Monday, August 23, 2004
TWO POEMS MAKE IT INTO
THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT
AT COMMUNITY CAR
You may remember that I had poems laminated and attached to Budget Bicycle's Red Bikes as part of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program in Madison, Wisconsin. Another part of the project is publication of a hand-sized book of poems to be placed in the glove compartments of vehicles at Community Car. Well - success here, too! Both of my poems have made it into the glove compartment. Here's the substance of a letter I received from Shoshauna Shy of Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf:
"Your poems 'Simply Morning' and 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' submitted to the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program have made the cut, and will be part of the collection of hand-sized books placed in the glove compartments of Community Car. Community Car is a car-sharing club with over 150 members in the Madison, Wisconsin area. Every time a member reserves and receives a car, they open the glove compartment to fill out a travel log, and that is when they will be given the opportunity to read the book of poems. The poems will be about walking, biking, running and an appreciation for nature by 12-15 poets from all across the country."
---------------------
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have toured the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide has been Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We walked through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together; now I'm in the office of Bryan Tillett, president of Excel..
Then Dave introduces me to Bryan Tillett, president of the company. We talk in Bryan's office. I ask Bryan about Excel's impact on the local economy. Bryan wants to compared Excel's annual sales to the Smith County wheat crop, so Dave calls the local extension agent to get current figures on wheat production in the county: 150,000 acres of wheat have been certified; a yield of thirty bushels per acre sounds about right for the droughty conditions Smith County has experienced; and the wheat will be worth about $3.50 a bushel. So this year's wheat crop in Smith County will be worth about $15.75 million. Excel has annual sales of $17-18 million.
"Our annual payroll is more than $3.5 million," Bryan says. "We have a hundred sixty-five employees. More than half of them are women. When fit and finish really count, you want women doing the detail work." A lot of the employees are farm wives.
How much do people in the area know about Excel's operation?
"We have an open house for the public every year," Bryan says. "A lot of people from town have been through the plant."
Is the company's location ever an issue?
"Almost all the goods we order come in by the truckload," Bryan said. "A lot of materials come from Indiana, which is the RV capital of the world. We have our own semi to pick up freight as well."
"We are probably about as vertically integrated as we can be," Bryan thinks. "I can't imagine having more than two hundred employees. As we max out the employment pool, we'll have to outsource more."
Fortunately, he notes, technology allows you to do more with less.
"We're a progressive company," Bryan says. "We feed all information to the plant from the office via a fiber optic network. There's a fiber optic line from here to the plant and everything is networked together.
"We've interfaced our AS/400 system with the PC network so orders are integrated. CAD (Computer-Assisted Design) sends orders over to update the bill of materials. Every board that is taken for use is cut according to optimized-use instructions. Parts are nested for optimum yield at the router."
Why is Excel located in Smith Center, Kansas?
"Because our founder was born and raised here," Bryan says. "Being away from the hub forces us to build a high-quality product. We can't compete on price because of the freight factor and we don't have the labor pool to mass-produce. So we compete on quality."
How do you develop a good crew of employees to produce quality work?
"We are selective in who we hire," Bryan says, "and we train them. We don't hire just anyone. The rural work ethic is so good. We have a lot less turnover than other companies. We train people and keep them. And we have core people like Rachel Favinger to help the beginners."
"We want building the size of the company to be a slow process," Bryan says. "The demand on the available labor pool and the demand for our product grows slowly as we increase the size of our dealer base."
How good a community is Smith Center as a location for the business?
"See how progressive the hospital is," Bryan says. "You can get almost any service you want at the hospital. There are fifteen or sixteen consulting physicians who come to Smith Center."
"And the school system," he adds. "It employs a lot of people. We have a tremendous school system."
"How many places in the U.S. can you go to sleep with the keys in your ignition?" he asks.
"It's sad that we export our youth," he says, "but there are not a lot of white collar jobs here."
"We are an aged community," he adds. "A lot of money has been made in the county. Sons and daughters move away and when the parents die and they will the money to their children, it leaves the county. We lose that money."
Would Excel ever move from Smith Center?
"Not as long as I'm one of the partners in the company," Dave says, "and I think the rest feel that way too. This is my home. Once a month we'll get a letter from somebody wanting to buy our company. We just throw them in the trash."
To be continued....
---------------------
THE BLESSINGS
from the "Married To Prairie" series, Middle Ground
(in the voice of a pioneer woman on the tall grass prairie
who has lost her husband)
The merciful day ends and I would count
my blessings: two strong daughters and a handsome
son, a pair of untiring horses and one
cow heavy with milk morning and evening,
a barn loft full of hay and a cellar
stocked for winter, the good apples hidden for
the Christmas stockings, a thick bolt of bright cloth
for a new dress, winter clothes already sewn
for the children, the warm sun all day today
taking the edge off the autumn wind, enough
wood from our grove cut against winter and piled
in the shed, a good well with good water, and
these busy hands of mine, these busy strong hands
and a good strong back. These are my blessings, these
and a sturdy house, the fireplace giving back its
warmth, this comfortable chair. What more could I want?
Oh, husband, there is an emptiness tonight!
>
THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT
AT COMMUNITY CAR
You may remember that I had poems laminated and attached to Budget Bicycle's Red Bikes as part of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program in Madison, Wisconsin. Another part of the project is publication of a hand-sized book of poems to be placed in the glove compartments of vehicles at Community Car. Well - success here, too! Both of my poems have made it into the glove compartment. Here's the substance of a letter I received from Shoshauna Shy of Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf:
"Your poems 'Simply Morning' and 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' submitted to the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program have made the cut, and will be part of the collection of hand-sized books placed in the glove compartments of Community Car. Community Car is a car-sharing club with over 150 members in the Madison, Wisconsin area. Every time a member reserves and receives a car, they open the glove compartment to fill out a travel log, and that is when they will be given the opportunity to read the book of poems. The poems will be about walking, biking, running and an appreciation for nature by 12-15 poets from all across the country."
---------------------
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have toured the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide has been Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We walked through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together; now I'm in the office of Bryan Tillett, president of Excel..
Then Dave introduces me to Bryan Tillett, president of the company. We talk in Bryan's office. I ask Bryan about Excel's impact on the local economy. Bryan wants to compared Excel's annual sales to the Smith County wheat crop, so Dave calls the local extension agent to get current figures on wheat production in the county: 150,000 acres of wheat have been certified; a yield of thirty bushels per acre sounds about right for the droughty conditions Smith County has experienced; and the wheat will be worth about $3.50 a bushel. So this year's wheat crop in Smith County will be worth about $15.75 million. Excel has annual sales of $17-18 million.
"Our annual payroll is more than $3.5 million," Bryan says. "We have a hundred sixty-five employees. More than half of them are women. When fit and finish really count, you want women doing the detail work." A lot of the employees are farm wives.
How much do people in the area know about Excel's operation?
"We have an open house for the public every year," Bryan says. "A lot of people from town have been through the plant."
Is the company's location ever an issue?
"Almost all the goods we order come in by the truckload," Bryan said. "A lot of materials come from Indiana, which is the RV capital of the world. We have our own semi to pick up freight as well."
"We are probably about as vertically integrated as we can be," Bryan thinks. "I can't imagine having more than two hundred employees. As we max out the employment pool, we'll have to outsource more."
Fortunately, he notes, technology allows you to do more with less.
"We're a progressive company," Bryan says. "We feed all information to the plant from the office via a fiber optic network. There's a fiber optic line from here to the plant and everything is networked together.
"We've interfaced our AS/400 system with the PC network so orders are integrated. CAD (Computer-Assisted Design) sends orders over to update the bill of materials. Every board that is taken for use is cut according to optimized-use instructions. Parts are nested for optimum yield at the router."
Why is Excel located in Smith Center, Kansas?
"Because our founder was born and raised here," Bryan says. "Being away from the hub forces us to build a high-quality product. We can't compete on price because of the freight factor and we don't have the labor pool to mass-produce. So we compete on quality."
How do you develop a good crew of employees to produce quality work?
"We are selective in who we hire," Bryan says, "and we train them. We don't hire just anyone. The rural work ethic is so good. We have a lot less turnover than other companies. We train people and keep them. And we have core people like Rachel Favinger to help the beginners."
"We want building the size of the company to be a slow process," Bryan says. "The demand on the available labor pool and the demand for our product grows slowly as we increase the size of our dealer base."
How good a community is Smith Center as a location for the business?
"See how progressive the hospital is," Bryan says. "You can get almost any service you want at the hospital. There are fifteen or sixteen consulting physicians who come to Smith Center."
"And the school system," he adds. "It employs a lot of people. We have a tremendous school system."
"How many places in the U.S. can you go to sleep with the keys in your ignition?" he asks.
"It's sad that we export our youth," he says, "but there are not a lot of white collar jobs here."
"We are an aged community," he adds. "A lot of money has been made in the county. Sons and daughters move away and when the parents die and they will the money to their children, it leaves the county. We lose that money."
Would Excel ever move from Smith Center?
"Not as long as I'm one of the partners in the company," Dave says, "and I think the rest feel that way too. This is my home. Once a month we'll get a letter from somebody wanting to buy our company. We just throw them in the trash."
To be continued....
---------------------
THE BLESSINGS
from the "Married To Prairie" series, Middle Ground
(in the voice of a pioneer woman on the tall grass prairie
who has lost her husband)
The merciful day ends and I would count
my blessings: two strong daughters and a handsome
son, a pair of untiring horses and one
cow heavy with milk morning and evening,
a barn loft full of hay and a cellar
stocked for winter, the good apples hidden for
the Christmas stockings, a thick bolt of bright cloth
for a new dress, winter clothes already sewn
for the children, the warm sun all day today
taking the edge off the autumn wind, enough
wood from our grove cut against winter and piled
in the shed, a good well with good water, and
these busy hands of mine, these busy strong hands
and a good strong back. These are my blessings, these
and a sturdy house, the fireplace giving back its
warmth, this comfortable chair. What more could I want?
Oh, husband, there is an emptiness tonight!
>
Sunday, August 22, 2004
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have been touring the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide is Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We've been walking through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together.
We have stepped off into another area to look at couches when Rachel comes over to ask if Dave told me about "the fire."
There was a day in 1983 when the plant burned to the ground. Everything was lost.
Rachel said she asked Vaughn "What are we going to do?"
"Well, you're going to come to work tomorrow," Vaughn replied.
The company re-built and has expanded every few years since.
A lot of the specialized equipment needed in the plant was designed and built in the plant. One such piece is the device that compresses cushions so that buttons can be put on them. The machine will compress a set of three cushions for the back of a sofa; a needle is poked through the center of the compressed area; the needle has a hook at the end of it; the hook pulls a piece of thick thread back through the cushion. The button is attached to the cushion with that piece of thread.
Joetta Wright, who has been with Excel for nine years and who had experience with other companies as well, is showing me how the buttons get attached. She says "Somebody told me this machine was designed by Vaughn. You can't order it from a catalog." She tells me about another machine they use to suck the air out of foam so it can be inserted into fabric.
Then Joetta is showing how the buttons are made. Scrap fabric is layered several times and a machine cuts circles of the material. A circle is placed in a machine with a metal top, the fabric gets folded around the top, and a plastic bottom is added to hold everything in place. When Joetta attaches the buttons to the cushions, she selects those that best match the fabric at that point. If it's a dark spot in the cushion, she'll choose a button with like, dark fabric.
"The denser the foam, the longer a cushion will last," Joetta says.
Dave adds that "Vaughn doesn't like to build things that have problems in a few years."
He also says that Excel will soon start padding the chairs in-house for the Limited Edition models, instead of having them brought in.
Then we step into a Limited Edition model that's near the end of the production line. Some women are adding the finishing touches and doing a final clean-up. I feel like an intruder in someone else's dream. The trailer has a fireplace, a TV, five surround-sound speakers, a computer desk. Oh my.
We leave the women to their work tidying up and enter the service department. Steve Ellenberger runs Excel's service. Dave introduces me to him. Steve tells me about taking care of customer needs - "I have a lot of customers who are 'two-way' customers," he says. "They stop in going south; they stop in going back north." Steve tries to make them happy "because a happy customer is your best advertising. Customer service is what builds customer loyalty."
And then with our typical middle western modesty, he shares the credit: "I'm just building on what my predecessors created."
Steve's family had originally staked a claim in the Kirwin area back in homestead days, Steve says. His father worked for the government and Steve lived all over the country. After his parents divorced, Steve came back to Kirwin to visit his mother, he met his wife, "and I never left. I'm a true flatlander now."
Steve schedules service for about seven customers a week during the summer months. "We also have some drive-ins we try to get to," he adds. "Some we just can't get to, and they go to their dealers for service when they get home."
"We have customers who bought Excel trailers specifically because other customers told them about our service," Steve says. "They couldn't get that kind of service from their other manufacturer."
Where did this push for quality, service, and excellence originate? Steve and Dave think it started with Vaughn. "He wants things done right, so there aren't problems."
I say good-bye to Steve. Dave and I stop in the counter lounge for a moment and Dave shows me the end of the video of the 2003 gathering of Excel customers. At the end of the get-together, the whole bunch of visitors line up their vehicles and head down Main Street Smith Center honking and banging pots and pans and everything imaginable. This is block after block of mostly retired folks making an awful lot of noise. It's the Noise Parade - old folks getting to act like kids again.
To be continued....
--------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 21, 1998
I saw a sky last night that makes me want to live forever. A sunset with clouds and color and a patch of sky like eyes that are window to the soul.
It was not just the light, the sky. The air was so heavy the wind had to crawl on its belly. The incipient evening dew - God's sign how much he loves the world. The thick vegetable aromas - the smell of swamp for miles along Highway E last night, the smell of matter transforming itself, of matter transformed.
The light, but more the stories the light shines on, illuminates. Sometimes I want so much to know the stories of all of us. I could taste that, last night.
This morning, a cool, grey mist around us, softening the edges of things. The quiet murmur of a day getting started. Our old friend the sun on the other, the eastern horizon. Grace is a gift; and this morning is grace.
Sometimes we argue overmuch when what we should do is shut up. Take it, don't rate it. Shut up and live.
A squirrel on the lawn. Moisture on the windshield. The neighbor's pick-up in the backyard with a trailer. He has been hauling in dirt for a flower bed. Each day is an adventure.
In some places in the country this morning the fog is serious business. Elsewhere, the day, she picks up her skirt and runs; she is wearing smooth, blue panties, the color of sky. The sight of it, or the heavy air, makes it hard to breathe.
>
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have been touring the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide is Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We've been walking through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together.
We have stepped off into another area to look at couches when Rachel comes over to ask if Dave told me about "the fire."
There was a day in 1983 when the plant burned to the ground. Everything was lost.
Rachel said she asked Vaughn "What are we going to do?"
"Well, you're going to come to work tomorrow," Vaughn replied.
The company re-built and has expanded every few years since.
A lot of the specialized equipment needed in the plant was designed and built in the plant. One such piece is the device that compresses cushions so that buttons can be put on them. The machine will compress a set of three cushions for the back of a sofa; a needle is poked through the center of the compressed area; the needle has a hook at the end of it; the hook pulls a piece of thick thread back through the cushion. The button is attached to the cushion with that piece of thread.
Joetta Wright, who has been with Excel for nine years and who had experience with other companies as well, is showing me how the buttons get attached. She says "Somebody told me this machine was designed by Vaughn. You can't order it from a catalog." She tells me about another machine they use to suck the air out of foam so it can be inserted into fabric.
Then Joetta is showing how the buttons are made. Scrap fabric is layered several times and a machine cuts circles of the material. A circle is placed in a machine with a metal top, the fabric gets folded around the top, and a plastic bottom is added to hold everything in place. When Joetta attaches the buttons to the cushions, she selects those that best match the fabric at that point. If it's a dark spot in the cushion, she'll choose a button with like, dark fabric.
"The denser the foam, the longer a cushion will last," Joetta says.
Dave adds that "Vaughn doesn't like to build things that have problems in a few years."
He also says that Excel will soon start padding the chairs in-house for the Limited Edition models, instead of having them brought in.
Then we step into a Limited Edition model that's near the end of the production line. Some women are adding the finishing touches and doing a final clean-up. I feel like an intruder in someone else's dream. The trailer has a fireplace, a TV, five surround-sound speakers, a computer desk. Oh my.
We leave the women to their work tidying up and enter the service department. Steve Ellenberger runs Excel's service. Dave introduces me to him. Steve tells me about taking care of customer needs - "I have a lot of customers who are 'two-way' customers," he says. "They stop in going south; they stop in going back north." Steve tries to make them happy "because a happy customer is your best advertising. Customer service is what builds customer loyalty."
And then with our typical middle western modesty, he shares the credit: "I'm just building on what my predecessors created."
Steve's family had originally staked a claim in the Kirwin area back in homestead days, Steve says. His father worked for the government and Steve lived all over the country. After his parents divorced, Steve came back to Kirwin to visit his mother, he met his wife, "and I never left. I'm a true flatlander now."
Steve schedules service for about seven customers a week during the summer months. "We also have some drive-ins we try to get to," he adds. "Some we just can't get to, and they go to their dealers for service when they get home."
"We have customers who bought Excel trailers specifically because other customers told them about our service," Steve says. "They couldn't get that kind of service from their other manufacturer."
Where did this push for quality, service, and excellence originate? Steve and Dave think it started with Vaughn. "He wants things done right, so there aren't problems."
I say good-bye to Steve. Dave and I stop in the counter lounge for a moment and Dave shows me the end of the video of the 2003 gathering of Excel customers. At the end of the get-together, the whole bunch of visitors line up their vehicles and head down Main Street Smith Center honking and banging pots and pans and everything imaginable. This is block after block of mostly retired folks making an awful lot of noise. It's the Noise Parade - old folks getting to act like kids again.
To be continued....
--------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 21, 1998
I saw a sky last night that makes me want to live forever. A sunset with clouds and color and a patch of sky like eyes that are window to the soul.
It was not just the light, the sky. The air was so heavy the wind had to crawl on its belly. The incipient evening dew - God's sign how much he loves the world. The thick vegetable aromas - the smell of swamp for miles along Highway E last night, the smell of matter transforming itself, of matter transformed.
The light, but more the stories the light shines on, illuminates. Sometimes I want so much to know the stories of all of us. I could taste that, last night.
This morning, a cool, grey mist around us, softening the edges of things. The quiet murmur of a day getting started. Our old friend the sun on the other, the eastern horizon. Grace is a gift; and this morning is grace.
Sometimes we argue overmuch when what we should do is shut up. Take it, don't rate it. Shut up and live.
A squirrel on the lawn. Moisture on the windshield. The neighbor's pick-up in the backyard with a trailer. He has been hauling in dirt for a flower bed. Each day is an adventure.
In some places in the country this morning the fog is serious business. Elsewhere, the day, she picks up her skirt and runs; she is wearing smooth, blue panties, the color of sky. The sight of it, or the heavy air, makes it hard to breathe.
>
Saturday, August 21, 2004
SATURDAY'S POEMS
--------------------------------
WHAT I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU:
PRAIRIE IN MY MOUTH
by John Rezmerski
Predicting tomorrow’s weather is chancy business,
let alone a five-day forecast.
No matter what the TV says, taking an umbrella to work
is thinking on your feet.
Catching by eye the lifting of red-winged blackbirds
in the evening,
I continue my daily exercise along a busy road,
foot by foot.
I have a friend who remembers when he was a child
in a bathtub
keeping his legs still, under water and bubbles,
fearful of seeing his bare feet.
He kept fixing the shingles on his roof, which
leaked half the time regardless.
He sought professional help after the ladder slipped
and he fell twenty feet.
The floor sloped. He got out his saw and went to work,
tired of tilted coffee in his cup.
Making a permanent decision, he temporarily trimmed
two of the table’s feet.
The land where he lived was flat, and that’s how
he wanted everything else.
He wanted someplace he could say it’s where he stood
on his own two feet.
The prairie in my mouth, stem by stem, corn crop
and bean harvest, fat pig,
is the place I call my own, a place where I like
to think there’s solid footing.
*
SOME GOOD THINGS LEFT AFTER
THE WAR WITH THE SIOUX
by John Rezmerski
My eyes welcome high grass,
green going yellow
shooting up
from old old earth
fed with hard-earned blood
and bled sweat.
This soil now marked by tractor tires
fed Amos Huggins in 1862
and feeds me now,
feeds you,
and the blood it has swallowed
never spoils the corn.
It is the magic of that blood,
red cells and white cells,
and clear yellow fluid
falling on the warm black earth,
that keeps legs pumping
up the valley and over the bluffs
to mourn the innocent,
to cherish the giving,
to pray with fast breath
to the breath of the land,
nitrogen rising
from remains of quiet and boastful alike,
seeping into the roots of rosebushes,
the strength of wheat,
the warmth of beans,
the sweetness of corn and pork,
the plumpness of lovers,
into children of grass and grain
and the spirit of the blood,
hundred-proof blood,
drunk-making blood,
man-making blood,
blood contaminated only by blood,
into the children of the eye,
of the spleen,
of the brain and the voice,
into the welcomers of grass,
welcomers of dawn
on the blue and brown earth,
welcomers of silence
and forgivers of fire and the plow and old murders.
"Some Good Things Left After the War with the Sioux" is reprinted from Heartland II: Poets of the Midwest, ed. Lucien Stryk, Northern Illinois University Press, 1975; reprinted by permission of the poet. Writer and storyteller John Calvin Rezmerski lives in Eagle Lake, Minnesota. Red Dragonfly Press recently published his "The Sheriff Next Day Answers the Reporter" as a chapbook. His most recent full-length collection, What Do I Know? New and Selected Poems, is available from Holy Cow! Press, P.O. Box 3170, Mount Royal Station, Duluth, MN 55803.
---------------------
A NOTE TO THE POETS OUT THERE
I'm interested in considering your "poems of place" for publication in The Middlewesterner's "Saturday's Poem" feature; send two or three of your best in the body of an e-mail addressed to tmmontag@dotnet.com . Put "Saturday's Poem" in the subject line. Then be patient. I will get back to you about whether I'll use your work or not. Send along a short biographical note and information about where your books can be purchased and I'll include that when your poem runs. There's no payment involved for having your work appear in "Saturday's Poem," but the feature is seen by some high class readers. About seventeen of them, by our current count.
INDEX OF THE THIRTEEN MOST RECENT SATURDAY'S POEMS
o Harriet Brown, "Speaking Midwestern" and "Where We Went" - July 10, 2004
o Robin Chapman, "By the Wisconsin River" - June 12, 2004
o Susan Firer, "The Butterfly Graveyard" - May 22, 2004
o Susan Firer, "The Bright Waterfall of Angels" - August 14, 2004
o R. Chris Halla, "My Prairie Wedding" - June 5, 2004
o Karla Huston, "Night Swim" and "Summer Storm" - July 31, 2004
o Loren Kleinman, "Formaggio" and "Jetsam" - July 24, 2004
o Colleen Redman, "Tincture Making" - May 15, 2004
o Jim Reese, "Ritual" and "Willing and Ready" - May 29, 2004
o Robert Schuler, "Thaw, 2003, Stanton Township" and "The American Millenium" - June 26, 2004
o Judith Strasser, "Apostle Islands History" and "County Road" - July 17, 2004
o Marilyn Taylor, "Surveying the Damage" - June 19, 2004
o Mark Vinz, "The Old Hometown" and "Midcontinent" - April 17, 2004
o Complete index to poems here
>
--------------------------------
WHAT I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU:
PRAIRIE IN MY MOUTH
by John Rezmerski
Predicting tomorrow’s weather is chancy business,
let alone a five-day forecast.
No matter what the TV says, taking an umbrella to work
is thinking on your feet.
Catching by eye the lifting of red-winged blackbirds
in the evening,
I continue my daily exercise along a busy road,
foot by foot.
I have a friend who remembers when he was a child
in a bathtub
keeping his legs still, under water and bubbles,
fearful of seeing his bare feet.
He kept fixing the shingles on his roof, which
leaked half the time regardless.
He sought professional help after the ladder slipped
and he fell twenty feet.
The floor sloped. He got out his saw and went to work,
tired of tilted coffee in his cup.
Making a permanent decision, he temporarily trimmed
two of the table’s feet.
The land where he lived was flat, and that’s how
he wanted everything else.
He wanted someplace he could say it’s where he stood
on his own two feet.
The prairie in my mouth, stem by stem, corn crop
and bean harvest, fat pig,
is the place I call my own, a place where I like
to think there’s solid footing.
*
SOME GOOD THINGS LEFT AFTER
THE WAR WITH THE SIOUX
by John Rezmerski
My eyes welcome high grass,
green going yellow
shooting up
from old old earth
fed with hard-earned blood
and bled sweat.
This soil now marked by tractor tires
fed Amos Huggins in 1862
and feeds me now,
feeds you,
and the blood it has swallowed
never spoils the corn.
It is the magic of that blood,
red cells and white cells,
and clear yellow fluid
falling on the warm black earth,
that keeps legs pumping
up the valley and over the bluffs
to mourn the innocent,
to cherish the giving,
to pray with fast breath
to the breath of the land,
nitrogen rising
from remains of quiet and boastful alike,
seeping into the roots of rosebushes,
the strength of wheat,
the warmth of beans,
the sweetness of corn and pork,
the plumpness of lovers,
into children of grass and grain
and the spirit of the blood,
hundred-proof blood,
drunk-making blood,
man-making blood,
blood contaminated only by blood,
into the children of the eye,
of the spleen,
of the brain and the voice,
into the welcomers of grass,
welcomers of dawn
on the blue and brown earth,
welcomers of silence
and forgivers of fire and the plow and old murders.
"Some Good Things Left After the War with the Sioux" is reprinted from Heartland II: Poets of the Midwest, ed. Lucien Stryk, Northern Illinois University Press, 1975; reprinted by permission of the poet. Writer and storyteller John Calvin Rezmerski lives in Eagle Lake, Minnesota. Red Dragonfly Press recently published his "The Sheriff Next Day Answers the Reporter" as a chapbook. His most recent full-length collection, What Do I Know? New and Selected Poems, is available from Holy Cow! Press, P.O. Box 3170, Mount Royal Station, Duluth, MN 55803.
---------------------
A NOTE TO THE POETS OUT THERE
I'm interested in considering your "poems of place" for publication in The Middlewesterner's "Saturday's Poem" feature; send two or three of your best in the body of an e-mail addressed to tmmontag@dotnet.com . Put "Saturday's Poem" in the subject line. Then be patient. I will get back to you about whether I'll use your work or not. Send along a short biographical note and information about where your books can be purchased and I'll include that when your poem runs. There's no payment involved for having your work appear in "Saturday's Poem," but the feature is seen by some high class readers. About seventeen of them, by our current count.
INDEX OF THE THIRTEEN MOST RECENT SATURDAY'S POEMS
o Harriet Brown, "Speaking Midwestern" and "Where We Went" - July 10, 2004
o Robin Chapman, "By the Wisconsin River" - June 12, 2004
o Susan Firer, "The Butterfly Graveyard" - May 22, 2004
o Susan Firer, "The Bright Waterfall of Angels" - August 14, 2004
o R. Chris Halla, "My Prairie Wedding" - June 5, 2004
o Karla Huston, "Night Swim" and "Summer Storm" - July 31, 2004
o Loren Kleinman, "Formaggio" and "Jetsam" - July 24, 2004
o Colleen Redman, "Tincture Making" - May 15, 2004
o Jim Reese, "Ritual" and "Willing and Ready" - May 29, 2004
o Robert Schuler, "Thaw, 2003, Stanton Township" and "The American Millenium" - June 26, 2004
o Judith Strasser, "Apostle Islands History" and "County Road" - July 17, 2004
o Marilyn Taylor, "Surveying the Damage" - June 19, 2004
o Mark Vinz, "The Old Hometown" and "Midcontinent" - April 17, 2004
o Complete index to poems here
>
Friday, August 20, 2004
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have been touring the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide is Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We've been walking through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together.
From the time that welding starts on the frame until a completed unit rolls out the door, it takes about two weeks to build an Excel trailer, according to Dave. He said the company usually has orders in hand for trailers about two or three months out.
We need some lead-time to get everything together for a unit," Dave notes. "Everything has to come together at the point you need it. It's like a concert."
Foremen continually turn in reports of what materials have been used so those can be re-ordered, Dave says. "Unfinished trailers cost us money. Getting materials in here when we need them is very important."
The company has a computerized production order; the same information goes to all departments so they are building the same trailer. You don't want a thirty-six foot chassis coming together with thirty-two foot side walls, for instance.
"We try to group runs of trailers of the same size," Dave says. "Sometimes, though, we just can't get away from the occasional 'one-sies.' We do have special orders and customizing that we have to accommodate."
Over here every day the same people put each trailer's wiring into a harness. Over there, the same people install the harnesses in the trailers.
"Some manufacturers have people pull wires," Dave says. "We get uniformity of installation with these harnesses."
We walk through the area where refrigerators and TVs for the trailers are received and stored. We stop at the shelving where the scrap fiberglass is kept waiting to be used as storage doors. One-inch foam insulation is attached to the fiberglass.
We meet another Excel sales rep out in the plant. Dave introduces Randy Vaughn who is originally from Lake Placid, New York, and how lives in Kirwin, Kansas. Randy is a convert to Kansas - he says "I'm a transplant and I'm here to stay."
Then we're watching caps and roofs being applied to the trailers. These pieces are actually manufactured by Arlwin Manufacturing, a company owned by one of Vaughn Peterson's cousins and situated just a few hundred feet east of the Excel plant.
All the windows and trim parts for a specific trailer get put on one cart and the cart is labeled for which trailer it belongs to. "They know they're not done," Dave says of those installing the trim, "until they've installed everything on the cart."
An overhead rail system allows one person to handle a cap, to pick it up and move it to the trailer for installation. "That system is handy," Dave says. "It's safe, and it's efficient for the workers - a plus for everybody."
"The furniture is built over here," Dave says as we enter a quieter area of the plant. "We make our own sofas, mattresses, windows, treatments, curtains, bedspreads, valances."
I'm introduced to Rachel Favinger, who is working at one of the tables. Rachel started with the company in 1969. She ended up the head of sewing; she retired; she came out of retirement to work part-time. Dave suggested that maybe she worked for the enjoyment of it, not the money. Rachel admits "I did forget to pick up my check here a few weeks ago."
"I started the sewing department with Mrs. Peterson," Rachel recalls. "I was a supervisor here for thirty years."
"They brought the sewing machines in and set 'em down and said 'here you go,'" Rachel remembers. "I made them go."
"They brought in a computerized machine in 1990 and set it down," she said. Nothing about it made any sense to Rachel. There were no instructions. "I sat down and cried. I went to Vaughn and cried. Vaughn said 'Get away from it,' so I went home. But when I came in the next day it was still here."
"I got on the phone to the manufacturer," Rachel says. "I got instructions in how to make it operate. Turns out they didn't send all the parts. We got the parts and got it going."
"I was terrible," Rachel said. "I used to go into furniture stores and turn furniture over to see how it was made."
Change orders drove her crazy. She'd have to tell sales reps "you just changed everything we just got done building."
"This work," Rachel says, "is a lot more complicated than people think." Now that she is a sewer part-time, the pressure is off her.
"But she has a lot of experience," Dave says. "She's an expert on the crew that newer people can turn to."
Typically Excel will have five patterns that customers can choose from for their matching sofas, bed spreads, curtains, etc.
A lot of manufacturers, Dave says, offer "queen-size beds, but the one question some customers have is whether it is a 'real' queen. You'll see 'short queens' from a lot of manufacturers - 60-inch by 75-inch. We build only the full queen - sixty-inch by 80-inch. We buy the springs for the mattresses but do the rest of the work ourselves."
To be continued....
--------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 20, 1998
About 5:00 a.m. a rain storm rolled through, rolled quickly through, dropped a heavy shower in but a moment. It is all blue skies now, sunshine, bright August day. If it warms up, it might be steamy.
What a view of the country you'd get if you could surf a storm front in from the west coast or the far north, all the way inland to Wisconsin. You'd swirl and blast in the mountains and, if you ever broke free, you'd sweep like a broom across the Dakotas, drag your toes in cool Minnesota water, brush against Wisconsin pines. Of course, there are times when the weather doesn't change much; then you might be like a sail boat becalmed in the middle of the lake.
I see that a woman in Fairwater has her underpanties pinned to the clothesline, one, two, three. They seem pretty skimpy out there, and too colorful to be middle western underpanties. Aren't ours usually white, cotton, baggy?
The sun rises so noticeably later these days and hangs lower in the sky as I head to work. That alone tells me the season is winding down, to say nothing of the cool nights, the evening dampness. The field corn isn't turning yet but that can't be far off. Soon, too, there'll be color in the trees and a different song in our heart - the great green uprising has slowed. Soon, it will once again be like counting days til the end of a jail term.
>
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have been touring the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide is Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We've been walking through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together.
From the time that welding starts on the frame until a completed unit rolls out the door, it takes about two weeks to build an Excel trailer, according to Dave. He said the company usually has orders in hand for trailers about two or three months out.
We need some lead-time to get everything together for a unit," Dave notes. "Everything has to come together at the point you need it. It's like a concert."
Foremen continually turn in reports of what materials have been used so those can be re-ordered, Dave says. "Unfinished trailers cost us money. Getting materials in here when we need them is very important."
The company has a computerized production order; the same information goes to all departments so they are building the same trailer. You don't want a thirty-six foot chassis coming together with thirty-two foot side walls, for instance.
"We try to group runs of trailers of the same size," Dave says. "Sometimes, though, we just can't get away from the occasional 'one-sies.' We do have special orders and customizing that we have to accommodate."
Over here every day the same people put each trailer's wiring into a harness. Over there, the same people install the harnesses in the trailers.
"Some manufacturers have people pull wires," Dave says. "We get uniformity of installation with these harnesses."
We walk through the area where refrigerators and TVs for the trailers are received and stored. We stop at the shelving where the scrap fiberglass is kept waiting to be used as storage doors. One-inch foam insulation is attached to the fiberglass.
We meet another Excel sales rep out in the plant. Dave introduces Randy Vaughn who is originally from Lake Placid, New York, and how lives in Kirwin, Kansas. Randy is a convert to Kansas - he says "I'm a transplant and I'm here to stay."
Then we're watching caps and roofs being applied to the trailers. These pieces are actually manufactured by Arlwin Manufacturing, a company owned by one of Vaughn Peterson's cousins and situated just a few hundred feet east of the Excel plant.
All the windows and trim parts for a specific trailer get put on one cart and the cart is labeled for which trailer it belongs to. "They know they're not done," Dave says of those installing the trim, "until they've installed everything on the cart."
An overhead rail system allows one person to handle a cap, to pick it up and move it to the trailer for installation. "That system is handy," Dave says. "It's safe, and it's efficient for the workers - a plus for everybody."
"The furniture is built over here," Dave says as we enter a quieter area of the plant. "We make our own sofas, mattresses, windows, treatments, curtains, bedspreads, valances."
I'm introduced to Rachel Favinger, who is working at one of the tables. Rachel started with the company in 1969. She ended up the head of sewing; she retired; she came out of retirement to work part-time. Dave suggested that maybe she worked for the enjoyment of it, not the money. Rachel admits "I did forget to pick up my check here a few weeks ago."
"I started the sewing department with Mrs. Peterson," Rachel recalls. "I was a supervisor here for thirty years."
"They brought the sewing machines in and set 'em down and said 'here you go,'" Rachel remembers. "I made them go."
"They brought in a computerized machine in 1990 and set it down," she said. Nothing about it made any sense to Rachel. There were no instructions. "I sat down and cried. I went to Vaughn and cried. Vaughn said 'Get away from it,' so I went home. But when I came in the next day it was still here."
"I got on the phone to the manufacturer," Rachel says. "I got instructions in how to make it operate. Turns out they didn't send all the parts. We got the parts and got it going."
"I was terrible," Rachel said. "I used to go into furniture stores and turn furniture over to see how it was made."
Change orders drove her crazy. She'd have to tell sales reps "you just changed everything we just got done building."
"This work," Rachel says, "is a lot more complicated than people think." Now that she is a sewer part-time, the pressure is off her.
"But she has a lot of experience," Dave says. "She's an expert on the crew that newer people can turn to."
Typically Excel will have five patterns that customers can choose from for their matching sofas, bed spreads, curtains, etc.
A lot of manufacturers, Dave says, offer "queen-size beds, but the one question some customers have is whether it is a 'real' queen. You'll see 'short queens' from a lot of manufacturers - 60-inch by 75-inch. We build only the full queen - sixty-inch by 80-inch. We buy the springs for the mattresses but do the rest of the work ourselves."
To be continued....
--------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 20, 1998
About 5:00 a.m. a rain storm rolled through, rolled quickly through, dropped a heavy shower in but a moment. It is all blue skies now, sunshine, bright August day. If it warms up, it might be steamy.
What a view of the country you'd get if you could surf a storm front in from the west coast or the far north, all the way inland to Wisconsin. You'd swirl and blast in the mountains and, if you ever broke free, you'd sweep like a broom across the Dakotas, drag your toes in cool Minnesota water, brush against Wisconsin pines. Of course, there are times when the weather doesn't change much; then you might be like a sail boat becalmed in the middle of the lake.
I see that a woman in Fairwater has her underpanties pinned to the clothesline, one, two, three. They seem pretty skimpy out there, and too colorful to be middle western underpanties. Aren't ours usually white, cotton, baggy?
The sun rises so noticeably later these days and hangs lower in the sky as I head to work. That alone tells me the season is winding down, to say nothing of the cool nights, the evening dampness. The field corn isn't turning yet but that can't be far off. Soon, too, there'll be color in the trees and a different song in our heart - the great green uprising has slowed. Soon, it will once again be like counting days til the end of a jail term.
>
Thursday, August 19, 2004
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have been touring the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide is Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We've been walking through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together.
There is room on the frame for a generator if the customer wants to make the unit entirely self-sufficient. The customer can install his own generator if he wishes, or can order one installed by Excel.
There is a white tank set onto the trailer - that's for drinking water. The black tank is for sewer. The grey tank is for wash water. The water tanks are set over two layers of insulation. Heating ducts also channel warm air from the furnace into the water tank area, to keep things from freezing. "This is a standard feature for us," Dave says. "It is not standard in the industry." If the unit has thermo-pane windows, Excel guarantees the water tanks won't free up down to zero degrees outside temperature. Lower-line models without thermo-pane windows are intended for customers who are not going to live in them year around, including the cold weather.
The frame of the trailer is 2"x10" box steel. The box steel, Dave says, "is more resistant to twisting and buckling than I-beam or C-channel steel because there are two vertical pieces of steel instead of one. It makes a stronger frame."
"Our frame is a Z-frame," he says. "What he means is that the back piece of frame comes to within several feet of the front of the trailer, and the front piece starts under the back piece and extends out in front of it. This provides greater ground clearance in back, where you need it, and it brings the front down to reduce wind resistance. It also lowers the center of gravity for the trailer and results in less side to side momentum.
"The trailer is like a race car," Dave suggests, "in that you want it as low as you can reasonably get it." If the back end is too low, it will drag and hit the ground. Yet you want as little wind resistance as possible and the Z-frame is a good compromise.
"We've been using the Z-frame since 1991," he said.
The spare tire for the trailer gets tucked up in the frame at the back.
"We put a boat-receiver hitch on the frame as an option," Dave says. "We can do that because we have the box steel frame. Being able to hitch a boat to the trailer - that separates the strong frame trailers from the weak frames. We'll put the boat hitch option on any of our trailers."
The "Limited Edition" Excel is the classiest line the company makes. The "Classic" is one step down - the difference is in the cost of the trim - real oak versus oak-styled paper over a wood core. Both the Limited Edition and the Classic are intended to be set up in RV parks. The "RT" Excel is for "RV trekking." It is made less expensively, but it is just as strong as the higher-priced models. The RT goes places you wouldn't take the Limited Edition or the Classic, "although you never know where they're going to put them."
None of Excel's competitors put a boat hitch on their trailers in the RT's class, which shows how strongly the RT is made.
Competitors to Excel's Limited Edition and Classic models would be companies such as Teton and HitchHiker. At the RT level, Dave says, "there are a thousand different companies. We want to be known as the strongest-built in the price range. Some companies' trailers in the lower price range are cheapened in a lot of areas. We still want our trailer to have a lot of strength."
"We weld our own frames," Dave says, "and paint them in an electrostatic paint booth. We buy the axles, rims, and tires, and put them onto the frames ourselves. We use heavy duty tires on big rims. Most brands buy the chassis frame. We build them ourselves."
Wilson Performance Flooring is standard in the Limited Edition Excel, linoleum for the Classic and RT models. An extra thick padding is used under the carpet in the trailers, to give the feel of home carpet.
The water-lines in the trailer run through the heat ducts. "Other brands build a sub-floor for the water-lines," Dave says. "I've never heard of our water-lines freezing up. This is what separates the cold weather trailers from the non-cold weather trailers."
It's what separates the real thing from the wannabes, I would say.
To be continued....
--------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 19, 1998
Why does a place need its poet? The poet names things. Who names things is the poet, whatever those around should call him, or her. The poet allows us to see this place, and to pick up pieces of it to carry with us. If we could not do that, all places would be the same to us; we would be like the animals.
Another cool morning. I am told it's supposed to get hot and August-like this week, but we haven't seen it yet. What I am getting as actual I much prefer to any forecast - even if it's a 100 degrees, even if it's rain. Stop talking about it. Show me the money. Move it or milk it, as we used to say in Iowa, pretending that the other fellow ought to get his cow out of our way.
It must have spit just a little rain last night - there is evidence of it on the windshield and the hood of the pick-up - but not much. A greyness rolls away, riffles on the dark pond, a breeze in the trees and bushes. There should be a taste of lilacs in the air on a morning like this, but of course it is much too late in the season.
A truck full of sweet corn heads into the village. The swallows flying at Weinkauf's are perhaps discussing the possibility of rain. A neighbor - fired from his job where I work - passes me heading north to another job wherever. His wife has left him. For another woman, he tells the people in the bars. A helicopter is spraying sweet corn right along Highway E; it pivots right above the road, right in front of me, drops down behind the power lines and sprays some more.
Some mornings I think every word should be a poem. Some mornings I know better. Today I sit on the edge of the razor contemplating the smoothness of its cut.
They are painting their ladies again, the owners of those old Victorian houses on Watson Street in Ripon.
Sometimes what you get is what you make of it.
>
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have been touring the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide is Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We've been walking through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together.
There is room on the frame for a generator if the customer wants to make the unit entirely self-sufficient. The customer can install his own generator if he wishes, or can order one installed by Excel.
There is a white tank set onto the trailer - that's for drinking water. The black tank is for sewer. The grey tank is for wash water. The water tanks are set over two layers of insulation. Heating ducts also channel warm air from the furnace into the water tank area, to keep things from freezing. "This is a standard feature for us," Dave says. "It is not standard in the industry." If the unit has thermo-pane windows, Excel guarantees the water tanks won't free up down to zero degrees outside temperature. Lower-line models without thermo-pane windows are intended for customers who are not going to live in them year around, including the cold weather.
The frame of the trailer is 2"x10" box steel. The box steel, Dave says, "is more resistant to twisting and buckling than I-beam or C-channel steel because there are two vertical pieces of steel instead of one. It makes a stronger frame."
"Our frame is a Z-frame," he says. "What he means is that the back piece of frame comes to within several feet of the front of the trailer, and the front piece starts under the back piece and extends out in front of it. This provides greater ground clearance in back, where you need it, and it brings the front down to reduce wind resistance. It also lowers the center of gravity for the trailer and results in less side to side momentum.
"The trailer is like a race car," Dave suggests, "in that you want it as low as you can reasonably get it." If the back end is too low, it will drag and hit the ground. Yet you want as little wind resistance as possible and the Z-frame is a good compromise.
"We've been using the Z-frame since 1991," he said.
The spare tire for the trailer gets tucked up in the frame at the back.
"We put a boat-receiver hitch on the frame as an option," Dave says. "We can do that because we have the box steel frame. Being able to hitch a boat to the trailer - that separates the strong frame trailers from the weak frames. We'll put the boat hitch option on any of our trailers."
The "Limited Edition" Excel is the classiest line the company makes. The "Classic" is one step down - the difference is in the cost of the trim - real oak versus oak-styled paper over a wood core. Both the Limited Edition and the Classic are intended to be set up in RV parks. The "RT" Excel is for "RV trekking." It is made less expensively, but it is just as strong as the higher-priced models. The RT goes places you wouldn't take the Limited Edition or the Classic, "although you never know where they're going to put them."
None of Excel's competitors put a boat hitch on their trailers in the RT's class, which shows how strongly the RT is made.
Competitors to Excel's Limited Edition and Classic models would be companies such as Teton and HitchHiker. At the RT level, Dave says, "there are a thousand different companies. We want to be known as the strongest-built in the price range. Some companies' trailers in the lower price range are cheapened in a lot of areas. We still want our trailer to have a lot of strength."
"We weld our own frames," Dave says, "and paint them in an electrostatic paint booth. We buy the axles, rims, and tires, and put them onto the frames ourselves. We use heavy duty tires on big rims. Most brands buy the chassis frame. We build them ourselves."
Wilson Performance Flooring is standard in the Limited Edition Excel, linoleum for the Classic and RT models. An extra thick padding is used under the carpet in the trailers, to give the feel of home carpet.
The water-lines in the trailer run through the heat ducts. "Other brands build a sub-floor for the water-lines," Dave says. "I've never heard of our water-lines freezing up. This is what separates the cold weather trailers from the non-cold weather trailers."
It's what separates the real thing from the wannabes, I would say.
To be continued....
--------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 19, 1998
Why does a place need its poet? The poet names things. Who names things is the poet, whatever those around should call him, or her. The poet allows us to see this place, and to pick up pieces of it to carry with us. If we could not do that, all places would be the same to us; we would be like the animals.
Another cool morning. I am told it's supposed to get hot and August-like this week, but we haven't seen it yet. What I am getting as actual I much prefer to any forecast - even if it's a 100 degrees, even if it's rain. Stop talking about it. Show me the money. Move it or milk it, as we used to say in Iowa, pretending that the other fellow ought to get his cow out of our way.
It must have spit just a little rain last night - there is evidence of it on the windshield and the hood of the pick-up - but not much. A greyness rolls away, riffles on the dark pond, a breeze in the trees and bushes. There should be a taste of lilacs in the air on a morning like this, but of course it is much too late in the season.
A truck full of sweet corn heads into the village. The swallows flying at Weinkauf's are perhaps discussing the possibility of rain. A neighbor - fired from his job where I work - passes me heading north to another job wherever. His wife has left him. For another woman, he tells the people in the bars. A helicopter is spraying sweet corn right along Highway E; it pivots right above the road, right in front of me, drops down behind the power lines and sprays some more.
Some mornings I think every word should be a poem. Some mornings I know better. Today I sit on the edge of the razor contemplating the smoothness of its cut.
They are painting their ladies again, the owners of those old Victorian houses on Watson Street in Ripon.
Sometimes what you get is what you make of it.
>
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have been touring the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide is Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We've been walking through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together.
We're watching a fellow put lumber through a computerized saw. "All the pieces are cut exactly the same," Dave says. "This is good work for the computer to do. It lets us put people where judgment is needed, in installation."
The lumber coming off the saw is bundled and tagged and stacked on a skid. The tag tells others what the wood has been cut for and where it is to be used. This pallet holds wood for one left-side wall. That pallet has the wood for a right-side wall. Left and right are different because doors and windows go in different places.
The pieces of wood get laid out in a jig to make the side wall; they get stapled together, then screwed together, then glued together. "They are held together three ways," Dave notes.
"The first side wall in a run is actually the jig for the next ones," Dave says. I see that now.
In the next area, a fellow is insulating the side wall. He's up on a table where the side wall is laid out and is stuffing insulation in every nook and cranny. "A lot of manufacturers use foam board between the studs for insulation," Dave says. "We want insulation stuffed in fully, no voids. We can stuff any design easily this way. Like these trapezoid shapes where the nose of the trailer drops down."
"With metal in the wall, you get condensation," Dave says. "Wood is flexible. Wood moves and returns to its original shape. Aluminum would spring - once it's bent, it's bent."
"Wood doesn't transfer energy," he notes. "If an area gets damaged, the damage is pretty much confined to that one area."
The fellow putting the insulation into place also installs the wiring into the walls. Then he applies a half-inch bead of glue to the exposed wood surfaces and puts a fiberglass sheet into place. Then the entire wall is slid on rollers into a press for an hour and a half of heavy pressure. "When the glue is set up," Dave says, "that bond is the strongest point of the trailer. If you take a sledge hammer to the wall, the wood will break before that bond releases."
"We use positive pressure instead of vacuum pressure," Dave says. "Other manufacturers apply a thin film of adhesive and use vacuum pressure to bond the fiberglass in place. Heat will separate that bond."
"We're the only manufacturer that uses the positive pressure adhesive for the side wall," he says.
The shape of the Excel trailer drops down towards the rear - "to reduce wind drag," Dave says, "and to reduce heat rise in cold weather."
"Our trailer has a more aerodynamic shape than a box doing down the road," he says by way of implicit criticism of other designs.
Once the glue of the side wall has set up in the press, the next fellow in line routes out openings in the fiberglass where windows, doors, and slide-outs will be located. This isn't a computerized operation but is done by hand. The fellow follows the outline of the lumber for each opening. The fiberglass cut out of the side wall is retained and gets cut to become storage doors. Laminated for foam board, the scrap gets transformed into the highest quality storage doors in the industry, Dave says. "We couldn't buy storage doors as thick as we wanted them, so we had to build them ourselves. And there's no way we could ship enough of these doors in here from someplace else."
"It's just more efficient for us to put our scrap to other uses," he says.
"That's one thing Vaughn does here," Dave adds. "He'll come through the plant looking at the efficiency of the operation, asking what can we do better."
Once the openings have been cut out of the side wall and rubber seals put into place, the wall is allowed to stand, to let the glue cure entirely. The "L" shape on the edge of the slide-out room locks into a rubber seal of the wall and keeps both moisture and air from entering the trailer.
We're looking at a slide-out. "This is an entertainment center," Dave says, "TV, computer, telephone all go here."
The slide-outs move in and out of the trailer on steel rollers set high enough to keep the bottom of the slide-out from dragging on the carpet.
The trailer frames are fabricated in a line coming in at a right angle. We are looking at one of the frames now. This one is nearly ready to get put together with the side walls. The next one farther back needs more work yet; farther back, someone is attaching axles to a frame and putting tires on. Farther down the line than I can see, someone is welding frames together.
To be continued....
-----------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 18, 1998
It rained yesterday in the morning; it rained good before it was done. The sky wanted to clear in the afternoon and by evening it was steaming. It was cool during the night, somewhat grey this morning.
I think perhaps the reason we don't pay much attention to the greater world beyond us - there is plenty here close at hand to be concerned of. I've often said government should be no bigger than as far as you can see - township size, perhaps. There is plenty in the village and the town to worry over, we don't need to concern ourselves so much with what our President did or didn't do. We have our schools to take care of, the village water works, the flow of water in our Grand River. Let those with nothing local to do bird dog the distant, low-impact concerns. We'll let the national press fret for us, so we can do our work here.
I remember when the "Camp David Accord" was signed, the news people were interviewing the locals in town right outside Camp David - What was the effect of this historic agreement on their lives? "Don't affect us none, day to day, as far as I can see. The whole conflict don't affect us none." The interviewer expressed his superiority by being appalled with such responses.
Clean water, clean air, good schools, a place to put our garbage. Rain or lack of rain, good markets, a fair price. If you're talking about anything else, you might be wasting your breath.
A sour morning - the smell of canning factory waste water drifting on the day, all the way to my driveway.
"She opens like a cut" is the sentence I get as I drive out of town. What does that mean; and why would I save a sentence like that?
In the distance, the grey sky is streaked in layers, like a bad watercolor - again. How can what looks like bad art be our reality?
>
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
I have been touring the Excel plant (Peterson Industries) which sits at the north edge of Smith Center along Highway 36. My tour guide is Dave Rorabaugh, the company's western sales rep. We've been walking through the plant so I can see how Excel's travel trailers get put together.
We're watching a fellow put lumber through a computerized saw. "All the pieces are cut exactly the same," Dave says. "This is good work for the computer to do. It lets us put people where judgment is needed, in installation."
The lumber coming off the saw is bundled and tagged and stacked on a skid. The tag tells others what the wood has been cut for and where it is to be used. This pallet holds wood for one left-side wall. That pallet has the wood for a right-side wall. Left and right are different because doors and windows go in different places.
The pieces of wood get laid out in a jig to make the side wall; they get stapled together, then screwed together, then glued together. "They are held together three ways," Dave notes.
"The first side wall in a run is actually the jig for the next ones," Dave says. I see that now.
In the next area, a fellow is insulating the side wall. He's up on a table where the side wall is laid out and is stuffing insulation in every nook and cranny. "A lot of manufacturers use foam board between the studs for insulation," Dave says. "We want insulation stuffed in fully, no voids. We can stuff any design easily this way. Like these trapezoid shapes where the nose of the trailer drops down."
"With metal in the wall, you get condensation," Dave says. "Wood is flexible. Wood moves and returns to its original shape. Aluminum would spring - once it's bent, it's bent."
"Wood doesn't transfer energy," he notes. "If an area gets damaged, the damage is pretty much confined to that one area."
The fellow putting the insulation into place also installs the wiring into the walls. Then he applies a half-inch bead of glue to the exposed wood surfaces and puts a fiberglass sheet into place. Then the entire wall is slid on rollers into a press for an hour and a half of heavy pressure. "When the glue is set up," Dave says, "that bond is the strongest point of the trailer. If you take a sledge hammer to the wall, the wood will break before that bond releases."
"We use positive pressure instead of vacuum pressure," Dave says. "Other manufacturers apply a thin film of adhesive and use vacuum pressure to bond the fiberglass in place. Heat will separate that bond."
"We're the only manufacturer that uses the positive pressure adhesive for the side wall," he says.
The shape of the Excel trailer drops down towards the rear - "to reduce wind drag," Dave says, "and to reduce heat rise in cold weather."
"Our trailer has a more aerodynamic shape than a box doing down the road," he says by way of implicit criticism of other designs.
Once the glue of the side wall has set up in the press, the next fellow in line routes out openings in the fiberglass where windows, doors, and slide-outs will be located. This isn't a computerized operation but is done by hand. The fellow follows the outline of the lumber for each opening. The fiberglass cut out of the side wall is retained and gets cut to become storage doors. Laminated for foam board, the scrap gets transformed into the highest quality storage doors in the industry, Dave says. "We couldn't buy storage doors as thick as we wanted them, so we had to build them ourselves. And there's no way we could ship enough of these doors in here from someplace else."
"It's just more efficient for us to put our scrap to other uses," he says.
"That's one thing Vaughn does here," Dave adds. "He'll come through the plant looking at the efficiency of the operation, asking what can we do better."
Once the openings have been cut out of the side wall and rubber seals put into place, the wall is allowed to stand, to let the glue cure entirely. The "L" shape on the edge of the slide-out room locks into a rubber seal of the wall and keeps both moisture and air from entering the trailer.
We're looking at a slide-out. "This is an entertainment center," Dave says, "TV, computer, telephone all go here."
The slide-outs move in and out of the trailer on steel rollers set high enough to keep the bottom of the slide-out from dragging on the carpet.
The trailer frames are fabricated in a line coming in at a right angle. We are looking at one of the frames now. This one is nearly ready to get put together with the side walls. The next one farther back needs more work yet; farther back, someone is attaching axles to a frame and putting tires on. Farther down the line than I can see, someone is welding frames together.
To be continued....
-----------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 18, 1998
It rained yesterday in the morning; it rained good before it was done. The sky wanted to clear in the afternoon and by evening it was steaming. It was cool during the night, somewhat grey this morning.
I think perhaps the reason we don't pay much attention to the greater world beyond us - there is plenty here close at hand to be concerned of. I've often said government should be no bigger than as far as you can see - township size, perhaps. There is plenty in the village and the town to worry over, we don't need to concern ourselves so much with what our President did or didn't do. We have our schools to take care of, the village water works, the flow of water in our Grand River. Let those with nothing local to do bird dog the distant, low-impact concerns. We'll let the national press fret for us, so we can do our work here.
I remember when the "Camp David Accord" was signed, the news people were interviewing the locals in town right outside Camp David - What was the effect of this historic agreement on their lives? "Don't affect us none, day to day, as far as I can see. The whole conflict don't affect us none." The interviewer expressed his superiority by being appalled with such responses.
Clean water, clean air, good schools, a place to put our garbage. Rain or lack of rain, good markets, a fair price. If you're talking about anything else, you might be wasting your breath.
A sour morning - the smell of canning factory waste water drifting on the day, all the way to my driveway.
"She opens like a cut" is the sentence I get as I drive out of town. What does that mean; and why would I save a sentence like that?
In the distance, the grey sky is streaked in layers, like a bad watercolor - again. How can what looks like bad art be our reality?
Another
Zen day.
I have be-
come lost
in sky. How
can I
say any-
thing? What
little wind
there is
is enough.
>
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
THIS IS A TEST,
THIS IS ONLY A TEST:
WHICH IS MORE LIKELY?
1. Which is more likely: (a) The Pope will renounce his religion and enter a Buddhist monastery; OR (b) the bear will stop using the entire forest as his personal latrine?
2. Which is more likely: (a) During the Republican National Convention, George Bush will announce that Osama bin Laden has been captured or killed; OR (b) The Pope will formally declare George Bush to be the Anti-Christ and will order the clergy not to serve Communion to any Catholic who votes for him?
3. Which is more likely: (a) George Bush will wake up the morning he is to be nominated for another term, will ask "Christ, what am I doing?" and will decline to run again, ala Lyndon Johnson: "If nominated I shall not run; if elected I shall not serve..."? OR (b) John Kerry will win the November presidential election but George Bush will declare martial law and use the army to prevent the change of administrations as scheduled in January.
Please fully explain the reasons for your choices. If you can.
----------------------
QUETICO JOURNAL
AUGUST 9, 2004
DAY SIX
Morning
It rained at 3:00 a.m., not heavily. The wolves were calling again, about 4:45 a.m. It is a grey morning, though the sun is trying to break through.
The wind is against us today. We have five or six miles to paddle to our first portage, which will take us out of Quetico Lake. Quetico Lake is about ten miles long, total. We came into the far end of it yesterday afternoon. We paddle the rest of it today, portage into Beaverhouse Lake, and find a campsite within twenty minutes or so of our take-out point. We would have paddled farther yesterday with the wind at our back but we were all wet and tired and ready for some rest.
We have all day to get where we're going but we hope that it won't take all day. We hope that it won't be hard paddling.
Evening
The water, the rock, the sky, the irony. We left camp in a spit of rain, paddled against the wind. It rained the morning through, rained nearly the whole way to our final portage. We were wet and cold and made the decision we'd pack up and head part way towards home today instead of early tomorrow morning. A wet, miserable night, just to say we did it? Smart heroes don't do such things, and we didn't either.
Once we'd made the decision, the sun tried to come out, of course. The air got hot.
As we neared that last portage, from Quetico Lake back into Beaverhouse, two eagles stood silent vigil in a dead tree along our way. The smaller, the male, was top left, our left; the larger female, bottom right. They stayed silent, but their mere presence was Quetico's salute good-bye to the weary travelers.
There's the remnant steel of an old car along the portage route. What remains is mostly the rust of part of the body and a fender. I can imagine the telling of this story: the old fellow talking in quite a thick accent, saying, "Yah, ve g'ot her this f'ar b'ot she voulden go in der deep vater. So dat's ver we lef der." Yah, dat's ver dey lef der.
In Beaverhouse Lake, as we were angling towards our take-out, we saw a Beaver seaplane take off from the Ranger Station. We saw a storm building in the direction of our take-out. We paddled like hell and sweated.
When the hard rain hit, we had the canoes and all our gear up to the cars and had just started loading, tying down. We got wetter in the ten minutes it took us to get everything battened down than I had gotten at any point on the trip. Getting rained on hard, that's God's way of saying good-bye, I guess. It was a cold rain and the air turned cold. But then we were heading for home.
All told, we'd traversed some forty-eight miles, paddling and portaging. It had been a good trip. The most precious of it for me, I think, occurred about ten minutes before we came off the water. By then we'd turned and were headed straight for our take-out. Philip and Susan were leading the way, Mary and I were nearly side by side with Anne and Ellie, and Andrew riding shot-gun. I heard Andrew and looked over. The wind was blowing his words away. What I think I heard him say was: "O, Great God of Canada, thank you." Then he doffed his Cubs cap and tipped it to the spirit in the sky. Nobody told him to do it. It was the perfect prayer, spontaneous and deeply-felt.
Andrew, I'm with you: "O, Great God of Canada," I pray, "thank you."
---------------------
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
Excel (Peterson Industries) was founded by Vaughn Peterson. It makes "fifth-wheel" mobile homes. Nearly everyone in town says I have to tour the place - they point to the company with some pride. I won't get to meet Vaughn Peterson - he's in his 80s and has just recently had heart surgery. Dave Rorabaugh, Excel's western sales representative, will give me a tour of the plant, and I'll get a chance to talk to Bryan Tillett, president of the company.
When I arrive at the plant, I'm struck by how unassuming it appears. It doesn't look like much more than several sheds humped together along Highway 36. That's a typical middle western ploy, I'm finding - unassuming on the outside, chock full of life and excellence within.
While I'm waiting for Dave Rorabaugh to free up, the receptionist sets me up in the customer lounge with a videotape of the 2003 "Excel Family Reunion." Every three years, as many of Excel's customers as can make it come back to Smith Center for an Excel Jamboree. All those campers get parked up around the high school for the week-long shindig. "We put out food for them," the receptionist tells me of the company's hospitality, and the community's. "The whole town gets behind us."
Then the tape is rolling. People are videotaped registering for a space at the Jamboree. "Where are you from?" asks the fellow with the camera. The answers: Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Wyoming, Texas.
"Sounds like it's going to be a good time," one fellow says, "not too hot, not too cold."
"Is this your first time here?" the fellow with the camera asks a couple.
"No, this is the fourth time for us."
"They said you can come early," another fellow tells the camera. "I think anybody who comes on time is late."
Dave Rorabaugh is the western region sales representative for Excel and he also does organic farming on the side, just a mile from the geographic center over near Lebanon. Dave gives me a tour of the plant.
Excel builds "a cold weather trailer," Dave says. When you look at an Excel trailer, it doesn't look like a house, but it's built like a house - of wood. Studs, insulation, the roof with 16-inch centers.
"We build most everything ourselves," Dave says. "We're a long ways from everybody else in the industry. And it provides more employment here to do as much as we can ourselves." Other than the school district and the hospital, Excel is the largest employer in town.
I see the jig for the roof, with its 16-inch centers. Dave shows me swanstone - "like Corydon, a solid surface counter-top."
"The color goes all the way through," Dave says. "If it gets scratched, you can sand the scratch smooth and you've got the same color."
The entire counter gets assembled, it gets labeled for the particular trailer it will go into, then when the trailer comes down the line, the counter is set into it before the sidewalls get put on. "We try to put as much as we can in before we put the walls up," Dave explains.
The face framing for the counter is pre-drilled and screwed together. The higher-priced units gets a solid oak face; the face for the mid-priced units has a lumber core with a paper wrap to simulate oak. "We don't use particle board," Dave says. "It can't be screwed together. We use paper because it won't bubble and peel off. Paper doesn't delaminate."
We pass the fabrication area for fiberglass and water-lines and come to stand at the two computer-operated routers that can cut out "any design, any kind of corner" and put holes anywhere they're needed. "This is a good use of the computer," Dave says. "Using the computer instead of jigs - zip, zip, zip, it's done."
To be continued....
---------------------
THE TUESDAY REPORT
ON IVAN BURGESS'S ECHO ECHO
(501 W. Third #12, Smith Center, KS 66967)
"Ludene the Dancing Machine and waitress at Paul's Cafe was making plans to go dancing in Goodland Sunday night," Ivan said. "One of Ludene's favorite group's was playing in Goodland that night. Ludene told me the name of the group. It was either Out Back, Boon Docks, or Back House, one of the rustic names. It didn't sound like they played much Guy Lombardo music."
"Bruce and Bobbi Miles went to Liberal, Kansas, a week ago, to an Economic Development Seminar," Ivan reported. "They were going to get up and leave early in the morning. But they didn't. Instead, they decided to fly down in Bruce's 1946 Luscombe airplane with a souped up motor. That's what they did. They got home safely just before a 40 mile per hour wind hit."
"Stan Hooper entertained a guest that he had met over the internet," Ivan said. "Stan and the gentleman had been interneting back and forth for several years. He and two of his grandkids showed up last Saturday. They are from New York City. Stan showed them around the town and took them out to the harvest field. They were amazed at the things that went on in the country. The two boys are orthodox Jews and they had a hard time finding any kosher food here in Smith Center."
Ivan said: "Bill Greene, the Smith Center high school football coach who developed an offense that went through the opposing team like 'a dose of salts through the hired girl,' sent me his new e-mail address. Said he didn't want to miss the Echo."
"In case some of you who live in the modern era where football players wear nose guards, mouthpieces, and plastic helmets don't know it," Ivan wrote, "Linton Lull was one of Smith Center's best football players on one of Smith Center's better teams. Not only that, Linton was one of the top track people in the state in 1940. If you say anything to him he will deny that he was any good. But he played wingback on the football team, forward on a basketball team that just missed going to State - Hays beat them 36-30 in the semi-finals of the regional - and ran a strong 53 second quarter of a mile over dirt or cinder tracks. He also played trombone and when he was a freshman he sat in a trombone section that could terrorize a freshman trombone player."
"Sheila Stewart has been nurturing and giving tender lovin' care to an apricot tree for five years," Ivan said. "This, the fifth year, finally paid dividends. Not a very big dividend, but a dividend nonetheless. This year Sheila picked her first fruit off her pet tree. The tree yielded two (2) apricots. One of them was rotten. But Sheila said the good one was delicious. What has happened to Sheila's tree every year is that it has been nipped by a late frost. To remedy that, what you want to do is in the winter when it snows pile up snow all around the base of the tree. I mean a lot of snow. Then pile straw on top of the snow. What happens is - in the spring of the year when the ground warms up and the tree roots think it is time to send up some sap, this snow and straw keep the ground around the base of the tree cold and the tree roots, they don't do much thinkin', they just think it is still winter and the tree will stay dormant, thus avoiding a late spring freeze. Echo don't guarantee this will happen, but I've given er a lot of thought and that's the conclusion I've come to."
"The ever vigilant Dick Stroup was out jogging one day last week," Ivan said. "He came to the highway - he looked to his right - he looked to his left - he looked up - but he forgot to look down. He started across the highway and caught his toe on a piece of asphalt that was sticking up. Dick fa' down an go boom. Skinned his knee. But since his wife wasn't home to kiss it and make it all better, he climbed up and ran another five miles. They tell me that jogging is just like riding a horse - if you get thrown, you get right back up and crawl back on it."
"If they ever find bones on the moon," Ivan said, "you can figure the cow didn't make it."
"Let's see," he said, "what's that one about the ship that was loaded with yo-yo's. It got caught in a storm and sank 35 times."
"I'm convinced," Ivan said, "firmly convinced that people would get better quicker if they could wear their regular Fruit of the Looms when they are in the hospital."
"The reason the Echo is short this week is because I went to the hospital last Tuesday morning," Ivan said. "Had a temp. Been trying to get well ever since. Had a bladder infection and it got in my blood. Hope you understand. See you next week."
"They gave me some stuff at the hospital," he said, "a whole gallon of it - salt and X-ray dye. Cleaned me out. In fact, I know I hadn't eaten that much in several months. Think it got rid of some left-over Thanksgiving turkey."
"I see where the Democrats are cozying up to the plumbers union," Ivan said. "They haven't even been elected yet and already they are wanting to put two new johns in the White House."
"You spend four days in a hospital and you realize just how rotten daytime TV is," Ivan said. "I actually heard more intelligent conversation in the first half hour I was in Paul's Cafe than I did in four days of daytime TV."
"What is it that they say about retirement?" Ivan asked. "When you retire, you spend half your time trying to remember someone's name and the other half looking for a restroom. Restroom - what I've lost in velocity I have gained in longevity."
"Moine and Nita Fulmer delivered an Excel trailer to New Hampshire recently," Ivan said. "Since they didn't have one to pull back, they decided to spend a couple of days longer getting back. So they hit some two lane highways in Vermont and Connecticut. Moine said one thing he noticed, it didn't make any diffrence where you stopped along the highway, you were always within walking distance of a house. That's just like here. You are always within walking distance of a house. Sometimes, though, you might have to walk four or five miles or more."
"Oh," Ivan said, "all the numbers on the roads out in the country remind me of the old story - farmer calls the fire department and says his barn is one fire. Fire department says 'how do we get there?' Farmer says 'don't you still have those little red trucks?'"
"I'll be so glad when October gets here," Ivan said. "That is the only month of the year when we have decent weather. I mean, you can count on it - Mother Nature tries to apologize for all the lousy weather she has given us all year and she saves up her best for October."
--------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 17, 1998
A dark morning. It looks as if the street is wet, as if a very slow, very gentle cloud briefly kissed the ground. It will not stop with a single kiss, one thinks. The weekend was fairly mild and this morning is cool. This is - I say - not the August I remember. Where are the dog days? We had them in July, I suppose you're going to say. Bah! We need a hundred degree day here, just to say we've had it. We need people to suffer of heat. This is the middle west.
Ah, the musky smell of rain. The gentle sound it makes, like a woman brushing her hair. A rain slow enough to leach the dust from the air. It is morning.
Tippa tippa tippa goes the rain on the roof of the pick-up - enough that I need the wipers as I leave the drive way.
Out in the country the rain is falling at a serious rate. Even so, a sourness hangs where the canning factory sprays its waste water. A flatbed semi slaps a spray of moisture against my windshield. It is dark in all directions.
It is the kind of day that makes me think of grade school. How I felt being cooped up with the nuns and a roomful of kids who bathe only on Saturday night. The kind of day a good rain would be appreciated, the whole system needing to be cleansed, the clouds at the end running away with nothing more to say. The smell of white paste in the gallon jar. The way you want to get out of the school after a rain like that. The way you want to touch a girl on the inner part of her arm, out in the school yard. The musk of wetness on the playground. The way I felt then, smooth-skinned, aching, longing for more.
And now this, it seems, is what it comes to - a wet day, and work.
>
THIS IS ONLY A TEST:
WHICH IS MORE LIKELY?
1. Which is more likely: (a) The Pope will renounce his religion and enter a Buddhist monastery; OR (b) the bear will stop using the entire forest as his personal latrine?
2. Which is more likely: (a) During the Republican National Convention, George Bush will announce that Osama bin Laden has been captured or killed; OR (b) The Pope will formally declare George Bush to be the Anti-Christ and will order the clergy not to serve Communion to any Catholic who votes for him?
3. Which is more likely: (a) George Bush will wake up the morning he is to be nominated for another term, will ask "Christ, what am I doing?" and will decline to run again, ala Lyndon Johnson: "If nominated I shall not run; if elected I shall not serve..."? OR (b) John Kerry will win the November presidential election but George Bush will declare martial law and use the army to prevent the change of administrations as scheduled in January.
Please fully explain the reasons for your choices. If you can.
----------------------
QUETICO JOURNAL
AUGUST 9, 2004
DAY SIX
Morning
It rained at 3:00 a.m., not heavily. The wolves were calling again, about 4:45 a.m. It is a grey morning, though the sun is trying to break through.
The wind is against us today. We have five or six miles to paddle to our first portage, which will take us out of Quetico Lake. Quetico Lake is about ten miles long, total. We came into the far end of it yesterday afternoon. We paddle the rest of it today, portage into Beaverhouse Lake, and find a campsite within twenty minutes or so of our take-out point. We would have paddled farther yesterday with the wind at our back but we were all wet and tired and ready for some rest.
We have all day to get where we're going but we hope that it won't take all day. We hope that it won't be hard paddling.
Evening
The water, the rock, the sky, the irony. We left camp in a spit of rain, paddled against the wind. It rained the morning through, rained nearly the whole way to our final portage. We were wet and cold and made the decision we'd pack up and head part way towards home today instead of early tomorrow morning. A wet, miserable night, just to say we did it? Smart heroes don't do such things, and we didn't either.
Once we'd made the decision, the sun tried to come out, of course. The air got hot.
As we neared that last portage, from Quetico Lake back into Beaverhouse, two eagles stood silent vigil in a dead tree along our way. The smaller, the male, was top left, our left; the larger female, bottom right. They stayed silent, but their mere presence was Quetico's salute good-bye to the weary travelers.
There's the remnant steel of an old car along the portage route. What remains is mostly the rust of part of the body and a fender. I can imagine the telling of this story: the old fellow talking in quite a thick accent, saying, "Yah, ve g'ot her this f'ar b'ot she voulden go in der deep vater. So dat's ver we lef der." Yah, dat's ver dey lef der.
In Beaverhouse Lake, as we were angling towards our take-out, we saw a Beaver seaplane take off from the Ranger Station. We saw a storm building in the direction of our take-out. We paddled like hell and sweated.
When the hard rain hit, we had the canoes and all our gear up to the cars and had just started loading, tying down. We got wetter in the ten minutes it took us to get everything battened down than I had gotten at any point on the trip. Getting rained on hard, that's God's way of saying good-bye, I guess. It was a cold rain and the air turned cold. But then we were heading for home.
All told, we'd traversed some forty-eight miles, paddling and portaging. It had been a good trip. The most precious of it for me, I think, occurred about ten minutes before we came off the water. By then we'd turned and were headed straight for our take-out. Philip and Susan were leading the way, Mary and I were nearly side by side with Anne and Ellie, and Andrew riding shot-gun. I heard Andrew and looked over. The wind was blowing his words away. What I think I heard him say was: "O, Great God of Canada, thank you." Then he doffed his Cubs cap and tipped it to the spirit in the sky. Nobody told him to do it. It was the perfect prayer, spontaneous and deeply-felt.
Andrew, I'm with you: "O, Great God of Canada," I pray, "thank you."
---------------------
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
Excel (Peterson Industries) was founded by Vaughn Peterson. It makes "fifth-wheel" mobile homes. Nearly everyone in town says I have to tour the place - they point to the company with some pride. I won't get to meet Vaughn Peterson - he's in his 80s and has just recently had heart surgery. Dave Rorabaugh, Excel's western sales representative, will give me a tour of the plant, and I'll get a chance to talk to Bryan Tillett, president of the company.
When I arrive at the plant, I'm struck by how unassuming it appears. It doesn't look like much more than several sheds humped together along Highway 36. That's a typical middle western ploy, I'm finding - unassuming on the outside, chock full of life and excellence within.
While I'm waiting for Dave Rorabaugh to free up, the receptionist sets me up in the customer lounge with a videotape of the 2003 "Excel Family Reunion." Every three years, as many of Excel's customers as can make it come back to Smith Center for an Excel Jamboree. All those campers get parked up around the high school for the week-long shindig. "We put out food for them," the receptionist tells me of the company's hospitality, and the community's. "The whole town gets behind us."
Then the tape is rolling. People are videotaped registering for a space at the Jamboree. "Where are you from?" asks the fellow with the camera. The answers: Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Wyoming, Texas.
"Sounds like it's going to be a good time," one fellow says, "not too hot, not too cold."
"Is this your first time here?" the fellow with the camera asks a couple.
"No, this is the fourth time for us."
"They said you can come early," another fellow tells the camera. "I think anybody who comes on time is late."
Dave Rorabaugh is the western region sales representative for Excel and he also does organic farming on the side, just a mile from the geographic center over near Lebanon. Dave gives me a tour of the plant.
Excel builds "a cold weather trailer," Dave says. When you look at an Excel trailer, it doesn't look like a house, but it's built like a house - of wood. Studs, insulation, the roof with 16-inch centers.
"We build most everything ourselves," Dave says. "We're a long ways from everybody else in the industry. And it provides more employment here to do as much as we can ourselves." Other than the school district and the hospital, Excel is the largest employer in town.
I see the jig for the roof, with its 16-inch centers. Dave shows me swanstone - "like Corydon, a solid surface counter-top."
"The color goes all the way through," Dave says. "If it gets scratched, you can sand the scratch smooth and you've got the same color."
The entire counter gets assembled, it gets labeled for the particular trailer it will go into, then when the trailer comes down the line, the counter is set into it before the sidewalls get put on. "We try to put as much as we can in before we put the walls up," Dave explains.
The face framing for the counter is pre-drilled and screwed together. The higher-priced units gets a solid oak face; the face for the mid-priced units has a lumber core with a paper wrap to simulate oak. "We don't use particle board," Dave says. "It can't be screwed together. We use paper because it won't bubble and peel off. Paper doesn't delaminate."
We pass the fabrication area for fiberglass and water-lines and come to stand at the two computer-operated routers that can cut out "any design, any kind of corner" and put holes anywhere they're needed. "This is a good use of the computer," Dave says. "Using the computer instead of jigs - zip, zip, zip, it's done."
To be continued....
---------------------
THE TUESDAY REPORT
ON IVAN BURGESS'S ECHO ECHO
(501 W. Third #12, Smith Center, KS 66967)
"Ludene the Dancing Machine and waitress at Paul's Cafe was making plans to go dancing in Goodland Sunday night," Ivan said. "One of Ludene's favorite group's was playing in Goodland that night. Ludene told me the name of the group. It was either Out Back, Boon Docks, or Back House, one of the rustic names. It didn't sound like they played much Guy Lombardo music."
"Bruce and Bobbi Miles went to Liberal, Kansas, a week ago, to an Economic Development Seminar," Ivan reported. "They were going to get up and leave early in the morning. But they didn't. Instead, they decided to fly down in Bruce's 1946 Luscombe airplane with a souped up motor. That's what they did. They got home safely just before a 40 mile per hour wind hit."
"Stan Hooper entertained a guest that he had met over the internet," Ivan said. "Stan and the gentleman had been interneting back and forth for several years. He and two of his grandkids showed up last Saturday. They are from New York City. Stan showed them around the town and took them out to the harvest field. They were amazed at the things that went on in the country. The two boys are orthodox Jews and they had a hard time finding any kosher food here in Smith Center."
Ivan said: "Bill Greene, the Smith Center high school football coach who developed an offense that went through the opposing team like 'a dose of salts through the hired girl,' sent me his new e-mail address. Said he didn't want to miss the Echo."
"In case some of you who live in the modern era where football players wear nose guards, mouthpieces, and plastic helmets don't know it," Ivan wrote, "Linton Lull was one of Smith Center's best football players on one of Smith Center's better teams. Not only that, Linton was one of the top track people in the state in 1940. If you say anything to him he will deny that he was any good. But he played wingback on the football team, forward on a basketball team that just missed going to State - Hays beat them 36-30 in the semi-finals of the regional - and ran a strong 53 second quarter of a mile over dirt or cinder tracks. He also played trombone and when he was a freshman he sat in a trombone section that could terrorize a freshman trombone player."
"Sheila Stewart has been nurturing and giving tender lovin' care to an apricot tree for five years," Ivan said. "This, the fifth year, finally paid dividends. Not a very big dividend, but a dividend nonetheless. This year Sheila picked her first fruit off her pet tree. The tree yielded two (2) apricots. One of them was rotten. But Sheila said the good one was delicious. What has happened to Sheila's tree every year is that it has been nipped by a late frost. To remedy that, what you want to do is in the winter when it snows pile up snow all around the base of the tree. I mean a lot of snow. Then pile straw on top of the snow. What happens is - in the spring of the year when the ground warms up and the tree roots think it is time to send up some sap, this snow and straw keep the ground around the base of the tree cold and the tree roots, they don't do much thinkin', they just think it is still winter and the tree will stay dormant, thus avoiding a late spring freeze. Echo don't guarantee this will happen, but I've given er a lot of thought and that's the conclusion I've come to."
"The ever vigilant Dick Stroup was out jogging one day last week," Ivan said. "He came to the highway - he looked to his right - he looked to his left - he looked up - but he forgot to look down. He started across the highway and caught his toe on a piece of asphalt that was sticking up. Dick fa' down an go boom. Skinned his knee. But since his wife wasn't home to kiss it and make it all better, he climbed up and ran another five miles. They tell me that jogging is just like riding a horse - if you get thrown, you get right back up and crawl back on it."
"If they ever find bones on the moon," Ivan said, "you can figure the cow didn't make it."
"Let's see," he said, "what's that one about the ship that was loaded with yo-yo's. It got caught in a storm and sank 35 times."
"I'm convinced," Ivan said, "firmly convinced that people would get better quicker if they could wear their regular Fruit of the Looms when they are in the hospital."
"The reason the Echo is short this week is because I went to the hospital last Tuesday morning," Ivan said. "Had a temp. Been trying to get well ever since. Had a bladder infection and it got in my blood. Hope you understand. See you next week."
"They gave me some stuff at the hospital," he said, "a whole gallon of it - salt and X-ray dye. Cleaned me out. In fact, I know I hadn't eaten that much in several months. Think it got rid of some left-over Thanksgiving turkey."
"I see where the Democrats are cozying up to the plumbers union," Ivan said. "They haven't even been elected yet and already they are wanting to put two new johns in the White House."
"You spend four days in a hospital and you realize just how rotten daytime TV is," Ivan said. "I actually heard more intelligent conversation in the first half hour I was in Paul's Cafe than I did in four days of daytime TV."
"What is it that they say about retirement?" Ivan asked. "When you retire, you spend half your time trying to remember someone's name and the other half looking for a restroom. Restroom - what I've lost in velocity I have gained in longevity."
"Moine and Nita Fulmer delivered an Excel trailer to New Hampshire recently," Ivan said. "Since they didn't have one to pull back, they decided to spend a couple of days longer getting back. So they hit some two lane highways in Vermont and Connecticut. Moine said one thing he noticed, it didn't make any diffrence where you stopped along the highway, you were always within walking distance of a house. That's just like here. You are always within walking distance of a house. Sometimes, though, you might have to walk four or five miles or more."
"Oh," Ivan said, "all the numbers on the roads out in the country remind me of the old story - farmer calls the fire department and says his barn is one fire. Fire department says 'how do we get there?' Farmer says 'don't you still have those little red trucks?'"
"I'll be so glad when October gets here," Ivan said. "That is the only month of the year when we have decent weather. I mean, you can count on it - Mother Nature tries to apologize for all the lousy weather she has given us all year and she saves up her best for October."
--------------------
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 17, 1998
A dark morning. It looks as if the street is wet, as if a very slow, very gentle cloud briefly kissed the ground. It will not stop with a single kiss, one thinks. The weekend was fairly mild and this morning is cool. This is - I say - not the August I remember. Where are the dog days? We had them in July, I suppose you're going to say. Bah! We need a hundred degree day here, just to say we've had it. We need people to suffer of heat. This is the middle west.
Ah, the musky smell of rain. The gentle sound it makes, like a woman brushing her hair. A rain slow enough to leach the dust from the air. It is morning.
Tippa tippa tippa goes the rain on the roof of the pick-up - enough that I need the wipers as I leave the drive way.
Out in the country the rain is falling at a serious rate. Even so, a sourness hangs where the canning factory sprays its waste water. A flatbed semi slaps a spray of moisture against my windshield. It is dark in all directions.
It is the kind of day that makes me think of grade school. How I felt being cooped up with the nuns and a roomful of kids who bathe only on Saturday night. The kind of day a good rain would be appreciated, the whole system needing to be cleansed, the clouds at the end running away with nothing more to say. The smell of white paste in the gallon jar. The way you want to get out of the school after a rain like that. The way you want to touch a girl on the inner part of her arm, out in the school yard. The musk of wetness on the playground. The way I felt then, smooth-skinned, aching, longing for more.
And now this, it seems, is what it comes to - a wet day, and work.
>
Monday, August 16, 2004
QUETICO JOURNAL
AUGUST 8, 2004
DAY FIVE
It rained during the night. This morning we prayed: "O, Great God of Canada, thank you for the moisture, which lessens our worry of fire. Now we ask you for sunshine."
It misted all the day.
We made two portages and had a long paddle.
It all blends together. "Was today the day we had to put the canoe over the beaver dam?" I asked at supper. "No, that was yesterday," they said.
We have had two hard days on the water and I have come nearly to the limit of my endurace. I think I will have to work out harder if I'm going to keep up this extreme relaxation.
Ellie has been paddling with Anne these past days, mother and daughter, with nine-year-old Andrew between them. Ellie is a trooper; she keeps leaning into her work - stroke, stroke, stroke. How many twelve-year-old girls have such knowledge as she gains here? How many have such a relationship with their mothers as Ellie does with that woman steering her canoeing?
At least for the last four or five miles today the wind was at our back. It would have been a much harder paddle against the wind.
We had baked northern for supper, that Philip caught, a big one, stuffed with onions and a small-mouth bass that Andrew caught. Plus macaroni and cheese, in case the fishing had not been successful, and "fiesta corn bread" that was really skillet-fried, in the shape of pancakes, with corn and salsa in it. We had a side of Mary's hummus that she'd dried at home and reconstituted here; it was very good with the mac and cheese, with the fiesta corn bread, with the fish. I suppose the garlic in the hummus gave a little something extra to the camp food. We are out of crackers.
I don't care how hard the ground feels, I am going to sleep tonight.
*
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
At the Second Cup Cafe and Pastries, there are six tables set up for four diners; one table set up for two; two tables set up for eight; and one table set up for sixteen. The As the Bladder Fills Club sits at the table set for sixteen. Between 8:00-9:00 a.m. every day, it's their table. There is a plaque on the wall that says the Kiwanis meets at the Second Cup at 7:00 a.m. every Friday; there's another plaque on the wall, a little more home-made, with the image of a toilet on it, indicating that the As the Bladder Fills Club meets here, too, every day, 8:00-9:00 a.m.
Claude Gripp and Jack Benn are the first two fellows to sit down with their coffee this morning. I join them, and soon Ivan Burgess joins them too.
Jack likes to fish up near Flin Flon, Manitoba, and I've been to Flin Flon a couple of times. We're talking about the town, about Inge Bjornson, who outfits on Neso Lake up there and has written a book about his antics and adventures in the wilderness.
Ivan is talking to someone else who has settled in with us; he's explaining "When I was a kid, we had more fun getting ready to do something than we ever did doing it."
Linton Lull has joined us. "My favorite Burgess story," he says, "is about Ivan in school. They were teaching the kids music. The teacher gave each kid a rhythm instrument to play - drums, cymbals, sticks, and so on. Ivan was so poor they just gave him one stick."
I don't know why Ivan draws so much fire. Maybe it's because he gives it back as good as he gets. And his jab is like a paper cut - so clean you don't notice until you see the blood.
"When I die," Ivan says, "If they don't put green signs out by the highway that say 'Boyhood Home of Ivan Burgess,' then I've been a complete failure."
To be continued....
*
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 14, 1998
Respect, I think, comes to the fellow who earns it. Sure, these folks will give you the benefit of the doubt to start off, but don't misconstrue that to mean they're not watching you. You screw up, you slip in their eyes and must recover one hard piece at a time. You screw up, you re-earn respect only grudgingly. The folk memory is forever. Especially with issues of trust. If you've earned mistrust, it's near impossible to climb out of that box - how will they know for sure you won't slip again.
It's not that these folks can't deal with uncertainty. The farmers amongst them face uncertainty every time they put seed in the ground. Will it rain? Will it hail? Will the selling price be high enough to cover the cost of producing?
The issue may not be that you betrayed them so much as they didn't see it coming. Now if they put you over into the column of uncertainty, along with drought and hail and fire, they can deal with your failure. Of course, you might imagine how much drought and hail and fire are loved by farmers, and how much your betrayal might be loved as well.
Is it the same, every one of these August mornings - moisture on the windshield, haze in the distance, blue sky, still pond? What will I see to comment on in an endlessly repeating cycle? Is this week of August an emblem for the whole idea of watching a piece of ground from year to year - it will all be an endless repetition of cycles before I am done.
Except maybe for the jet rumbling overhead this morning, August 14, 1998, 7:23 a.m. CDT. The sound rolls away into the distance. I would believe it left O'Hare in Chicago and is heading for the Twin Cities, by the way the sound has crossed the sky. The jet's passengers have moved half that distance and I'm not even out of the driveway yet.
A lovely haze of a daze of a day, out in the country. A haze considerably heavier than yesterday's.
It is surprising to me how quickly the corn ground has been worked. One of those fields taken recently is plowed already.
Off in the distant haze, a spray plane drops down to skim just above a field. It is working dangerously close to high power lines. At times it seems to stand on a wing tip. You've got to love to fly to do a job that dangerous and dirty. But look who's calling the kettle black - I go in to my work, which might not be to that fellow's liking at all.
>
AUGUST 8, 2004
DAY FIVE
It rained during the night. This morning we prayed: "O, Great God of Canada, thank you for the moisture, which lessens our worry of fire. Now we ask you for sunshine."
It misted all the day.
We made two portages and had a long paddle.
It all blends together. "Was today the day we had to put the canoe over the beaver dam?" I asked at supper. "No, that was yesterday," they said.
We have had two hard days on the water and I have come nearly to the limit of my endurace. I think I will have to work out harder if I'm going to keep up this extreme relaxation.
Ellie has been paddling with Anne these past days, mother and daughter, with nine-year-old Andrew between them. Ellie is a trooper; she keeps leaning into her work - stroke, stroke, stroke. How many twelve-year-old girls have such knowledge as she gains here? How many have such a relationship with their mothers as Ellie does with that woman steering her canoeing?
At least for the last four or five miles today the wind was at our back. It would have been a much harder paddle against the wind.
We had baked northern for supper, that Philip caught, a big one, stuffed with onions and a small-mouth bass that Andrew caught. Plus macaroni and cheese, in case the fishing had not been successful, and "fiesta corn bread" that was really skillet-fried, in the shape of pancakes, with corn and salsa in it. We had a side of Mary's hummus that she'd dried at home and reconstituted here; it was very good with the mac and cheese, with the fiesta corn bread, with the fish. I suppose the garlic in the hummus gave a little something extra to the camp food. We are out of crackers.
I don't care how hard the ground feels, I am going to sleep tonight.
*
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 15, 2004 - CONTINUED
At the Second Cup Cafe and Pastries, there are six tables set up for four diners; one table set up for two; two tables set up for eight; and one table set up for sixteen. The As the Bladder Fills Club sits at the table set for sixteen. Between 8:00-9:00 a.m. every day, it's their table. There is a plaque on the wall that says the Kiwanis meets at the Second Cup at 7:00 a.m. every Friday; there's another plaque on the wall, a little more home-made, with the image of a toilet on it, indicating that the As the Bladder Fills Club meets here, too, every day, 8:00-9:00 a.m.
Claude Gripp and Jack Benn are the first two fellows to sit down with their coffee this morning. I join them, and soon Ivan Burgess joins them too.
Jack likes to fish up near Flin Flon, Manitoba, and I've been to Flin Flon a couple of times. We're talking about the town, about Inge Bjornson, who outfits on Neso Lake up there and has written a book about his antics and adventures in the wilderness.
Ivan is talking to someone else who has settled in with us; he's explaining "When I was a kid, we had more fun getting ready to do something than we ever did doing it."
Linton Lull has joined us. "My favorite Burgess story," he says, "is about Ivan in school. They were teaching the kids music. The teacher gave each kid a rhythm instrument to play - drums, cymbals, sticks, and so on. Ivan was so poor they just gave him one stick."
I don't know why Ivan draws so much fire. Maybe it's because he gives it back as good as he gets. And his jab is like a paper cut - so clean you don't notice until you see the blood.
"When I die," Ivan says, "If they don't put green signs out by the highway that say 'Boyhood Home of Ivan Burgess,' then I've been a complete failure."
To be continued....
*
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 14, 1998
Respect, I think, comes to the fellow who earns it. Sure, these folks will give you the benefit of the doubt to start off, but don't misconstrue that to mean they're not watching you. You screw up, you slip in their eyes and must recover one hard piece at a time. You screw up, you re-earn respect only grudgingly. The folk memory is forever. Especially with issues of trust. If you've earned mistrust, it's near impossible to climb out of that box - how will they know for sure you won't slip again.
It's not that these folks can't deal with uncertainty. The farmers amongst them face uncertainty every time they put seed in the ground. Will it rain? Will it hail? Will the selling price be high enough to cover the cost of producing?
The issue may not be that you betrayed them so much as they didn't see it coming. Now if they put you over into the column of uncertainty, along with drought and hail and fire, they can deal with your failure. Of course, you might imagine how much drought and hail and fire are loved by farmers, and how much your betrayal might be loved as well.
Is it the same, every one of these August mornings - moisture on the windshield, haze in the distance, blue sky, still pond? What will I see to comment on in an endlessly repeating cycle? Is this week of August an emblem for the whole idea of watching a piece of ground from year to year - it will all be an endless repetition of cycles before I am done.
Except maybe for the jet rumbling overhead this morning, August 14, 1998, 7:23 a.m. CDT. The sound rolls away into the distance. I would believe it left O'Hare in Chicago and is heading for the Twin Cities, by the way the sound has crossed the sky. The jet's passengers have moved half that distance and I'm not even out of the driveway yet.
A lovely haze of a daze of a day, out in the country. A haze considerably heavier than yesterday's.
It is surprising to me how quickly the corn ground has been worked. One of those fields taken recently is plowed already.
Off in the distant haze, a spray plane drops down to skim just above a field. It is working dangerously close to high power lines. At times it seems to stand on a wing tip. You've got to love to fly to do a job that dangerous and dirty. But look who's calling the kettle black - I go in to my work, which might not be to that fellow's liking at all.
>
Sunday, August 15, 2004
AMERICA ZEN:
A GATHERING OF POETS
It's at press and will be available within a month, the anthology that I have several poems accepted for, America Zen: A Gathering of Poets, edited by Ray McNiece & Larry Smith. It is 224 pages perfect bound, 6x9, ISBN: 0-933087-91-8. It's available for $16 from Bottom Dog Press, PO Box 425, Huron, OH 44839.
And I am recommending that you get a copy of it. Bottom Dog should soon have more information about the anthology available at their web site here, if you're interested.
The poets included in this gathering are: Nin Andrews, David Budbill, Thomas Rain Crowe, Kathe Davis, Diane di Prima, Stanford M. Forrester, Tess Gallagher, Margaret Gibson, John Gilgun, Netta Gillespie, Sam Hamill, William Heyen, Jane Hirschfield, Holly Hughes, Mary Sue Koeppel, Mark Kuhar, Mac Lojowsky, Ray McNiece, Tom Montag, Shin Yu Pai, Paul S. Piper, Maj Ragain, David Ray, Seido Ray Ronci, Andrew Schelling, Paul Skyrm, Larry Smith, Tony Trigilio, Chase Twichell, and Anne Waldmann
"Each poet is fully represented by a biographical sketch, a photo, a statement on Zen and poetry, and a selection of five or more poems," the editors say.
Eleven of my "Ben Zen" poems are included, and four from my "Plain Poems" series. This, from "Ben Zen:"
*
QUETICO JOURNAL
AUGUST 7, 2004
DAY FOUR
It was the day for a big move. We needed to make some miles, and so we did. Because the water is low, the expected three or four portages turned out to be seven or eight or nine, hard to say exactly. Creeks you could paddle through the last time Susan's map was updated, well, you can't paddle through them now. Standing atop a beaver dam is like standing on top of the world. Yahoo! you want to yell, and Yahoo! would echo back.
The deepest I got stuck in the muck was up to my knees, both knees, same time. We pushed on, working harder than we expected to. Yet, as I said to the four people waiting for us to clear one particularly messy portage, as I was standing there knee-deep in the muck: I said: This is what we come for, isn't it?
Yeah, it is. If what we got was what we could get at home, why would we come here for it?
This morning the rain waited until we had our coffee and our cups of oatmeal and fruit compote, until we had the dishes washed, the tents rolled up and put away, the gear packed. If it had to rain, we got exactly what you'd want - a shy, beg-your-pardon drizzle. Some little wind blew the clouds away about noon or so and then we had sunshine.
We pushed ourselves pretty hard, made the promised "last portage" three or four times, and finally set up camp towards 5:00 p.m. on a little island with lovely sites for tents, a nice flat rock barely sloping into the water for washing up. I got myself washed up and put on fresh clothes. I would say I was a "new man," but not everything washed off: I am stained with this landscape. It is good to take some of where you've been with you, close as your own skin.
*
NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 14, 2004 - CONTINUED
I was invited by Starr Jacobs of Smith Center to have supper in the field with her husband, Brent, and with Brent's cousin, Dan Jacobs, as they harvested their wheat crop. I extended the invitation by asking if I could ride in the combine after supper while Dan continued running it. Dan operates the combine; Brent & Starr's son, Steve, hauls the wheat from the combine to the semi-truck that Brent drives; and Brent hauls the wheat to storage. This continues my account of some time spent riding in the combine on a Monday evening three days into Smith County's 2004 wheat harvest.
How does he know when the bin on the combine is getting full? When the light flashes that indicates "Bin Full," it's too late to swing the auger out and get Steve coming with the wagon. He'd have to stop the combine and wait.
"I let it go up to the top of the window behind me," Dan said. "Then I swing the auger out. Usually when he gets here, the bin is full enough."
There was a pheasant running in the wheat ahead of us. Dan pointed at the moving stalks that gave away its position. Very soon the pheasant exploded out of the wheat, flew up and off to the left.
"If you didn't farm," I asked Dan, "what would you do?"
"I don't know," he said. "I honestly don't know."
"When it gets dark out tonight," Dan said later, "it will be dark. No moon out tonight."
At night in the dark, when the wind is blowing, when you turn away from the dirt the combine throws out, you can see what you're doing. When the wind is not blowing, it doesn't matter which way you turn; either way you are blinded by it.
"There's a fog for you," Dan said as he drove into a cloud of the chaff.
"In the dark," he said, "it's easy to get turned around. You know where you are, but you don't know where the truck is. Sometimes you have to ask the guy in the truck to turn his parking lights on."
Millers are attracted to the lights of the combine. Twenty of them were fluttering in front of the windshield. They were good for occasionally cleaning a little dust here and there off the glass, otherwise they just reflected the headlights back at you. Millers are moths with wings that look dusty or powdered, thought to suggest the dusted clothes of a fellow who works in a grain mill.
"Some of this ground here we're going to want to disk, so we can put a crop in this fall," Dan said. "But I'm not sure you're going to get a disk in the ground - it's rock hard."
We were out along the road at the east edge of the field then. "My dad told me there's one thing they don't produce more of," Dan recalled. "That's land. If you've got it, keep it. There won't be any more. They can produce more money; they can't produce more land."
"Here," Dan pointed out, "there used to be buildings. There was a house here, a bunch of trees there. We tore them all down. The old well is where we made that curve right there. The house set over there. We had a guy with a Cat come in, push the house in, and cover it with dirt. We tore out the trees - more brush, really, than trees. It was rough ground here for a few years but we've smoothed it out."
I got a chill at the back of my neck. Ghosts on the landscape. Right here, right now, in this very place.
"The wind picked back up, didn't it?" I observed.
"Yeah," Dan said. "The way it was acting earlier, I thought it was going to stay down."
Now there was a blizzard of dust in the lights of the combine again. It was difficult to see the wheat right in front of us.
Dan turned the combine tightly and headed it back the other way. "If you really want to turn short," he said, "you can stand on the turning brake and it'll come right around. It's hard on the tires, though. They're not made to turn that sharp, so they slide."
It was after 10:00 p.m. when we unloaded the last bin of wheat into the wagon. Dan couldn't see the truck. He knew where he was, but he didn't know for sure where the truck was. He had to drive only a short distance to a terrace to get his bearings; he adjusted his direction slightly and soon enough we pulled to a stop near the road, near where I'd left my car.
I had to get down out of the cab of the combine and head for town. Steve was unloading the last wagonload of the day into the truck. The other truck was being parked a quarter mile down the road. Dan said he was going to park the combine over there, too. It's the neighbor's ground, it has been disked and is bare dirt. "We won't leave the combine or the other equipment out here on the wheat stubble," Dan said. "Lightning could start a fire in the stubble and burn up our equipment."
Even when you sleep, you have to worry.
I thanked Dan for letting me ride with him. I got into the car and turned it in the other direction. In my headlights I saw Brent walking back up the road to get the other truck. I stop, get out to thank him, too, for the chance ride the combine.
"You know your way back to town?" he asked me.
"You head that way and that way," I said, indicating a direction straight ahead, and a right turn from straight ahead. "I just keep going that way and that way til I reach the main road."
I knew where I was. I knew where I was going.
"Just watch for the lights," Brent said. He meant that the lights of Smith Center will show up off to the northwest.
And they did. I was driving back roads in the dark, I was headed for Smith Center. I knew where I was. I knew where I was going. I know where I've been.
These Kansas farmers are not so different than the Iowa farm folk I grew up among.
To be continued....
*
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 13, 1998
Years ago - twenty years ago now - when I was hauling bundles of the regional newspaper Fox River Patriot store-to-store along a four-hundred-mile route, I first sensed so strongly that the place makes the man. In very marked contrast to the good black prairie where I found people of good cheer, on the marginal sands those I encountered were crabbed and a little more surly, short-tempered, hard-pressed. It wasn't just one or two incidents that gave rise to the observation, but repeated occurrence across two years of hauling papers. A hard land makes a hard people. A hard land deforms a man, perhaps. A rich land blesses him. I would add that the better land resulted in a better store as well - brighter, better stocked, better kept. On the marginal sands, you could see the stores themselves were more marginal.
I could make that same trip again now without papers, couldn't I, stopping the same places, observing the people, getting a gauge on whether anything has changed - either in my way of seeing things, or in the people themselves. It might be an interesting trip.
Moisture on the windshield this morning. A blue sky. High, thin clouds. And some low, wet, cold ones too, scattered. We won't know for a while what kind of day is coming.
The earth has a forgiving memory. She is mending where the tree came down along Washington Street. When the green grass grows in thick, we won't know a tree ever stood there.
Sometimes we don't now how to read the signs from our own past.
A thick ground haze out in the country, almost a Canadian morning, folks! More sweet corn has been taken, all of it so far on the east side of Highway E, none of it on the west side. Duh, Tom, look close to the ground in that field you thought was soy beans; don't you see the purple? That's how you tell it's a field of beets! Even knowing this, even with my glasses on, it's still tough for an Iowa farm boy to recognize a field of beets.
A good poet would make poetry of a day such as this. The lingering, smoky smell where the barn burned. The sweet, wet aroma near the new houses north of Five Corners. The diffusion of light in the curtain of haze to the east. That woman and her dog, walking. I, on the other hand, will simply note that they've been seen. Been scene. Been here. You hear that, people? We were here; we mattered this little while.
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A GATHERING OF POETS
It's at press and will be available within a month, the anthology that I have several poems accepted for, America Zen: A Gathering of Poets, edited by Ray McNiece & Larry Smith. It is 224 pages perfect bound, 6x9, ISBN: 0-933087-91-8. It's available for $16 from Bottom Dog Press, PO Box 425, Huron, OH 44839.
And I am recommending that you get a copy of it. Bottom Dog should soon have more information about the anthology available at their web site here, if you're interested.
The poets included in this gathering are: Nin Andrews, David Budbill, Thomas Rain Crowe, Kathe Davis, Diane di Prima, Stanford M. Forrester, Tess Gallagher, Margaret Gibson, John Gilgun, Netta Gillespie, Sam Hamill, William Heyen, Jane Hirschfield, Holly Hughes, Mary Sue Koeppel, Mark Kuhar, Mac Lojowsky, Ray McNiece, Tom Montag, Shin Yu Pai, Paul S. Piper, Maj Ragain, David Ray, Seido Ray Ronci, Andrew Schelling, Paul Skyrm, Larry Smith, Tony Trigilio, Chase Twichell, and Anne Waldmann
"Each poet is fully represented by a biographical sketch, a photo, a statement on Zen and poetry, and a selection of five or more poems," the editors say.
Eleven of my "Ben Zen" poems are included, and four from my "Plain Poems" series. This, from "Ben Zen:"
I push the mountain,And this, from the "Plain Poems:"
Ben says, and push
The mountain and
Still the mountain
Pushes back.
JULY 6, 2001 (2)
We don't know the ponderous
thoughts of stones. What do they
dream of as afternoon heats them?
Do they dream of arms and legs
or wings? Do they dream of love?
Do they remember glaciers -
the weight, the shove? Sitting with
stones, oh, lost among stones, aren't
you surprised at what you learn?
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QUETICO JOURNAL
AUGUST 7, 2004
DAY FOUR
It was the day for a big move. We needed to make some miles, and so we did. Because the water is low, the expected three or four portages turned out to be seven or eight or nine, hard to say exactly. Creeks you could paddle through the last time Susan's map was updated, well, you can't paddle through them now. Standing atop a beaver dam is like standing on top of the world. Yahoo! you want to yell, and Yahoo! would echo back.
The deepest I got stuck in the muck was up to my knees, both knees, same time. We pushed on, working harder than we expected to. Yet, as I said to the four people waiting for us to clear one particularly messy portage, as I was standing there knee-deep in the muck: I said: This is what we come for, isn't it?
Yeah, it is. If what we got was what we could get at home, why would we come here for it?
This morning the rain waited until we had our coffee and our cups of oatmeal and fruit compote, until we had the dishes washed, the tents rolled up and put away, the gear packed. If it had to rain, we got exactly what you'd want - a shy, beg-your-pardon drizzle. Some little wind blew the clouds away about noon or so and then we had sunshine.
We pushed ourselves pretty hard, made the promised "last portage" three or four times, and finally set up camp towards 5:00 p.m. on a little island with lovely sites for tents, a nice flat rock barely sloping into the water for washing up. I got myself washed up and put on fresh clothes. I would say I was a "new man," but not everything washed off: I am stained with this landscape. It is good to take some of where you've been with you, close as your own skin.
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NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNALS
A VISIT TO SMITH CENTER, KANSAS
JUNE 14, 2004 - CONTINUED
I was invited by Starr Jacobs of Smith Center to have supper in the field with her husband, Brent, and with Brent's cousin, Dan Jacobs, as they harvested their wheat crop. I extended the invitation by asking if I could ride in the combine after supper while Dan continued running it. Dan operates the combine; Brent & Starr's son, Steve, hauls the wheat from the combine to the semi-truck that Brent drives; and Brent hauls the wheat to storage. This continues my account of some time spent riding in the combine on a Monday evening three days into Smith County's 2004 wheat harvest.
How does he know when the bin on the combine is getting full? When the light flashes that indicates "Bin Full," it's too late to swing the auger out and get Steve coming with the wagon. He'd have to stop the combine and wait.
"I let it go up to the top of the window behind me," Dan said. "Then I swing the auger out. Usually when he gets here, the bin is full enough."
There was a pheasant running in the wheat ahead of us. Dan pointed at the moving stalks that gave away its position. Very soon the pheasant exploded out of the wheat, flew up and off to the left.
"If you didn't farm," I asked Dan, "what would you do?"
"I don't know," he said. "I honestly don't know."
"When it gets dark out tonight," Dan said later, "it will be dark. No moon out tonight."
At night in the dark, when the wind is blowing, when you turn away from the dirt the combine throws out, you can see what you're doing. When the wind is not blowing, it doesn't matter which way you turn; either way you are blinded by it.
"There's a fog for you," Dan said as he drove into a cloud of the chaff.
"In the dark," he said, "it's easy to get turned around. You know where you are, but you don't know where the truck is. Sometimes you have to ask the guy in the truck to turn his parking lights on."
Millers are attracted to the lights of the combine. Twenty of them were fluttering in front of the windshield. They were good for occasionally cleaning a little dust here and there off the glass, otherwise they just reflected the headlights back at you. Millers are moths with wings that look dusty or powdered, thought to suggest the dusted clothes of a fellow who works in a grain mill.
"Some of this ground here we're going to want to disk, so we can put a crop in this fall," Dan said. "But I'm not sure you're going to get a disk in the ground - it's rock hard."
We were out along the road at the east edge of the field then. "My dad told me there's one thing they don't produce more of," Dan recalled. "That's land. If you've got it, keep it. There won't be any more. They can produce more money; they can't produce more land."
"Here," Dan pointed out, "there used to be buildings. There was a house here, a bunch of trees there. We tore them all down. The old well is where we made that curve right there. The house set over there. We had a guy with a Cat come in, push the house in, and cover it with dirt. We tore out the trees - more brush, really, than trees. It was rough ground here for a few years but we've smoothed it out."
I got a chill at the back of my neck. Ghosts on the landscape. Right here, right now, in this very place.
"The wind picked back up, didn't it?" I observed.
"Yeah," Dan said. "The way it was acting earlier, I thought it was going to stay down."
Now there was a blizzard of dust in the lights of the combine again. It was difficult to see the wheat right in front of us.
Dan turned the combine tightly and headed it back the other way. "If you really want to turn short," he said, "you can stand on the turning brake and it'll come right around. It's hard on the tires, though. They're not made to turn that sharp, so they slide."
It was after 10:00 p.m. when we unloaded the last bin of wheat into the wagon. Dan couldn't see the truck. He knew where he was, but he didn't know for sure where the truck was. He had to drive only a short distance to a terrace to get his bearings; he adjusted his direction slightly and soon enough we pulled to a stop near the road, near where I'd left my car.
I had to get down out of the cab of the combine and head for town. Steve was unloading the last wagonload of the day into the truck. The other truck was being parked a quarter mile down the road. Dan said he was going to park the combine over there, too. It's the neighbor's ground, it has been disked and is bare dirt. "We won't leave the combine or the other equipment out here on the wheat stubble," Dan said. "Lightning could start a fire in the stubble and burn up our equipment."
Even when you sleep, you have to worry.
I thanked Dan for letting me ride with him. I got into the car and turned it in the other direction. In my headlights I saw Brent walking back up the road to get the other truck. I stop, get out to thank him, too, for the chance ride the combine.
"You know your way back to town?" he asked me.
"You head that way and that way," I said, indicating a direction straight ahead, and a right turn from straight ahead. "I just keep going that way and that way til I reach the main road."
I knew where I was. I knew where I was going.
"Just watch for the lights," Brent said. He meant that the lights of Smith Center will show up off to the northwest.
And they did. I was driving back roads in the dark, I was headed for Smith Center. I knew where I was. I knew where I was going. I know where I've been.
These Kansas farmers are not so different than the Iowa farm folk I grew up among.
To be continued....
*
from
MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 13, 1998
Years ago - twenty years ago now - when I was hauling bundles of the regional newspaper Fox River Patriot store-to-store along a four-hundred-mile route, I first sensed so strongly that the place makes the man. In very marked contrast to the good black prairie where I found people of good cheer, on the marginal sands those I encountered were crabbed and a little more surly, short-tempered, hard-pressed. It wasn't just one or two incidents that gave rise to the observation, but repeated occurrence across two years of hauling papers. A hard land makes a hard people. A hard land deforms a man, perhaps. A rich land blesses him. I would add that the better land resulted in a better store as well - brighter, better stocked, better kept. On the marginal sands, you could see the stores themselves were more marginal.
I could make that same trip again now without papers, couldn't I, stopping the same places, observing the people, getting a gauge on whether anything has changed - either in my way of seeing things, or in the people themselves. It might be an interesting trip.
Moisture on the windshield this morning. A blue sky. High, thin clouds. And some low, wet, cold ones too, scattered. We won't know for a while what kind of day is coming.
The earth has a forgiving memory. She is mending where the tree came down along Washington Street. When the green grass grows in thick, we won't know a tree ever stood there.
Sometimes we don't now how to read the signs from our own past.
A thick ground haze out in the country, almost a Canadian morning, folks! More sweet corn has been taken, all of it so far on the east side of Highway E, none of it on the west side. Duh, Tom, look close to the ground in that field you thought was soy beans; don't you see the purple? That's how you tell it's a field of beets! Even knowing this, even with my glasses on, it's still tough for an Iowa farm boy to recognize a field of beets.
A good poet would make poetry of a day such as this. The lingering, smoky smell where the barn burned. The sweet, wet aroma near the new houses north of Five Corners. The diffusion of light in the curtain of haze to the east. That woman and her dog, walking. I, on the other hand, will simply note that they've been seen. Been scene. Been here. You hear that, people? We were here; we mattered this little while.
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