Margo Buys a TV and Chair

Friends Judy and Dottie
 joined us at the Polk County Fair
Old School house.  They
got ribbons on Genealogy
projects.  Margo and I
got a dozen ribbons too!

Margo has been handling the last few weeks since she found out that she has breast cancer very well.  She had been calm, rational, and optimistic.  The many tests and visits with many doctors at Mayo Clinic in Rochester have been somewhat overwhelming, but also reassuring as we see the tremendous effort to pin down the type and extent of the cancer and plan the treatment. 

We have a home near Rochester, about 25 miles from the downtown Cancer Center at Mayo, and that and because I worked there for 25 years, means that we have done our family doctoring and specialty doctoring at the Clinic for all that time.  It is a place with people who inspire confidence.

At the fair this week, we visited with our Cushing neighbor, Joyce, who is 5 years into her own cancer battle, and doing quite well.  She said “When I go to Mayo they must have a notice on my medical records that says I am to be treated special, because they surely do treat me as if I were the most important person they have to see.”   We have felt the same way.

Margo has found that she has triple negative metastatic breast cancer at stage II-III.  There is one large tumor in her left breast, and a few smaller ones as well as at least one lymph node found with abnormal cells.  It was found with her annual mammogram although we had also thought we found a change in the breast too-a kind of long lump that was noticeably different than the rest of the breast.

Triple negative means the cancer cells do not have estrogen, progesterone nor Her2 receptors.  This determines the treatment, and can make it more difficult to treat. There are many types of triple negative, so the cancer therapy has to be varied to find the right kind of treatment that is effective with her particular cells. 

The cancer is fast growing and that is both good and bad.  It is good as the cancer cells are more easily killed than the normal ones with treatments that kill fast growing cells, and bad as it has come on rapidly and continues to grow.

As far as the testing could determine, it hasn’t spread beyond possibly one lymph node nearby.  “We can’t be absolutely sure where cancer cells have spread—maybe a few here and there, so our treatment will be to assume there might be some and treat the whole body instead of  just the breast.” 

Chemotherapy comes first to try to shrink the tumor before surgically removing it.  Margo starts chemo every Tuesday for 12 weeks beginning August 13^th.  The first drug is Taxol, derived from the bark of Yew trees.  She will have 12 weeks of weekly doses, and then an evaluation before phase 2 of chemotherapy with stronger drugs.  After that an evaluation and surgically removing the breast (or lumps) and lymph nodes followed by radiation to again attack any fast growing cells.  The treatment is about a year long total.  Her prognosis now is about 85% likelihood of being alive in 5 years.  It is still unknown how well her cancer will respond to treatment, so the statistics are overall for everyone with her condition.  Being younger and otherwise healthy is certainly a plus.

The main cancer doctor Margo will be working with is Dr. Tufia Haddad. After she talked to us about Margo’s condition, I asked her if she knew an Anne Haddad, a woman I had worked with closely back in the 1980s at Mayo in digestive disease research.  “She was my Mom,” replied our new doctor.   Anne got breast cancer in at age 40 and within 6 months had died from it, leaving Tufia, then 18, determined to make a difference. She went through college, worked at Mayo in research, then to medical school and residency, then as an oncologist at the University of MN.  Recently she moved to Mayo and back to her home town of Rochester.  She enrolled Margo in a clinical trial that adds an additional promising treatment drug to the normal treatments.  

We both knew her mother quite well and it wonderful to see her daughter taking on her mother’s killer.  Dr. Haddad is about the age her mother was when cancer struck her down—a loss that was very personal to me at the time.  I was introducing computers into Mayo research, and Anne was one of those who embraced the change and made my job easier.  Tufia's mother would be very proud of her. 

Our son Scott lives with us at our home in Pine Island.  He works winters and generally takes the summers off and has been available to help.  He has been wonderful in taking on both Margo and my recent health problems, ferrying us to appointments and being supportive and taking care of our home there.  It would be quite difficult for us otherwise. 

Margo is settling in for a year of treatments.  She and Scott went “comfortable chair” shopping this week and ended up with an Amish built recliner that she liked very much that includes a motorized tilt unit that lets you move from lying back to upright with a press of a button. 

They go to Wal-Mart today to pick up the 42 inch flat screen TV we ordered online.  Our old 19 inch was fine for occasional watching, but with Margo and me both limited in physical activities, we thought that we would blow a few hundred and get one we could watch from our chairs without binoculars to read the online guide.  We have a ROKU box that gets many internet channels, online Netflix, and get many local channels from the antenna including Iowa and MN public TV stations.  We already have high speed internet and Margo and I each have our own laptop—so our entertainment center is quite well stocked for a long winter.

Margo and I were talking about health and health insurance and how that we were insulated from the costs of our care having both Medicare and a supplemental program (I continued my insurance through Mayo Clinic when I retired—high cost and high benefits—so between the two we are well covered).  I wonder what it would be like if you didn’t have either and had the same problems?  That worry would certainly make this harder.  I think that is why we are so supportive of the Obamacare initiative—knowing there are 40 million folks out there who don’t have insurance, mostly because they can’t afford it.  Those who want to get rid of it seem not to have any solution for the problem, just a get rid of it and let the poor folks go without for fear the rich might have to share a little.  

That is absolutely not acceptable in a society that is as rich as ours—which of course then moves us to the idea that the tremendously unequal distribution of earnings between the rich and the poor, those who can and can’t afford medical care, is immoral.  What I can’t understand is how many of my friends, who claim to be Christians, can accept this as the way things should be, and want to get rid of what benefits are dribbled out to poor folks now.   I think they have lost sight of what Jesus taught us.

So, with Margo beginning her year-long fight against cancer, we are hunkering down for a hard year, but optimistic things will come out good in the end.  Whatever the outcome, we plan to try to enjoy the life we have left to us. 

 I am 3 months into my own less pressing battle with myasthenia gravis.  As you may recall from previous posts, this is where your own immune system creates antibodies that get between nerve endings and muscle beginnings and block the signals to move the voluntary muscles (breathing, eating, talking, arms, legs, fingers…).  

The design of human bodies is flawed -- no one who understands how things work or don't work and screw up all the time, could possibly believe an intelligent design theory!  Much easier to accept an evolutionary trial and error process, with lots of errors along the way.  Problem is that we pass on our genes while still young and healthy, so no selection is made for longevity. Only way to solve that I can think of is having very old healthy men be fathers of children--and sadly, that rules me out. 

I am not improving nor getting worse, but coping.  I take medicine 1 to function on a daily basis and it brings me up to just able to do the things one needs to do to live, but not able to do much beyond the minimums.  I can walk, see, drive, talk, eat, type, breathe, etc.,  as long as I take this stuff.

Medicine 2, prednisone, is to shut down the immune system from making the crappy antibodies.  If that stops, then my muscles will work OK, however, of course, one doesn’t get along very well without an immune system, so the goal is to run the immune system lower and cope with some antibodies and some immune system—a balancing act that will be with me the rest of my life.  Right now my immune system is still too robust, cranking out the bad stuff, so I am continuing to increase the prednisone and watching it push me into diabetes—trying, so far successfully to limit my diet just like a diabetic including the blood sugar testing. My problems are chronic and I can cope with them, and our attention is focused on Margo’s battle for the coming months.     

Saturday our Rock Club has its big rock show at Frederic WI at the high school on hwy 35 north of town.  Margo hopes to be there as a host.  Saturday is also Doc Squirt Day in Cushing, so I need to put out a display of old pictures and books from our history society.  Maybe will see you at one or the other.  So many wonderful friends stopped by and wished us luck last weekend at the school house museum at the fairgrounds that it was like a reunion!  We plan to stay as active as possible while in our dwindling years.   

Frac oil drilling insights

My old high school friend Bill stopped  over last weekend to catch up on what is happening with us. He had just spent a week trout fishing with his son down in frac sand country.  It got us to talking about the sand and oil wells and fracking.   

The conversation turned to his son who works in the oil fields in ND with one of the major drilling companies as an oil engineer, working with fracking well development.  What follows is my best recollection of what I learned from Bill, who had spent time talking to his son about the work.  I pressed him about safety and other issues.   Although these are not his words exactly, but I will write it conversationally as I remember him telling it to me. 

People worry about oil well drilling and fracking polluting the water.  That happens only if the oil driller is not careful when grouting the wells.  A well is drilled deep, maybe 10,000 feet, right through the water table.  On the way down, and as the well is created, it is grouted—concrete is pumped down to line the hole.  It is critical that the grouting is done responsibly—that the right concrete for the conditions and the right amount and procedures are used and experienced engineers are in charge.  The problems that have shown up are from careless drilling.  Our company is very very fussy to do this right—you don’t want to pollute the water and have all the problems that come from that any more than the folks who live nearby.  So when you hear about that kind of thing, it means the drilling company hasn’t done things the way they should.  We spend a lot of time getting things exactly right—doing more than what is needed instead of cutting corners.  Oil wells make enough money that there is no excuse to do them on the cheap.  

The holes go down deep—maybe 10,000 feet and then turn and head off in side directions—maybe even 5 different pipes.  Each pipe is double – a pipe and a liner.  There is a shortage of pipes, and some of the foreign ones are not good enough quality to use.  The American steel industry is starting back up some plants just to make the miles of pipeline (maybe 15 needed on a well).  Takes them a while to get the plants back in production, but should create jobs for mining iron ore and steel making.   Most of the steel comes from recycled materials now. 

Living in ND is difficult.  Housing is hard to find and expensive.  Going out to eat is a problem—way to many folks to get served quickly.  The most profitable McDonalds is out here and it doesn’t serve inside, just drive through.  Even Wal-Mart doesn’t look the same—stuff is not put on shelves, just left on pallets.  They can’t get enough employees and things sell so fast. 

You don’t want to go out to a bar—too much chance of getting in a fight.  Just like the wild west.  

Anybody who can pass a drug test can get a job if they are willing to work—lots of overtime, lots of truck driving jobs; even construction as they build more housing.    Very good pay for most jobs—have to or people won’t work for you.  There is no tolerance at my job for any folks who are on drugs or even come in tipsy—don’t want anyone messing with your safety and the well being done right.  

There are about 218 drilling rigs active right now. You can find out that stuff at www.bakerhughes.com   My son is headed to Alaska later in the year where a group of Texas investors have been drilling upslope from the existing oil wells.  You know, production up there is down, and they think there is more oil further up the hills.   He might go to Australia next year.  They are heavy into natural gas there.  

Polk Fair Winners

I entered two stories and a poem at the 2012 Polk Co Fair and got 2 blues and a red.  Here they are
Yarn of Yesteryear

Sex Education on the Farm or Udderly Stumped

   I grew up on a farm where animals were making love all of the time, often without proper marriages or courtships and sometimes in polygamous relationships.  We milked cows for a living, had dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, ducks and geese and sometimes borrowed the neighbor’s bull for a visit to our farm.  Visits by the Inseminator added a little confusion, but by 7^th grade we farm boys were fully educated, just a little in the dark as to correct terminology. 

  

   My church gave me clear guidance.  Everything before marriage was absolutely wrong—dancing, petting, kissing, thinking, TV, movies, self-abuse, etc. all leading to moral decay, drugs and spindly girly men headed straight for hell. After marriage advice was limited to divorce, coveting your neighbor and adultery as additional paths to hell.

  

 We began our sex education with questions to the adults around us.

     Why is the bull so ornery?  “You would be ornery if you were kept in a pen or tied up all day long too!”

     What does the bull do when you shut the barn doors and leave the cow in?  “He is being a Daddy.”

     Why can’t we watch the bull being a daddy?  “When you are older.”

     How long does it take?  “Oh about 20 seconds.”

     Why does the rooster keep jumping on the hens and pecking their heads?  “He is ornery too.”

     Why did the Tom Cat kill the baby kittens.  “They had a different Daddy.”

     Why is the momma cat yowling so much today?  “Give her some milk, she must be hungry.”

     Why did Lady have one puppy that looks so different?  “He had a different Daddy then the others.”

     Does Lady have two husbands?  “Dogs are different then people.”

      Why is that cow jumping up and riding the other cow?   “She is just lazy and wants a free ride to the pasture.”

     When does the ‘seminator man come again?  (He gives us kids a piece of candy!)  “The artificial inseminator comes when a cow is in heat”

     Does he give the cow some aspirin for her temperature?  “You got it wrong, he is putting a calf inside the cow.”

     Can we watch?  “When you are older.” 

     Why does he wear such long gloves and what are the straws for?  “I hear your mother calling.” 
     Why did our heifer jump the fence and run away to the neighbors?  “She wanted to visit the bull over there.”

     Why are we pulling so hard?  “The calf is stuck and the cow will die if we don’t pull him out.”

     My farm friends at school were no better educated.  “Gina raised her hand and I could see her bag through her armhole!” bragged Don at recess. 

   “Listen you dummy, you don’t call it a bag on a girl, that’s only on a cow”

   “Well, what do you call it?”   We were stumped.  Udders?

 

     Finally SCFHS gave a sex education class.  The boys were in one and the girls in another.  Dr. Riegel talked to us with a priest and minister sitting in.  There were no pictures and very few words we understood in the short talk.  We did gather that it took a guy and a girl to have a baby and that we shouldn’t be thinking about it until after we are married.  “Cold showers will keep you pure.” “Self abuse is wrong—more cold showers”  “Are there any questions?”   Of course no one dared ask a question.

         

     Eventually I got married and got on the job training.  

*****   Story of 500 words or less -- I wrote this story to explain my knee brace to my great nieces and nephews

A Great Fall

Once upon a time, there was a not too young prince, Prince Russ, who liked to build and fix things.  One day, he said to his brother, Prince Everett, and his nephew, Prince Bryce, “Let’s fix the roof on the sawmill shed on Thursday.”  After the usual amount of grumpling, Prince Everett and Prince Bryce agreed.

On Thursday, they met at the sawmill shed.   “Who will fix the roof?” asked Prince Russ.  “Not I,” said Prince Everett, “I have to fix the posts.”   “Not I”, said Prince Bryce, “I have to use my tractor to clear the slabs.”  “Well, then I will,” said Prince Russ.  And he proceeded to climb to the top of the 100 foot step ladder with a huge board to fix the roof. 

Just then a terrible earthquake started shaking the ground.  Prince Russ hung on to the ladder with all his might.  The ladder swayed left; the ladder swayed right; the ladder jumped up and down.  Prince Russ had a great fall.  All of Cushing’s First Responders and all of St. Croix’s doctors couldn’t put Prince Russ together again. 

A big white ambulance rushed Prince Russ to the World Famous Mayo Clinic where Dr.  Sems, cut open his leg on both sides to look at the bone.  “Oh, my,” said Nurse Johnson.  “Bring me my Sears electric drill,” ordered Dr. Sems, “and bring me all the metal screws, plates, and hinges that are in the janitors shop.”  Then Dr. Sems took the bones from the knee to the ankle, which he called the Fibula and Tibia, and started putting them together again.   He put in 12 stainless steel screws.  He put in two silver spoons.  He put in a stainless steel strap that was used for holding a muffler on a car.  “Good as new!” he exclaimed after three hours and using up all of his hardware. 

“Go home and wait for 100 days and then learn how to walk and everything will be fine, said Dr. Sems.  And he was right, except for one thing, Prince Russ had so much iron and steel in his leg, that every night in bed, he rolled and turned around until his leg pointed north like a compass.  Although this was a bother at first, Prince Russ never got lost again when he was hunting or camping, because his leg always pointed north!  

Poem (only a Red ribbon here)

                     Deer Santa

Twas the night before Christmas, at the cabin on the lake

The only creature stirring was Margo beginning to bake.

The stocking were hung by the stove pipe with care

In hopes they’d dry out before day would be there.

The mice were all snug in their tiny little beds

While visions of cookie crumbs danced in their heads.

And Margo in her apron, while I took a nap,

Had just started mixing some fresh ginger snaps.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the curtains and scraped frost off the sash.

                     

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a grizzled old buck, a huge white-tail deer.

He made not a sound, but went straight to his work,

And emptied all the feeders, then turned with a jerk.

And giving a snort from way too much greed,

Bucked trash can over and spilled all the seed. 

He ate forty dollars worth of fancy bird food,

Then turned to the feeders in a dangerous mood.

And knocked them about and then to the ground

And stomped them to pieces with nary a sound.

He searched all about for any more plunder,

While I yelled curses and hollered like thunder.

I opened the door and gave a sharp whistle,

As he headed towards my bucket of thistle.

He chomped it all down, with hardly a pause,

Then turned to examine my air filled Claus.

With sharp pointed antlers, he gave it a poke,

And down went Santa, air spewing like smoke.  

I took out my gun, and shot high over head

To to scare him away with a hail of lead.

He looked all about, to find more to eat

But nothing was left, so he made his retreat. 

As he walked slowly off, he turned back his head,

And I read in his eye; it gave me much to dread. 

“I’ll be back real soon,” ere he went out of sight,

“Merry Christmas to you and to all a good night.”

There were about 10 entries in all.  We earned many ribbons on apples, butter, maple syrup products, and some other of our 25 entries.  We spent most of our time hosting the 160 year old school house museum on the fair grounds and counted a total of over 1400 people stopping in to visit during the 4 days of the fair.  This was our 8th year to help out.  

Polk County Fair St. Croix Falls, WI

Margo and I are helping host the historic school house at the fair this year

Margo ailing

Margo, my wife of 40 years, has been having tests this week at Mayo Clinic.  The results show breast cancer with a possibility of having spread to some lymph nodes.  She has more test Friday and next week and it appears that she will begin treatment after that.  The treatment will start with chemotherapy.  More information as things happen.  She is handling it well.

Send her a note to margowh at  gmail.com and wish her good luck.

Update Monday July 23   -- tests show cancer in one breast spread to some lymph nodes.  More tests yet this week, visits with the treatment people and probably chemo starting in early August for 4 months, followed by surgery followed by radiation. She is taking it OK.  Generally we are quite optimistic that things will turn out fine after a long stretch of treatments.

County Fair, Haying, and Health

Most July days in the 1950s and 60s would have found the Hanson Boys
out in the hay field sweating away whether it was 90 or 100 degrees.
When I first started we still used a hay loader pulled behind the hay wagon
that brought the hay up onto the load.  I started driving the B Farmall on
a real steep hill.  The loader came loose, rolled backwards down the big steep hill,
and gracefully a big arc at the bottom never even tipping at all.  I was 9 at the time.
Dad just had me circle around and come back and re-hook up (better this time) and we
just kept on working.  Quite exciting for a kid.  

Spent the first two days of this week at the Polk County Fair grounds preparing the Red Schoolhouse for next week's county fair.  The Polk County Genealogy Society is hosting it this year.  I put two window air conditioners in and will have the school the Cool Spot at the fair.  Centurylink is putting wireless in at the fair office and at the 4-H building and we are hopeful of getting a signal to the school house so we can do some online genealogy, the way everything is going nowadays.  The building has metal clad siding which does present a problem for getting the signal through the walls.  If it works, we will bill ourselves as "The Coolest Hot Spot at the Fair."  Drop in next Thursday - Sunday 9-9 and you may catch us there taking a urn being hosts.  We have a lot of fruits, vegetables, and other stuff to take as exhibitors, so this coming week will be getting it all ready.  Have a decent pumpkin already to go--just have to disconnect the IV with growth hormone going directly into the stem.

An early hay rake was made to look like a bunch of hay forks  each helping
to gather the hay into windrows.  The photos were taken a few years ago near
Grantsburg at the Morris Blomgren auction.  It was huge, and I took photos of
everything.

Nothing new to report on my 9 weeks of Myasthenia Gravis. Still waiting for prednisone to slow down the production of antibodies attacking my nerve-muscle connection.  My latest description of MG;   A bunch of beavers are building dams on the streams that run from my brain to my muscles.  Medicine one, mestinon, puts them to sleep for a few hours and medicine two, prednisone, attempts to kill them off.  

Generally I can function OK--nothing much physical because I tire almost immediately trying to do anything that involves voluntary muscles (breathing, eating, walking, typing, etc.).  However, my mind is razor sharp; I have no pain, I am comfortable and can do the normal things of daily living--just not the strenuous things.

Margo is having tests today at Mayo.  She had a mammogram that picked up a lump and also had a few lumps under an arm.  Today she gets a biopsy and MRI.  This is to rule out cancer, and rule in benign cysts.  She will find out the results tomorrow.  Scary business getting old.

Stokely's Finest String Beans

    Stringbeans spilled out from the broken 4x4x4 wood box and spread all around it on the ground.  It was my first day on the job with Stokelys field crew and I already had screwed up!  Riding around the field, standing on the back of the Chisholm-Ryder bean picker while Conrad drove it slowly down the two rows of beans, my only responsibility was to make sure the box dumped safely to the ground so Clarence could pick it up and load it on the truck with the forklift tractor. As Conrad pulled the trip lever, I hopped off the trailer as the box slid off quickly onto the ground hitting with a jolt that broke it apart and spilled the beans. 

   Clarence climbed off the backwards Ford forklift tractor, “Some of these bean boxes are rotten and should be thrown away—but Stokelys is too cheap to buy new ones.  You gotta hold it back so it comes sliding down real slow”   He helped me clip the box back together and drove away as I spent the next half hour refilling a handful at a time.    

   We worked out of the Frederic plant.  The harvest season started after the 4th of July holiday and lasted until the freeze in September or until all the fields were done and my brother Everett and I returned to River Falls College. 

    Each machine was a modified tractor—raised higher and underslung with double rollers on each side to pick the beans, a conveyor belt under the belly to run them back under a hydraulically run fan to suck out the leaves and then up to dump into one of two adjacent wood boxes on a short trailer behind.  They were big, clumsy, noisy machines that along with we 16 field crew, ground our way through thousands of acres of string beans spread from Hastings MN to Indian Creek WI over a three month season.   

    There were eight machines, each with a two-man crew along with a couple of fieldmen, mechanics, and the truck drivers.  At Hastings we were put up at the old Gardner Hotel on main street – no air conditioning, a bathroom per floor down the hall, and three or more per room with cots here and there.  We bought and paid for our own meals and kept the receipts for reimbursement during the two weeks we stayed at Hastings before moving the machines back to Wisconsin and again living at home.

        The work was dull; in the field from sunrise to sunset for three months; seven days a week with most weeks between 90 and 100 hours.  We drove the machines 1.25 miles per hour back and forth on fields moving from farm to farm as the beans grew ready for the factory in Frederic.  We needed to pick enough to keep it going 24 hours a day, seven days a week.   

    What kept the job entertaining were the people who worked on the crew.  There were a mixture of retired farmers, a few college students like my brother Everett and I trying to make enough money for another year of school, and some “regulars” who worked there every year starting early in the spring with bean planting and continuing into late fall with the picking and then machinery maintenance.  The regulars depended on unemployment during the winter.  Most of them were in their 50s or early 60s.  Uncle Lloyd, a regular, got us on.  We were “farm boys, used to running machinery, needing money for college.”  He personally vouched for us and we didn’t want to let him down!

    While we were at Hastings, a few of the men who were away from home and their wives, went directly to the Gardner bar when they came in at 9 pm and spent the next 4 hours drinking, a few hours in bed and then at 5:00 am getting up for breakfast at the café across the road and heading to the fields.  After a few days of this they were pretty tired and cross. 

    Coogan was probably in his 60s (or maybe in his 40s showing signs of a hard life) whose nickname meant “little barrel” in Norwegian, was named for his ability to hold beer.  After a hard night, he fell asleep on the tractor and soon the huge unit was heading cornerwise across the field aiming for the fence.  Reynold chased after him and hollered until he woke up.

    Levi was normally an easy going guy.  He doubled as a mechanic and did a good job.  However, after a few days at Hastings, away from his wife, he started to look pretty haggard; unshaven, unbathed and bleary eyed.  Clarence drove the forklift and came up behind Levi riding on the back of the picker and motioned to dump the bean box for loading on the truck.  Levi got off and jumped on the forklift and punched Clarence in the mouth.  Later when we asked why he did it, “It just seemed to me Clarence needed to be punched” was all he would say.

    Most of the time we road to and from Frederic with Emeryn in Marty, his 1949 Chevrolet four door.  The car was falling to pieces with boards covering the holes in the floor.  Every time he hit a little bump, the front wheels would start wobbling and the whole car shook until he wrenched the steering wheel hard left and back straight to calm it down.  He raised beans on his farm near Trade River.  Some years were good, many not so good.  After a very good year with his whole farm in beans we kidded another Trade River crewman, Conrad, “You must be rich now!”  “No, yust moderately well ta do,” he replied with a broad smile in his Swedish brogue.

   One summer was particularly dry and dusty.  By the time we came in to punch out on the Stokelys factory time clock in the late evening, we were really dirty.  There were always some other people from the plant waiting in the timeclock line to punch in and out.  “Must be pretty dry out there someone would usually comment,” looking at us.  “Yup,” replied Lloyd one night, “it’s so dusty it gets in your lungs real bad,” and then raised his closed hand to his mouth with a loud long cough sprayed the room with dust to the shocked then laughing people.  He had brought a handful all the way back from the field and with his cough blew it all over for a joke!

    One day, Emeryn finished a field last and headed out fast to catch up with the others already leaving for the next field.  He took a shortcut through the ditch and in the tall grass dropped the front wheel into a cement culvert and folded it right back under, bending the whole mechanism of bean picker #1.  He was kidded mercilessly thereafter and at any new field it was “better let Emeryn go first and find the culverts.”  Old #1 was never the same after that.

   I got old #2 in its fourth year when the engine was pretty worn.  It used a quart of oil and had lost some of its power and road speed.  Ray, the mechanic, said it was due for an engine overhaul that winter.    

    Whenever we finished one farmer’s field, the fieldman, Martin or Ernie told one of the crew where the next field was.  Often it was a few miles and a complicated set of directions.  As we finished, we emptyed our loads and in sort of a strung out parade headed to the next field following the leader.  Sometimes we were too far behind and got lost.  Number 2 and I straggled farther and father behind the parade as the season progressed.   

   I mentioned this to Uncle Lloyd, who said with a hint of a smile “a person could adjust the throttle rod to get more rpms, but the mechanics would not approve.”    Parking away from the others, one night after work, Everett and I got our wrenches out and adjusted it a lot.  After that, even with a weak engine, I could now keep up, and actually pull away from the others if I had wanted to.  Over the winter, #2 was overhauled and next season, Clarence (who had seniority) took it.  He seemed to be the one that always struck out first for the next field, and driving wide open with a fresh engine and the speeded up throttle, left us in the dust.   After a few weeks of this, Everett and I stayed late one night and undid our previous adjustment and added a few extra turns for good measure. 

   “I don’t know what is wrong with #2, but it just don’t seem to have any git anymore,” Clarence complained a few days later while we were greasing up.  Uncle Lloyd looked over at Everett and me and with a mostly suppressed grin replied, “You know Clarence, maybe you damaged it driving it so hard when you were breaking in the new rings.” 

    With little to keep from getting bored, people did odd things.  One week, Willie chose to pull up tightly behind Everett with his front wheel almost touching the big back trailer wheel ahead.  When Everett speeded up, so did Willie.  Getting very annoyed, Everett watched until Willie was daydreaming and then suddenly stepped on his clutch coming to a stop while pretending to have trouble with the blower.  Willie drove right into the back wheel ahead of him, snapping the bolt on his own front wheel requiring a long explanation to the mechanic how he drove into a machine in front of him.  Everett never looked back.

    The first years we all rode to the field in a beat up old Carryall passenger van.  It was in pretty 

rough shape, but the motor had been overhauled.  Stokelys was notoriously cheap and although we complained, never got around to fixing many problems it had.    One day when I was driving the crew through Osceola coming home from the fields, a cop pulled us over and said “Your brake light is burned out.  I’m giving you a fix-it ticket.”  “This vehicle belongs to Stokelys not me,” I replied.  “Well, I’ll give you a fix-it ticket to give to Stokelys.”   “You know,” I said, “the turning signal doesn’t work either.” “OK, I will add that to the ticket,” said the Cop.    Then Everett said, “The emergency brake won’t work either.” “The dash lights are out too” added Willie.  “You know, the front end shakes and it steers bad to the left,“ added Lloyd and Conrad said “you should look at the front tires—they are almost down to the threads,” as the cop wrote it all down grinning hugely.    I turned the ticket in that night to the boss, “We got a real hard nosed cop.” Two days later the Carryall was back, all fixed!

    I didn’t tell you about our wildcat strike; trucks rearing up on the St. Croix hill; agate and Indian artifact finds and lots more.  Everett said “The main reason I went back to college each fall was so I wouldn’t have to work 100 hours a week at Stokely's anymore!”   

Bears at the Cabin

Indianhead Gem and Mineral Society Meeting

Attended last night's meeting where we learned about Geology.

Lunch is served by the Guys

Show and Tell 

Is it a Laker or is it from Brazil?

Door prizes for everyone

Down in the St. Croix Valley Song

Several Years ago I found out about a song written by a Grantsburg woman, Cora Meade Hegge, called "The St. Croix Valley.'   I managed to get a copy of it and heard it sung by Cora's great grandson.  Somewhere I have a tape of him singing it--hope to find it and add to the post. 

Here is the music and a little about Cora.