From one extreme to another. ….
From one extreme to another. Tuesday, when I made my weekly trip to Loyal, I was tempted to turn on the air conditioner. This morning a couple of the girls said there was some snow on the ground when they came to work and I believe the temperature is in the 40’s, but I’m not going to go out and find out.
Between the winds on Tuesday and Wednesday and the rain, then the snow on Friday, a lot of the trees have been stripped bare. From a distance the woods are still colorful and should remain that way for a few more weeks, I hope.
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The clear dry spell was perfect for farmers who had soybeans to combine. The cooler damp weather has put a stop to the combining, but it shouldn’t stop chopping corn. I hear people talking about how dry it is, but I’m happy we don’t have lots of moisture, as we haven’t had to contend with mud. We often saw the roads covered with mud as farmers pulled their chopper wagons out of the field.
Our farm was at the end of a dead end road so we never had to even give it a thought about pulling a wagon or piece of farm equipment down the road.
I guess another thing we never had to be concerned with and that was water or rain runoff. I always understood our farm was the highest point in that part of the township and I guess it is true as there was a small stream I had to get over going to school, using an old road that was built many years before. Only someone had removed the bridge boards leaving only the beams or stringers. It did require a good balance walking across or a misstep meant a wet foot.
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The strangest sight I ever saw was a scene on the way to Loyal on Tuesday. I was on a light knoll driving from Highway 73 to Loyal and as I looked out all I could see was the tan and brown fields of ripe corn and soybeans.
I even went driving the next day to see if that was true all over, but the areas I drove through always had a hayfield or woods that didn’t make it possible.
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A few weeks ago there was a big rush to buy some Snoopy stamps. I was lucky enough that Mark brought me some after one of the area postmasters tried to tell me they weren’t out yet.
Ever since the Snoopy comic strip appeared in the paper, a story developed at Turtle Lake about the artist, Chas. Schultz. He was born in Minneapolis and they say his father was a barber in St. Paul. But the story also is told that he once lived in a home just north of Turtle Lake. It was right after you crossed the Apple River, which in that location you could jump over most of the time.
My friend Otto Becker’s father bought the farm as it was right next to their farm. He tore the house down and one of the neighbors took the stair steps to use going to the basement in their home.
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The new American Legion magazine just came and a couple of things caught my eye. One was a picture and item about $34,500 raised by the American Legion Riders for The Highground to help the people with disabilities and enhance mental health services for veterans. I don’t ever remember The Highground ever mentioned before in the magazine.
The other item was a letter to the editor regarding the plan to rename nine army bases. The bases are currently named for Confederate generals.
I have to disagree. We did fight a Civil War and those Confederate generals were also Americans just like those from the north. You can’t or shouldn’t change history just to be politically correct.
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I’m not a cook, but was reading something the other day that just makes sense. It was about saving flour for future baking. I don’t recall any details except to put it in a square container, then place it in the refrigerator. Why a square container, the writer noted? Because it takes up less space.
No one has ever explained the question of why we put a round pizza in a square box and then when you cut it, you do a triangle style?
Speaking of pizzas, I read in the Medford Star-News this week in their “time machine” column about an activity taking place in Medford back in 1972. Ronald and Joe “Pep” Simek were constructing a new building. It would be 24,000 square feet and four times bigger than the current building. It would mean they can double their production of pizzas.
One night in Texas, Florence and I had gone back to the mainland to Aransas Pass to shop in their WalMart Store. We passed by some people looking at a display of Tombstone Pizzas on sale. They were wondering about it and we assured them it was the best.
That brings up a question that has been going through my mind for some days. I had seen an ad for Grassland butter in a paper wrapper and wondered why the news about the new wrapper.
Then I remembered we bought WalMart butter in Texas as it was about a third of the cost of a pound of Land O’ Lakes butter. The key was I knew the code number for Grassland and that was all I needed.
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This afternoon, when I went to pick up my mail, someone was grumbling about the snow. I told them our daughter and son-in-law were at the moment in sunny Florida scraping the mud off their floors and repairing whatever other damage they found. Maybe the Upper Midwest isn’t such a bad place after all.
