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This is a rough draft of The humble Farmer's Rants for the week of October 28, 2007

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1. You know that the offerings --- I’m tempted to say droppings --- on television have reached a new low when I have to admit that one of my favorite programs is Cops. We have talked about the fact that the program Cops features crimes by lower class people. We’re talking about crimes like your dog attacking your neighbor’s parrot or trying to outrun cops when they give you the blue light for drunken driving. The crimes committed by upper class people, like stealing your employees’ pension fund doesn’t make for good tv. Here’s bad news. According to the local paper, even lower class crimes aren’t worth filming around here. I just read in the police blotter that a person was apprehended after he got chatting with his friends and left a store without remembering to pay for his coffee.

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2. When I first meet someone I usually ask, “What do you do?” You might accuse me of throwing out a thoughtless, meaningless phrase --- just like those who say, “Have a nice day.” But I really want to know what people do. And when I ask people what they do, many of them have to repeat it. “What do I do?” as if they have to think about it a bit. Are we becoming a homogenized society? Is it possible that people no longer know what they do? The next time you see me ask me what I do. If I can give you an answer, we’ll both know.

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3. You’ve heard me tell about buying an Italian sandwich on Monhegan. The girl in the little market was from Eastern Europe and when she said, “Large or Small?” I held out both hands in front of me like you’d do to indicate size, and said, “About that big.” She said, “I don’t understand inches.” I said, “I’m showing you centimeters.”

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4. I only mentioned that inches-centimeters story because it is an example of the things you can hear in every day conversation if you are listening. I’m talking here about the kind of things that people say that make you want to shake your head and scream. My brother said he went into a little store up near Rumford and asked how to get to Augusta. The man behind the counter said, “From here?”

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5. And then – my brother obviously has something going up near Rumford, because another day he got lost trying to find it. So he pulled the car over where two women were walking on a sidewalk and asked them how to get to Rumford. One of them said, “Which way are you coming from?” We’re talking about average people you find on the street all across America. Even though there’s an election coming up, don’t stories like this make you suspect that things aren’t going to get any better?

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6. I read it while I was waiting to get my eyes examined. I almost didn’t find the magazine --- Consumer Reports --- because it was buried in a pile of worthless magazines. True, you don’t expect to find world class literature in a waiting room. But right there on the cover of Consumer Reports it said “How to get 200,000 miles out of your car.” Wow. Imagine being able to learn how to get 200,000 miles out of your car. But the blue truck with the HUMBLE plate you see me driving around has 268,000 miles on it. So --- you’re likely to see me stopped and smoking on the Maine Turnpike most any day now. I’m driving on borrowed time. But when you see me stopped on the highway, think to yourself how many miles I might have gotten out of that truck if I’d known what I was doing.

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7. If you live in St. George, Maine, you might not realize that we have a world class dump. If you are living with the most wonderful spouse in the world, you might not realize what a good thing you have going. And the same thing is true of our dump. One of the best things we ever did in St. George was to build and maintain our own dump and not consolidate it with another town. So stop for a minute today and appreciate your spouse and your St. George dump. Of course they call it a recycling center, and that is really what it is. Our dump is staffed by very intelligent people who keep the place immaculate. Everything is recycled. There is even a second hand store there so good things that would otherwise be crushed, burned or ground up, find new homes. My brother says you could set up an entire new home with good things you found at that store down at our dump. People are encouraged to take home bicycles, excellent building material, and fire wood. Why not? Why should good things be destroyed? Our dump should serve as a model for the rest of Maine. I only mention this because I hear that there are dumps in Maine where good things are immediately crushed so people can’t take them home and use them. Why is this happening? Is the chamber of commerce in your town opposed to recycling? I’m humble@humblefarmer.com

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8. I wouldn’t believe it, but a friend who has a house only 50 or so feet from the Atlantic Ocean told me that lobstermen who bait their traps with kerosene are now catching three times the number of counters. On the other hand, they aren’t able to sell these lobsters to anyone they know.

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9. My friend Doris helped me buy a machine that sits on the dashboard of my truck and gives me directions. It is not to be confused with the thing that is strapped into the seat beside me that gives me directions. This machine also gives me a list of the restaurants in the immediate area and how to find them. Sadly lacking on this machine, however, is a button that will tell you where you can buy a steamed hotdog in Maine.

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10. A young Bowdoin student recently told me that it now cost --- I think he said $42,000 a year to attend Bowdoin College. If this is true we now live in a country where only the very rich can afford to get a formal post-high school education. It is my understanding that in the more progressive European countries a college education --- including a PhD ---and health care --- are simply considered necessities which are enjoyed by citizens in any affluent, civilized society. But over the past 50 years, young people in our country have had to work longer hours for less. My college tuition was, I think, $50 a semester and I was able to earn that in a summer. The $10 I earned on Saturday night playing for dances at the Blue Goose paid for my room and food for a week. And when you graduated, your first year’s teaching salary would buy you a furnished house on an acre of land. Nowadays a new teacher has to work 5 years to buy the same house. I won’t live to see it, but you might wake up some day to discover that your children are living under a piece of tin on a muddy hillside. All this was brought to mind because I met that young Bowdoin student. I asked him, “What was the worst thing that happened to you at Bowdoin?” And he said, “Probably my freshman roommate.”

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11. You can tell me if this is true or not because you read more than I do. Well, I might read as many hours as you do, but I read the same elementary books in French and Italian or Swedish or Dutch over and over and over. So I don’t read as many different books as you do. One of my well-read friends just observed --- that when authors produce their second book, they spend the first three chapters apologizing for what they said in their first book.

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12. My friend Rich came to Maine from Chicago and moved way back into the woods in Union. I don’t know what he was trying to get away from, but the woods in Union is a good place to do it. Rich rented a car and while he was driving along he pushed some of the buttons --- just to see. And Rich says that he pushed one button and a voice came out of the sky and said, “This is your On Star emergency service.” It was scary. Rich, who has been known to exaggerate for the sake of a good story, says he argued with it for quite a while. I’ve known for a long time that they can put a thing on your car that enables them to unlock it by satellite. It’s also a handy tool if your car has been stolen and the police want to track it down or even shut off the motor. Speaking of voices coming out of the sky, Rich, who is retired and has nothing constructive to do with his time, says there is now a cookie jar cast in the shape of a policeman. When you open the lid, a voice says, “Step away from the cookie jar.”

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http://flickr.com/photos/gaylon/18192881/in/set-72157594146479017/

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13. I don’t think my problem here is with semantics. You tell me. Matt was sitting at my breakfast table last week and Matt said that to be able do something, “You’ve got to believe it’s possible.” I had to disagree. Because from what I’ve seen and read, some of the greatest advances in science have been made by people who didn’t realize that it couldn’t be done.

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