they ate hay instead of bitter brush and sage.
I figure, that given the fact that that happened over 50 years ago, and since every person who shot deer illegally and out of season at that time is now in a better place, no one can really assess a fine. Not one person is alive, who enjoyed those night hunts.
Our family figured, since we fed them, we could eat them too.
This blog is only the first part of a number of entries that show the ranch. It was an important day for me to be there, but it was also a difficult one. I still have a connection to the land, something my father taught me, something my family has had since Viking times--men who eventually became Normans, who invaded Britain in search of farm ground in 1066.
That connection remained in our family. Dad taught me to watch skies to predict storms, and what he taught me was accurate.
I did a Holocaust seminar in Reno, and a colleague and I were walking into the building. "It's going to storm tomorrow," I told him.
He assured me that it wouldn't happen, and I told him that "mare's tails" in the skies predicted storm. The colleague laughed, until it rained the next day. He was impressed.
Dad taught me to plant wheat as the moon grows. It always was something that worked.
He taught me to develop a sense of how tilled land felt as we stomped through newly tilled soil behind a tractor and plow. There is a feel you begin to understand.
But the thing that was most important about life on that ranch was understanding the importance of hard work, the value of quality labor, the necessity of needed responsibility. There was a time to do things, and putting something off was not to be tolerated.
You did what you had to do to succeed. The principles, that my father taught me led to my success as a professional. He died. The dream of continuing the family tradition died too.
There was no way for things to work differently. John Lennon said this about such situations: "Life is what happens, when you least expect it."
I am the sum total of what I learned on that farm, and that is what is important--nothing else matters now. Bitterness or regret is a waste of time, a waste of life.
The summer before my dad's passing, he and I talked about my eventually running that farm. Sometimes, the dream is still so clear to me, I still know what specific jobs my dad wanted to complete. It was a checklist, a timetable.
Then cancer played its role. When I talked to my dad shortly before his death, the purpose changed. Mom's security was most important, and he knew that no one could provide that security and still make a living on the farm. Farming is an expensive hobby, and it's also important to realize that you never really own the land. It owns you.
Dad wanted the family to work together to provide that security for my mom. For years, he did that for his mother. He wanted the same for his sweetheart. That was what was most important.
You can't change the course of life. It's like this river you run. The water is in spring runoff, and you ride it out the best you can. You meet challenges. You determine what you will do with your life.
My dad gave all of us in our family the ability to succeed. Those things he taught us is what will make us strong, what will help us create our own lives, what will enable us to do the same for our own children. It's about teaching them to be strong, to be hard-working, to be successful.
I owe what I am to what I learned in my youth in this beautiful place, even though it isn't what I remember it to be.
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