I could begin by saying I once met a farmer who liked the mud, but that would be a lie.  No farmer likes the mud.  I’m hardly a stranger to telling lies, but some even I dare not utter for fear of the repercussions.

In this case I’d probably lose my farmer card.  The impact on my life would be devastating.  Areas I now enjoy full access to would face restrictions.

Take the farm and home store, for instance.  No longer could I carouse about the whole thing, wandering aisle to aisle.  Instead I would be confined to paints, furnace filters, and anything else I needed to make a mess of my home’s electrical and plumbing systems.

The local elevator, where I pretty much grew up and over who’s counter I was free to speak on anything from politics, to crop prices, seed corn, fertilizer, cattle feed, and local gossip, would now restrict me as well.  I would be left to asking about the best feed for my miniature horses or fainting goats, making asinine inquiries about having anhydrous applied to my lawn, and complaining about how the last batch of dog food gave diarrhea to my Pomeranian.

Finally, at the equipment dealer, I would be relegated only to getting high prices belts for my lawnmower and making statements like, “Boy those new combines sure are something, aren’t they?  How much does one of them suckers cost?”

Other areas, like the local livestock market, would be off limits entirely.

Beyond the day to day impact, I’ve got my future to think about.  I may grow old someday.  If I do, I might want to go into town for a cup of coffee.  Without my farmer card, all I would really be able to talk about would be the weather and the diarrhea of my Pomeranian, I suppose.

I can’t tell you why every farmer hates the mud.  This morning I was reminded of a few reasons why I do, though.  I hate it in the mornings, before I leave the house, when I put clean white socks through yesterday’s coveralls, marking them in a grimy residue not five minutes after having fished them out of a drawer and put them on.

It’s a two-fold bane on socks.  Whenever you come back in, after kicking off boots twenty pounds heavier than they are supposed to be, followed by the coveralls, you re-grime them and dare not wear them into the house.  Cold, damp feet greet a cold garage floor, and you pick up the dirt you were hoping to avoid tracking across the kitchen linoleum.

Generally I refrain from washing coveralls until you wear them into town and someone offers to buy you a cup of coffee at the gas station.  After contemplating if leaving them dirty might not be more profitable, you return home and throw them into a high efficiency washer incapable of handling the mess because it was only designed to clean already clean clothes.

Then you do it all over again.

In the midst of it is the more serious work of trying to keep livestock comfortable and fed.  Sometimes, after hammering a tractor through a foot of slop, when you are out trying to cut the damp wrap off a bale of hay, hoping it at least doesn’t snow on top of the mess, you look down to find the rat terrier house dog belly deep beside you.

It could be worse.  It could be a Pomeranian with diarrhea.

No, I’ve never met a farmer that likes the mud.

In the springtime comes the grass, from somewhere down below,
springing up from the March mud relentless,
as though it would cover the boy of summer,
under the tree at which he dallied.

And so it has, a million times.
Boys no longer dally at trees,
but I suspect it will find them anyway.

The poor southerner has a year long quest to keep it at bay,
but here, after the November rain, we get snow.

Down from above in splendor,
driven mad by the wind,
a blanket descends on the ground below,
making it beautiful once again.

Fleeting and taking nothing
it will not in time give back,
as thought it were a bender
from the anxious grass.

“To their deaths, then?”

Being involved in agriculture, I still get some of my news like the generations before me, via the AM band of the radio.  Generally it is intermittent, as I get in and out of the cab.  Sound bytes mostly, delivered in a format still relatively free of commentary.  Unfortunately for you, you won’t get this one delivered the same.

The sound byte was from Jeb Bush, a candidate I thought should have dropped out of the race sometime ago.  I heard it on the day of the most recent terror attacks in Paris, only they hadn’t happened yet.  It had been delivered the night before at an Iowa campaign stop.  It was in response to Donald Trump asserting he would ship all Syrian refugees back the day he took office.

“To their deaths, then?  I mean, what does he think is going to happen to them when they get there?  This is the best answer he’s got?”

I know ardent Trump supporters who maintain the candidate is forcing a long-needed, productive conversation among the Republican party, conservatives, and the country.  Personally, I don’t ever recall a productive conversation coming from someone whose main reasoning seems to be, “trust me folks; I know what I am doing.”  In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t recall a needed one coming from those circumstances either.

Maybe it is Bush, on his way out the door, that’s going to generate it.  He’s the only one that seems to be asking questions, after all.

He seems to be asking whose life are we “pro,” and how “pro” are we going to get about it?  That is a question that has needed to be asked in both parties for sometime.  In some ways what Trump proposes the current administration already seems to have done in other ways.

Will Bush continue to ask it now, bringing the issue out in vivid color, or will he opt as Facebook did, and let that color fade a bit in favor of expediency?

I suppose there is always the chance the voters might ask it themselves.

“To their deaths, then?”

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We had stopped for a drink at a bar in downtown Chicago.  It was a trendy place and nearly empty.  A newer trend must have been around the corner somewhere.  We ordered a couple of beers. Continue reading →