I was raised by a collection of adopted uncles and grandfathers down near Larkspur, on a drumlin farm in Persephone Township. My mother, who was a single mom and busy trying to make a career to support her kids, often handed me into the care of the farmers of the
Seventh Line for weeks at a time. They were an odd choice for babysitters, but they treated me like the rarest form of crystal until they were certain I understood just how many ways there were to kill yourself on a working farm.
Read Also
Ground rules for farm family communications
Establishing meeting ground rules can help your family find ways to communicate that work for your farm. Here are some…
They led very hard lives. Many of them drank heavily and the rest were alcoholics. But I admired the way they worked together and played together. They had a marvellous talent for taking a simple task and spinning it out over the day and into several neighbouring townships before returning to the comfort of their wood stoves and telling deer-hunting stories far into the night.
One thing I noticed fairly early on was that their safety rules applied only to me. They might warn me on pain of death never ever to apply a brake downhill with a load behind or scold me for crossing bumpy ground with the loader over my head. But they thought nothing of attaching three full loads of hay to a tiny Case tractor and heading off down the sharp end of a drumlin. The guardian angels of the township worked 24/7 keeping them all out of hospitals and funeral homes.
I was thinking about this last week when Bob Pargeter and I drove by his dad s house at the top of the Sideroad. Old Garn Pargeter was studying a stretch of eavestrough that had separated from the fascia board on his farmhouse. It was an awkward place to get up to because the front veranda stuck out and made it hard to reach with a ladder.
Don t even think about going up there, Dad, said Bob. I ll call Wilbur McNabb. He does those seamless eaves-troughs and he ll replace the whole thing in an afternoon.
Bob made the call and Wilbur came out to consult with Garn. I guess Garn took one look at the estimate and said he d get in touch and as soon as Wilbur left he called Owly Drysdale. Between the two of them, Garn and Owly have three artificial hips, three knee replacements, an uncounted series of past vertebrae fractures, two hearing aids and one unrepaired hernia. And Owly brought his cattle dog, Buckshot, who is famously unhelpful.
The two of them backed up Owly s truck to the veranda and rigged two ladders, one of them lying flat on the icy veranda roof. Garn went up first, and Owly next and Buckshot behind him. Because of the stiff wind, they thought maybe a tie-off somewhere would be a good idea so they threw a loose half-hitch from the top rung around the satellite dish. Garn stood up on the upper ladder with a hammer and Owly put one hand in the small of his back to steady him and the other on Buckshot s collar to steady himself. Garn started whaling away on those long aluminum nails that may last forever as advertised but only remain straight when they are lying in the boxes at the TSC Store. None of the nails made contact with a rafter behind the flimsy facia board and Garn started to curse. This upset Buckshot who thought Garn was referring to Owly and he sank his teeth into the back of Garn s coveralls. That s when the satellite dish pulled away from the house.
We have the guardian angels to thank that affordable cellphone service has now been made available to the ancients of Persephone Township. Garn had one hand hooked on the fascia board for all three of them and managed to hike his phone out of his overalls pocket. I think Buckshot hit the Home button and Garn s wife picked up in the dairy aisle of the Zehr s in Port Petunia. She called my neighbour Vern Bunton who was on the scene in about four minutes.
There were no injuries and no charges were laid. Wilbur came out the next morning and told Garn that he was installing the new eavestrough and that it had been paid for in a spontaneous subscription by the regulars at the Kingbird Caf in the village. He said that Garn should think of it as a belated Christmas present from the neighbours.
ILLUSTRATION: RICK KURKOWSKI
