The wait was well worth ….
The wait was well worth it. My tulips are up and a dozen or so robins are hopping across the yard every morning. First I thought maybe it was just a good crop of worms but now I noticed they sure are enjoying the leftover apples on my flowering crabs.
Is everyone as anxious for spring to finally get here as I am? Today wasn’t so bad but yesterday the wind was terrible. Certainly a good day to stay inside, which I did most of the day.
For the second day in a row the temperature hasn’t reached above the freezing mark. I thought it was pretty interesting this afternoon as I checked out the Black River just west of Greenwood. The river was really running good but where Rock Creek joins the river, it had a coating of ice on it. Looks to me like the runoff is pretty well over but water from up north is keeping the flow going pretty good.
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This morning, as soon as our church service was over, I headed south to attend the Pancake Brunch at York Center. I kidded Chuck Butterbrodt if he actually lived there. Seems like every year when I come he and his wife are sitting at a table eating.
Of course the frosting on the cake was hearing those four little words. “I read your column”. I lost track of how many times I heard it but it was sweeter every time.
It was amazing to me this morning to find someone who didn’t realize Florence is still a part of the column. If you look closely right inside the left fence post you can see the letters, FJB. They have been there since August of 1967. She had drawn me a one column heading, but since I was using a lot of pictures in the early days, it just worked better to have it two columns.
In writing my first column I had mentioned the special area meetings I had attended the fall before. I had been a part of a special committee which traveled to Madison and met with people from the University Extension Service. The focus of meetings was to discuss why our counties were depressed and what could we do about it.
The answer came from an FFA group who spoke to our local Lions Club one night. They pointed out that the talk of each town is economic development and the urge to bring industry to town. They pointed out that the community already had the industry and that was agriculture.
This prompted the idea for some of the early columns. I did one on a farmer who had just installed a pipeline milker in his barn. He was having back problems and the doctor had advised him to find something that didn’t involve so much lifting.
Then I did another story on one of the milk haulers who picked up the milk at the farm’s milk house and brought it to town. Another story was about a farmer who had just been awarded a prize from Ford tractors for reaching a new record for milk production. Seems one of his problems was his standard Surge milker bucket wouldn’t hold all the milk the cow had to offer.
The Turtle Lake Co-op Creamery was in the swing of things with three usages for the milk. One was for frozen canned milk, one of the first to make Grade A powdered milk and butter. We began using powdered milk at the time. I found the secret to make it into liquid the night before so it was nice and cold when we went to drink it.
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This is a week late but I forgot to mention it last week. That was the high point in the basketball season and while watching one of the state high school teams, a young lad was introduced and his height was given as seven feet. Now that was what you’d call a tall young man. It didn’t help though, his team lost.
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Jackie called us last week with a sad story. Their air conditioner quit when the temperature was reaching near the 100 mark and they had heard it would cost $600 to have it repaired. Rupe decided to check around before they called a repairman. He found the problem. A snake had crawled in and gotten tangled up with the fan. Just one reason I wouldn’t live in Florida.
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There has been some bad news on television. Seems the U. S. Senate has voted to make daylight savings time the year round. If people want more daylight in the evening they simply have to move to the western edge of their time zone. It is bad enough getting up in the dark in the winter, but I just detest this time of the year. I don’t see what was the problem with the change coming in late April, but early March is just too early.
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When Sue comes up from their home near Holmen, she brings along a copy of the Courier, a free newspaper that serves Holmen and Onalaksa.
It contains a column written by the former editor of the LaCrosse Tribune.
He and his family live in the small community of Franklin, which is about halfway between Black River Falls and Highway 53 on County Road C.
Chris Hardie is his name and his tales sound very much like life on the farm that I encountered as a kid.
But a story right next to his column one week caught my eye. It told about the City of Onalaska hiring a new assistant Chief of Police. The Chief of Police had some kind words to say about the hiring. He just happens to be Charles Ashbeck.
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I’ll end this week’s column with a little story I ran across. Seems a Sunday school teacher had been talking to her class of five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment about honoring your father and mother she asked if there was a commandment on how to treat our brothers and sisters. Without missing a beat, one little six-year-old said, “Thou shall not kill”.
