My neighbor, Pat Lynch, once a had a young and tenacious salesman for the CO-OP talk his way inside the cab of his combine during harvest.

Part of me, Pat said, really liked the guy, and part of me didn’t want him in there.

“I got a question for you, Pat.”

“Fire away.”

“What the hell makes BB&P so special? We can never get a customer away from them. What is it that they can do, that we can’t?”

The question kind of took me back, Pat said.  I wasn’t expecting it.  I thought about it before I answered.

“Well the first thing you’d have to realize is that I don’t think Bob and Larry are doing it for the money. I don’t think they care about new pickups every year.”

BB&P Feed and Grain was the last independent, full-service farm retailer within a few counties in either direction. They bought grain, sold all types of fertilizer, sprayed your crop and fed you livestock. Bob would let you know they were at a tax disadvantage to their cooperative competitors, yet they would donate tens of thousands via events like the county fair, and they set the price for services and goods for miles.

They didn’t ask their help to do anything they didn’t do, and they didn’t show up late and go home early.  Having been employed there, I always enjoyed a young salesman coming in and asking Larry, covered in bean dust and behind the counter, if he might speak to the owner.

“Speaking,” Larry would say.

In the event of a problem, a company with multiple locations has a guy in each one explaining to you, “I’ll see what the higher ups want to do…” At BB&P if there was a problem, you talked to Bob and Larry. Then they fixed it.

To do so, they’d go to all lengths.

Twenty years ago I was farming my folks’ place. Soybean harvest had been underway, and the elevator was about to get full. You’d leave the last load of beans you cut on the truck to haul to the elevator the following morning while the dew was on and you had a little time to wait.

One particular morning had me the sixth or seventh truck in line.  The late Mark Hollingsworth was directly ahead of me. He had a beautiful 1968 GMC tandem with a 20 foot aluminum box. He was quite successful and quite kind, in a world where it’s become fashionable to forsake the latter in pursuit of the former.

Mark was outside his truck, head cranked up skyward. I parked the old Ford, applied the air brakes, and made my way up to him.

“What ya looking at, Mark?”

“I’m looking at Larry up there,” he said as he pointed to the top of the grain leg.

“They got everything about full, and they’re trying to use those bins behind the seed shed. The trouble is that drop tube has a hole in it. It was just sort of sprinkling yesterday, but it’s more than a sprinkle now. No one can get a crane in, so Larry is going to patch it with a sheet of tin and a roll of duct tape.”

The western grain leg rose 120 feet.  On top sits an inverted cone known as the distributor housing, and radiating out from it are the downspouts that transport the grain by gravity to wherever you want them to go. The housing doesn’t look that big from the ground, but it must be about 7 feet tall. Larry is six foot tall, and dangling down its incline, 120 feet in the air, he could not feel the downspout with his feet while holding on to its top.

“You’re right above it, just let go,” shouted a spotter from the staircase just below the housing. Larry did and slid down onto the tube which laid at a 45 degree angle.

We were all below, watching. Frozen looking at the spectacle that is Larry Molln.

He slid down the tube like a giant fire pole, save for when he had to navigate the cables which helped support it. Once properly positioned, he laid the tin over the hole, about  halfway down the length of the tube, and taped it securely in place, laid out and hugging it all the while.  Then he made his way on down to the same row of bins every singular bean was going to, save for those that had made the swan dive to the concrete.

Somewhere in the middle of the whole procession, the tension broke with Mark’s kind giggle, eyes beaming through the glasses neatly tucked under his seed cap.

“That Larry, he sure is something.”

I once retold that story to a gentleman who worked for a cooperative. He thought it the craziest thing he ever heard.

“They don’t pay me enough,” he said.

I’m sure they didn’t. But Pat was right.  It wasn’t about the money. It was abouy a commitment you made when you agreed to provide a service to other.  Knowing and having worked for Larry, it was about meeting the challenge each day provided.

Most of us are here today because someone, somewhere, knew that spirit. Everything we stand on was built on it.  Larry, in broad daylight and against a clear blue sky, painted the contrast between a time that was, and the one that is.

You know there is one more thing about it that I keep coming back to.

When I was younger, I was apt to believe the universe conspired against us.  I’ve gotten older now, and I know it means no ill will. It is oblivious to us and through its orbits and forces like gravity, friction, momentum and inertia it just happens to get itself squarely in front of our most pressing plans.

I don’t reccomend challenging the universe.  It usually doesn’t end well, but one day Larry smoked a cigeratte on top of a grain leg before climbing onto a distributor housing and delivering to that big old universe a Larry sized “F” and “U.”  In so doing he defied it’s gravity, friction, momentum and inertia.

At least for a couple days until that tin wore through.