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Rants June 24, 2007

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1. Last Sunday my wifes’s daughters, Alison and Tamar, came to visit. Alison is married to Aaron, and just to let you know what kind of a guy Aaron is, his parents made him listen to this program when he was just a little boy in high school. And Aaron married Alison even after he found out that her mother, Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, was married to me. I have the impression that back before Aaron met Alison he was kind of wimpy --- played cello in the symphony and is some kind of scientist who designs computer chips. But it wasn’t long before Alison got Aaron to ride his bike 15 miles to work --- you know, in an effort to toughen him up. And then she got him to work out in a gym in Portland every morning before work and then she got him to do those Triathlon things that she enjoys doing so much where you swim and then ride a bike in wet clothing and then run until you drop. And because I’m married to her mother, I know where she gets it. Anyway, Aaron told me that some 90 year old woman ran a marathon in England. She was disappointed because it took her 11 hours instead of the 8 that she’d figured on. This 90 year old woman said that she was glad when she’d finished so she could finally go home, sit down and have a cup of tea. Poor old thing. I mention this to you as a warning because I think it shows what could happen to you if you let yourself get out of shape.

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2. When should you buy hearing aids? If you and the person you live with are continually shouting back and forth you might be thinking about getting some hearing aids. So --- if you have your radio cranked up to full volume right now, you might lean a little closer and listen to I have to say. My loss of hearing could be genetic. I don’t know. I do remember my grandfather Skoglund sitting by the radio with his hand behind his ear. I know my father couldn’t hear and I don’t hear well. But I don’t know if I come by it naturally or if it was the big guns in the service that ruined my ears. You might remember that 50 years ago the military wasn’t as worried about your health and happiness as I’m sure they are now. But it came to pass that a few years ago I felt rich enough to get some hearing aids. When I wrote the check, it was my understanding that they were guaranteed for life. And that made sense to me because I was so old that I figured the inflated price was to cover any repairs that might be necessary until I died. But the first time I dropped one on the floor and destroyed the little microphone inside, I discovered that I had to pay for the repairs. Surprise surprise. So I very quickly learned to only take them out of my ears to mess with them when I was standing over a bed where they could gently bounce if I dropped one.

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3. Can you believe that the hinges are worn out on my hearing aids? I find they work if I shim the little trap doors with a piece of paper. You might not want to do this if you don’t want to walk around with a white piece of paper flapping out of your ear which makes you look like Dumbo. Like young mothers with children who talk about their children when they meet, people with hearing aids talk about their hearing aids when they meet. And it is my understanding that the hearing aids that you can get nowadays are much better than the hearing aids I got 5 or so years ago. So. Should you rush out and get hearing aids today if you can’t hear? No. If I were you, I’d wait five more years until they are improved.

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4. You have heard of Fiddlers on the Tobique. The Tobique River is in Northern New Brunswick and part of it flows between Nictau, population 16, and Riley Brook. For years Bill Miller has been asking me to come to his Fiddlers on the Tobique party in Nictau and this year Marsha and I went. Because I figured there would be 10,000 cars in Nictau and because there is only one road in Nictau, we went up two days early to avoid the crushing traffic. Not necessary. I didn’t see any crowding on the roads or anywhere else. You don’t want to drive to Nictau at night. We got to Plaster Rock early but Bill wasn’t there to meet us. He’d been rushed to the hospital with a very dangerous infected foot, which, for all I know, might be endemic among canoe builders. So we got to his house three hours later than we thought we would because Bill wasn’t there to guide us. Yes we drove by his house and went 20 miles without seeing a house or a car before we gave up and came back. Yes. We saw a moose in the road 10 feet in front of our car, but I was going so slow at the time there was no danger of hitting it. I also think I saw a bear. You don’t want to drive up to Nictau at night.

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5. I started out to tell you about my first canoe ride which was in Nictau on the Tobique River. Marsha and I were in Professor Kirk Whipper's canoe. Professor Whipper started the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario and you should Google Kirk Whipper and learn what a remarkable man he is. I don’t know if I should admit it on the radio, but Kirk Whipper is an activist for environmental causes. You can see pictures of our canoe trip on my web page. To the best of my memory, it was the first time I had ever set foot in a canoe. But although I had never been in a canoe before, I discovered I already had the social skills to conduct myself like a pro. Anyone who saw me in the canoe would think I had lived in canoes all my life. Because I’d been married to Marsha for 16 years, it was easy for me to sit quietly and only do what I was told.

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6. Marsha and I didn’t have to camp out or sleep in the car when we went to the Fiddlers on The Tobique festival in Nictau. Bill Miller, who started that festival, had been to my Annual Free Lobster Picnic 15 and 20 years ago and stayed at our house. He even bought my old 40 by 80 circus tent when Marsha made me shut my picnic down. And Bill had been inviting me up to his shindig for years and said that we wouldn’t cause him any problems at all --- because we could stay with his mother.

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7. I like to think that when I go somewhere, I am the ideal guest. I take off my shoes by the door so I never track in filth. We bring our own food and we wash our own dishes. We bring sleeping bags and put them down on the beds. We have our own pillow covers and towels so there is never any laundry to pick up or wash up after us. And then, we do the most important thing of all. When we leave, we take all our belongings so you don’t have to tie up something in a bundle and mail it to us.

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8. When Marsha and I went to Nictau to the Fiddlers on The Tobuque festival, we got to stay in the big house Bill Miller’s grandfather built years ago. There were three dozen or so campers out on the lawn and people would drive in and set up tents. I happened to be standing behind Bill’s mother Wilma by the door when a small car came alongside. Wilma opened the door and greeted the young people in the car. The young man said, “We were here a couple of years ago and we tented over there. But now there is a new house there.” Wilma smiled and said, “Would you like us to move it?”

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9. Do you like your husband’s hobby? You’re lucky if you share his passion for baseball, fishing or collecting old cars. Life is easier if you both like to do the same things. My wife Marsha hated one of my hobbies and soon put an end to it. It was called my Annual Free Lobster Picnic and after 14 years it had just about started to catch on as a fun annual event in Maine when I was forced to abandon it in 1994. You can’t believe the amount of pressure that can be brought to bear when a Type-A woman sets her mind to changing something. I also have a collection of Model T Fords that have been comforting me in my barn for over 50 years. Somebody is going be dragging them off before my ashes have cooled in the can. Marsha only tolerates them now because they are out of sight and I seldom mess with them. But there is a man who lives near me in St. George Maine who has --- I think it is an old Lincoln. And this man spends a lot of time and money working on this Lincoln. He doesn’t have time or money to do anything else around the house. I have heard it said that this man’s wife doesn’t really care for this Lincoln. And one day one of the neighbors asked this wife why she didn’t like the Lincoln. And the wife said, “You can ask. You’ve probably got cupboards.”

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10. A friend of mine employs several people and he belonged to some business organization that cost him $300 or so a year. Every year a man would come and visit my friend and talk with him and tell him all the wonderful things this association was doing for him for only $300 a year. But my friend was in a bad mood the last time I saw him. One of his excellent helpers had left him for a job that paid better and had better benefits. And you can see where he is coming from when he says that if he were the governor he’d stamp out welfare. You can understand why small businessmen who work 18 hours a day hate the thought of welfare when they hire a new person and that person calls in sick every day for the next week. There are some sluggards out there who give the people who really can’t work a bad name. But my friend was ranting and raving the last time I saw him and I could see why he had reason to be upset. He said that he just got a phone call from a girl who wanted him to join up with the business organization again for $300. My friend wanted to know where that nice man was that used to come around and tell him all the good things that $300 a year was doing for him. --- And she said that they’d fired him and were doing it by phone now to save money. My friend said he would have signed up in a heartbeat if the representative had called and chatted with him like a good neighbor, but that nobody on the end of a telephone line was going to get his money. I don’t know what the point of my saying all this is, but I’m humble@humblefarmer.com if you have people working for you and can explain the situation better than I can. Oh, by the way. My wife just got a check in the mail for $1500 that she can put toward the purchase of a new car. I wonder if 1000 of those check letters are as effective as one good friendly salesman?

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11. My old neighbor, Gramp Wiley, told me that back in the 1930s he was in the fertilized hen egg business. Gramp said, “ I had a few hundred hens, and a dozen roosters to fertilize the eggs. I kept records and we ate any rooster or pullet that didn't perform well. But watching them took so much time that I got a set of tiny bells and attached them to the roosters. Then I could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report just by listening to the tones of the different bells. My favorite bell ringer was old Brewster, but one morning I didn’t hear his bell ring once and I was afraid he’d given his life for the cause. I went out in the hen pen and saw several roosters chasing pullets, and their bells were ringing. But Old Brewster had his bell in his beak so it couldn't ring. This way he was able to sneak up on a pullet, which saved a lot of running. I showed him off up at Union Fair where he took top honors --- Which probably makes me the only farmer in Maine who has ever brought home a No Bell Prize.

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