Farm Hand

By Nate Bender

2/27/15

Early life experiences often make indelible impressions, influencing later and longer themes in one’s life journey.  And so it is for me, popping up in the autumn years of my life yet still.  In this short story I seek to capture a few of the many anecdotes connected to the farm labors of my rural Iowa youth, spanning the years 1953 to 1961.

Growing up on a seven acre mini-farm adjoining a village of some 200 residents, my two brothers and I were offered ample exposure to the unfolding seasonal markings of mother nature.  Our activities were essentially devoid of close supervision, resulting in sibling excursions into creative play.  It was in this setting I became aware of my natural bent to day-dream and drift into other worlds.

As time passed into our pre-teen and teen years, nature made her mark on the Bender-boys-three, each of us separated in age by at least one year.  We grew faster than any of our peers, and coupled with the residuals of conservative Lutheran admonishments, such as…..idle hands are the devil’s workshop…..pain is penance for sinning, we became targets for laboring on local farms. The thought that I had a choice when farmers solicited my employ was never realized.  Instead, I accepted any and all invites, even when I really didn’t want to do the specific work.

Older brother Reuben, with his superior strength and natural leanings toward physical movement, led the way.  In many ways all three of us mingled more often with older youth and adults than with our peers.  Looking back, we were ‘man-children’ which created a shortened youth!  On the other hand we were imbued with strong, sustaining  work-ethic values.

My earliest memories of being hired as a farm hand was when I was maybe in the fifth grade, or about 10 years old.   I was paid fifty cents and hour to walk behind a tractor-towed wooden sled, picking up rock, large and small, which can cause damage to tilling equipment in a field being prepped for planting corn, beans or oats.  At the end of the day I had earned maybe 3 or 4 dollars and was bone tired.  The feel of having my own spending money, regardless of its size, eased the fatigue and made a lasting mark on my ability to be self-sufficient.

Another grade-school era farm labor job involved joining my brothers and several other youth to walk a field of corn, with stalks roughly knee high (must have been around the fourth of July!).  With hoes in tow, our mission was to hoe out the many thistles found between the rows.  While this job was not as labor-intense as other jobs, the work created physical fatigue and notable sun burns by the end of the day.  Sun screen, long-sleeve shirts and hats were virtually non-existent on youth in those days.  A side note was my left index finger became imbedded with a thistle thorn that ultimately led to a severe infection requiring medical surgery.

During the Spring of my 13^th year, I was asked to do something I had never done before…to plow a 120 acre field in preparation for planting.  The young farmer was new in the area and was working a full-time job at the John Deer tractor works plant in Waterloo.  He was behind in his farming efforts, and wanted me to fill the void.  After a brief orientation on operating the tractor and the attached plow, I was entrusted without further supervision to till his soil.

Days turned into plowing throughout the night, challenging my ability to remain alert.  Near the end of my plowing endeavors, I had an accident while driving the tractor back to get refueled.  The plow inadvertently lowered when I crossed a wooden bridge, caught on one of the planks, and brought me to a quick halt.  No problem, the farmer told me and then directed to drive the tractor and attached plow nine miles to a nearby town for repair.  Accepting payment for my work gave me mixed feelings of pride and regret.

Upon graduating eighth grade in 1957, I was six feet four inches in height and growing.  I was forthwith recruited by Werner Poock to work full time on his farm, 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, six days a week for the sum of $75 per month during the summer months.  Even though the offer represented a big boost to my self-esteem, the long hours were daunting.  Most days, I rode my refurbished bicycle to and from his farm. 

My work taskings at the Poock farm were many and varied.  Retrieving the milk cows from a distant pasture I accidently came in contact with an electric fence.  To this day I have a fear of electrical undertakings.  I cleaned out calf and hog pens of their accumulated manure (crudely referred to as ‘pitching shit!’) and spread the product on a field being prepped for crop rotation.  I baled hay and stacked the bales into the barn’s hay loft.  I filled silos with freshly cut hay (clover and alfalfa), which required me to ascend the silo and enter its 35 foot tall oval chamber to compact the loose product.  I assisted in piglet castrations.  I cleaned out a chicken house of its high nitrogen manure and a goodly number of other laborings.

This summer of 1957, I also turned 14 and was invited to play on the town’s high-performance adult fast-pitch soft-ball team as its youngest member.  Somehow I was able to surpass the fatigue of my long days in farm hand work and gained a second wind to play ball on certain evenings and weekends.

Throughout my high school years, virtually every Saturday was occupied with farm hand work, by which time my hourly rate ascended to $1.00 per hour.  I usually accumulated $10.00 for a long day of hard work. More often than not, these work callings were the day after a football or basketball game when a day of rest to recover from the exertions would have been preferred.  Instead, I could be found doing jobs farmers didn’t want to do themselves.  Cleaning animal pens (pitching shit, if you will!) dominated the Fall and Winter months.  It was during these times I publically reported my desire to never be a manual laboring person once I graduated high school. A white-collar vocation surely awaited my discovery!

So what are the take-away messages to be gleaned from these recollections?  For one, my emotional and psychological make-up is not suited for farming, even though I am convinced I could farm, if my survival depended on it.  Secondly, freedom and confidence in self-expression would have allowed me to say NO to job offers I really did not want to do. 

Jonathan’s 39th Birthday

3/26/2015

by Nate Bender

Your 39^th birthday offers a call to reflect:

On the path you’ve trod,

On the station we now find you,

And the course now being set.

Like a certain predecessor

You’ve followed your spirit,

A free and searching one at that!

You’ve integrated vocational experiences

Into forming a more rewarding and sustainable future.

You’ve embraced marriage and family with steadfast zeal,

Adapting to special needs parenting demands

With grace and increased effectiveness.

Most of all, you make your parents proud;

Pride in the character you possess,

Pleasure in the mark you are making

On the larger world community,

And joy in forming the next generation.

Happy Birthday my dear Son.

I’ve Been Working on the Railroad

by Nate Bender

4/10/2015

Railroads, ranging from laying tracks to operating the locomotives, have long held a special presence in my life.  Within one hundred yards of our rural Iowa house, the Chicago Great Western made an indelible daily mark on my life experiences. The sights and sounds of passing trains created fascinations around traveling to new and different locales.  For unknown reasons, counting the number of rail cars, often numbering well over one hundred, was an important activity. 

Certain trains delivered mail that was ‘caught’ by an over-head ‘catcher’ gizmo, thus removing the need for coming to a complete stop.  Grain cars were sectioned off for filling at the adjoining grain elevator.  Ordered freight would be off-loaded at the Depot, including a set of weights I had ordered to increase my body strength and girth – yes, I was once a skinny weakling!

Fast forward to the Spring of 1964 -- I had completed my first trimester at Pepperdine University and registered my best academic performance ever.  I was formally removed from academic probation, thus qualified to receive a full athletic scholarship.  The core expenses would be taken care of---room, board, books and tuition.  I experienced a profound upswing in my spirit and momentum, emitting new confidence in my ability to complete the requirements for an under graduate degree, in an unknown major at this point.

I chose to skip the following Spring trimester, as the accrued Winter trimester debt of almost $1000 called for my acquiring a better paying job than my philatelist concession stand clerk job in Robinson’s Department Store.  As with much of my life, an unexpected opportunity presented itself: notification that the Southern Pacific Railroad was soliciting temporary hires for the soon to be extinct position of firemen.  Firemen were originally the stokers of the coal-burning locomotives.  Diesel engines replaced the coal-burners, which powered electric generators from which to move mighty loads.  Management, in concert with union agreement, decided to replace firemen with switchmen, the person who formerly occupied the caboose.

I promptly went to the railroad’s downtown Los Angeles personnel office and filled out the required paper work.  Without an interview, I was hired!  Within a day or two, I was employed full-time, as a fireman, with a pay rate beyond anything I had ever received.

Indoctrination and training was simple.  The engineer, who drives the locomotive and is the senior man of the crew gave me instructions on mounting and un-mounting moving locomotives and cars, along with hooking and unhooking cars.  Save for one long haul to Yuma, Arizona, and back, all of my work revolved around the main rail yard in Los Angeles where positioning or repositioning different rail cars for departure to other destinations were conducted. 

My four-month employment as a fireman became quite a contrast to the labor-intense work I did as a farm hand.  I was actually having fun while earning a full time salary in addition to overtime stints, that paid time and a half.  For several months I earned nearly $2000 a month!

Three notations around ‘working on the railroad’ stand out in my memory bank.  First, was paying off my student loan with one two-week pay check.  When cashing the check at my bank, I asked to receive its total in cash.  I then commenced to walk to the Pepperdine College registrar’s office in possession of more money than I had ever laid hands on.  I left the office filled with a skip in my get-a-long, possessing renewed pride, joy and confidence in my ability to be self sufficient, all on the eve of my 21^st birthday. 

Secondly, was the high desert trip to Yuma, in the smoldering mid-summer heat.  After a brief stop in Colton to drop off and pick up new freight cars, the remainder of the trip was full-throttle to Yuma, spending most of the time viewing the wonders of nature.  Of particular note was my having to make engine checks of the six locomotive units while speeding along at 60 miles per hour.  This required my transiting on the outside walk-ways of each unit, and stepping over open spaces onto the next engine unit, checking the oil and water levels.  At one point I discovered one unit over-heating, requiring me to shut the unit down.  I felt like I was on an adventure few people my age could have experienced.

My third noteworthy memory involved my exchanges with career-oriented personnel, many of whom were originally from Oklahoma.  Being an extrovert, with a curious nature, it took little time for people to share their personal lives!  Having no previous encounters with racist talk, I found myself shocked by their frequent derisive references to people of color.  My innocent, idealistic perspectives had to make an adjustment to be compassionate toward those holding such prejudices.

An aside memory involved my means of transportation to and from work.  Somewhere, involving another chance encounter I purchased a 1953 Chevy car for $50.  It had been reconfigured with an Oldsmobile V-8 engine and a floor-placed ‘stick-shift’ resulting in a gapping hole in the surrounding floor-board.  For some reason, this car had an inconsistent pattern in starting, frequently requiring my pushing it out into the street and flagging down a car to give me a push-start.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t have an official license tag, and for sure I had no insurance on it.  Upon completion of my railroad job, I simply let it sit on a side street, expecting it to be hauled away for junk….Its mission had been completed!  As soon as school started in late August, I was able to buy a replacement car, that being a 1951 Ford, for which I also paid $50.

Back to my job…..After receiving my last pay check, I ventured down town to purchase a new clothing ensemble, namely, my first blazer and matching shirt, tie and trousers, along with a pair of Florsheim wing-tip shoes.  These acts created feelings of success and prosperity!  And, I also purchased an airplane ticket to Newark, New Jersey to meet up with a former college roommate and attend the New York worlds fair.  

My work on the railroad resulted in my having an enriching life experience while also granting me financial solvency.  The security generated served as an aid in managing the needs of my junior year of college, while also presenting new story telling material in my social life!  To this day, I find myself transfixed on each and every railroad encounter I have, whether it be the movement of freight or passengers.  And my two young grandsons also have a shared interest in trains, including Thomas Trains around which I can easily become immersed, knowing what the real deal was like.

Toxic Faith

10 Reasons You Should Never Have A Religion

  BY  STEVEN BANCARZJANUARY 4, 2015SELF DISCOVERY, SPIRITUALITY

Written by Steve Pavlina on his site www.stevepavlina.com |

While consciously pursuing your spiritual development is commendable, joining an established religion such as Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism is one of the worst ways to go about it. In this article I’ll share 10 reasons why you must eventually abandon the baggage of organized religion if you wish to pursue conscious living in earnest.


1) Spirituality for dummies

If you have the awareness level of a snail, and your thinking is mired in shame and guilt (with perhaps a twist of drug abuse or suicidal thinking), then subscribing to a religion can help you climb to a higher level of awareness. Your mindset, however, still remains incredibly dysfunctional; you’ve merely swapped one form of erroneous thinking for another.

For reasonably intelligent people who aren’t suffering from major issues with low self-esteem, religion is ridiculously consciousness-lowering. While some religious beliefs can be empowering, on the whole the decision to formally participate in a religion will merely burden your mind with a hefty load of false notions.

When you subscribe to a religion, you substitute nebulous group-think for focused, independent thought. Instead of learning to discern truth on your own, you’re told what to believe. This doesn’t accelerate your spiritual growth; on the contrary it puts the brakes on your continued conscious development. Religion is the off-switch of the human mind.

Your own intellect is a better instrument of spiritual growth than any religious teachings.

2) Loss of spiritual depth perception

One of the worst mistakes you can make in life is to attach your identity to any particular religion or philosophy, such as by saying “I am a Christian” or “I am a Buddhist.” This forces your mind into a fixed perspective, robbing you of spiritual depth perception and savagely curtailing your ability to perceive reality accurately. If that sounds like a good idea to you, you’ll probably want to gouge out one of your eyeballs too. Surely you’ll be better off with a single, fixed perspective instead of having to consider two separate image streams… unless of course you’ve become attached to stereo vision.

Religious “truths” are inherently rooted in a fixed perspective, but real truth is perspective-independent. When you substitute religious teachings for truth, you mistake shadows for light sources. Consequently, you doom yourself to stumble around in the dark, utterly confused. Clarity remains forever elusive, and the best answer you get is that life is one giant mystery. Religious mysteries, however, arise not from what is truly unknowable; they arise from the limitations of trying to understand reality from a fixed frame of reference.

A more intelligent approach is to consider reality through a variety of different perspectives without trying to force your perceptions into an artificial religious framework. If you wish to learn more about this approach, read Spiritual Depth Perception.

3) Engineered obedience training

Religions are authoritarian hierarchies designed to dominate your free will. They’re power structures that aim to convince you to give away your power for the benefit of those who enjoy dominating people. When you subscribe to a religion, you enroll in a mindless minion training program. Religions don’t market themselves as such, but this is essentially how they operate.

Religions are very effective at turning human beings into sheep. They’re among the most powerful instruments of social conditioning. They operate by eroding your trust in your own intellect, gradually convincing you to put your trust into some external entity, such as a deity, prominent figure, or great book. Of course these instruments are usually controlled by those who administrate the minion training program, but they don’t have to be. Simply by convincing you to give your power away to something outside yourself, religion will condition you to be weaker, more docile, and easier to control. Religions actively promote this weakening process as if it were beneficial, commonly branding it with the word faith. What they’re actually promoting is submission.

Religions strive to fill your head with so much nonsense that your only recourse is to bow your head in submission, often quite literally. Get used to spending a lot of time on your knees because acts of submission such as bowing and kneeling are frequently incorporated into religious practice. Canine obedience training uses similar tactics. Now say, “Yes, Master.”

Have you ever wondered why religious teachings are invariably mysterious, confusing, and internally incongruent? This is no accident by the way — it’s quite intentional.

By putting forth confusing and internally conflicting information, your logical mind (i.e. your neocortex) is overwhelmed. You try in vain to integrate such contradictory beliefs, but it can’t be done. The net effect is that your logical mind disengages because it can’t find a pattern of core truth beneath all the nonsense, so without the help of your neocortex, you devolve to a more primitive (i.e. limbic) mode of thinking. You’re taught that this faith-based approach is a more spiritual and conscious way to live, but in reality it’s precisely the opposite. Getting you to distrust your own cerebral cortex actually makes you dumber and easier to manipulate and control. Karl Marx was right when he said, “Religion is the opiate of the people.”

For example, the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Bible frequently contradict each other with various rules of conduct, yet both are quoted during mass. You aren’t meant to ever make sense of them since that would defeat the whole purpose.

If you want to talk to God, then communicate directly instead of using third-party intermediaries. Surely God has no need of an interpreter. Don’t fall into the trap of becoming a mindless minion. It’s a mistake to think that turning off your neocortex and practicing mindless “faith” will bring you closer to God.

4) Toilet-bowl time management

If you devote serious time to the practice of religion, it’s safe to say you practice toilet-bowl time management, flushing much of your precious life down the drain with little or nothing to show for it.

First, you’ll waste a lot of time filling your head with useless nonsense. This includes reading some of the worst fiction ever written. Then there are various rules, laws, and practices to learn..

Next, you can expect to waste even more time on repetitive ritual and ceremony, such as attending mass, learning prayers, and practicing unproductive meditations.

If I add up the time I attended mass and Sunday school, studied religion in school as if it were a serious subject, and memorized various prayers, I count thousands of hours of my life I’d love to have back. I did, however, learn some important lessons, many of which are being shared in this article.

5) Waste of money

In addition to being a serious waste of time, religious practice can also be a huge waste of money.

For starters when you donate to a major religion, you support its expansion, which means you’re facilitating the enslavement of your fellow humans.  If you feel the urge to donate money, give it to a real and honorable cause, not a fabricated one. Better yet, go outside and do something yourself that really helps people. If you can’t think of anything better, grab a can of paint and clean up some local graffiti.

Your religious donations fund freeloaders who mooch off society but who generally provide little or no value in return. Sure there are some religious people who perform valuable public services, but for the most part, that isn’t their bailiwick. These freeloaders typically operate tax-free, meaning they’re effectively subsidized by taxpayers. That’s a great racket if you’re on the receiving side… not so great if you’re funding it though.

Would you seriously consider this sort of structure a “good cause” worthy of your hard-earned cash?

6) Religions create separation

Religions frequently promote inbred social networks. You’re encouraged to spend more time with people who share the same belief system while disengaging from those with incompatible beliefs. Sometimes this is done subtly; other times it’s more obvious.

If you’re one of the saved, blessed, or otherwise enlightened individuals who stumbled upon the one true belief system, then supposedly everyone else remains in the dark. Certain religions are overtly intolerant of outsiders, but to one degree or another, all major religions cast non-subscribers in a negative light. This helps to discourage members from abandoning the religion while still enabling them to proselytize. The main idea is to maintain social structures that reward loyalty and punish freedom of thought.

This us-vs-them prejudice is totally incongruent with conscious living. It’s also downright moronic from a global perspective. But it remains a favored practice of those who pull the strings. When you’re taught to distrust other human beings, fear gets a foothold in your consciousness, and you become much easier to control.

When you join a religion, your fellow mind-slaves will help to keep you in line, socially rewarding your continued obedience while punishing your disloyalty. Why do they do this? It’s what they’ve been conditioned to do. Tell your religious friends that you’re abandoning their religion because you want to think for yourself for a while, and watch the sparks fly. Suddenly you’ve gone from best friend to evil demon. There’s no greater threat to religious people than to profess your desire to think for yourself.

There are better ways to enjoy a sense of community than joining a slavery club. Try making friends with conscious, free-thinking people for a change — people who are willing to connect with you regardless of how silly your beliefs are. You may find it intimidating at first, but it’s quite refreshing once you get used to it.

7) Idiocy or hypocrisy – pick one

When you subscribe to an established religion, you have only two options. You can become an idiot, or you can become a hypocrite. If you’ve already chosen the former, I’ll explain why, and I’ll use small words so that you’re sure to understand.

First, there’s the idiocy route. You can willingly swallow all of the contrived, man-made drivel that’s fed to you. Accept that the earth is only 10,000 years old. Learn about various deities and such. Put your trust in someone who thinks they know what they’re talking about.

You’ll be saved, enlightened, and greeted with tremendous fanfare when you die… unless of course all the stuff you were taught turns out not to be true. Nah… if the guy in the robe says it’s true, it must be true. Ya gotta have faith, right?

Next, we have the hypocrisy option. In this case your neocortex is strong enough to identify various bits of utter nonsense in the religious teachings that others are trying to ram down your throat. You have a working B.S. detector, but it’s slightly damaged. You’re smart enough to realize that earth is probably a lot older than 10,000 years and that pre-marital (or non-marital) sex is a lot of fun, but some B.S. still gets through.   You know homosexuality should not be a criminal offense and that it occurs in nature all the time.  You don’t swallow all the bull, but you still identify yourself as a follower of a particular religion, most likely because you were raised in it and never actually chose it to begin with.

To you it’s just a casual pursuit. You’re certainly not a die-hard fundamentalist, but you figure that if you drink the wine and chew the wafer now and then, it’s good enough to get you a free ride into a half-decent afterlife. You belong to the pro-God club.

In this case you become an apologist for your own religion. You don’t want to be identified with the extreme fanatics, nor do you want to be associated with the non-believers. You figure you can straddle both sides. On earth you’ll basically live as a non-practitioner (or a very sloppy and inconsistent practitioner), but when you eventually die, you’ve still got the membership card to show God.

Do you realize how deluded that is?

8) Inherited falsehood

What if you were born into a different culture? Would you have been conscious enough to find your way back to your current belief system? Or are your current beliefs merely a product of your environment and not the result of conscious choice?

Many religious teachers (i.e. priests, rabbis, ministers, etc.) are just brainwashed slaves themselves. They don’t have any real authority and aren’t even aware of the agenda being set by their superiors. This makes them better minions because they actually believe the B.S. they’re spouting and don’t know the truth behind it. A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar, but that’s as far as they get. They may interact with the bartender, but they never get to know the guy who owns the bar. They suffer from inherited falsehood just like everyone else.

Is your religion based on the inspired word of God? No more than this article. Just because someone says their text is divinely inspired doesn’t mean it is. Anyone can claim divine inspiration.

Even the central figures in major religions didn’t follow the religions that were spawned in their names. If they didn’t swallow the prevailing “wisdom” about gods and spiritual leaders and such, why should you? If you want to be more like the people you worship, then follow their lead by striking out on your own.

9) Compassion in chains

Religious rules and laws invariably hamper the development of conscience. This causes all sorts of problems like pointless violence and warfare. Those who preach nonviolence as a rule or law tend to be the most violent of all.

When you externalize compassion into a set of rules and laws, what you’re left with isn’t compassion at all. True compassion is a matter of conscious choice, and that requires the absence of force-backed rules and laws.

Historically speaking, religious people love to fight each other. Instead of unconditional love, they practice conditional loyalty.  If you disagree with them, you’re a target… either for conversion or destruction (both of which are really the same thing).

If you value the ideal of unconditional love, you won’t find it in the practice of religion. Real compassion doesn’t arise from believing in God, from practicing various rituals, or from studying the concept of karma. Compassion can only result from conscious choice, and this requires the freedom to choose without the threat of punishment or the promise of reward. If you’re obedient to your faith, it’s a safe bet that compassion is absent from your life.

10) Faith is fear

Religion is the systematic marketing of fear.

That’s the kind of nonsense religion pushes on people. They train you to turn your back on courage, strength, and conscious living. This is stupidity, not divinity.

Religion will teach you to fear being different, to fear standing up for yourself, and to fear being an independent thinker. It will erode your self-trust by explaining why you’re unable to successfully manage life on your own terms: You are unworthy. You’re a sinner. You’re unclean. You belong to a lesser caste. You are not enlightened. Of course the solution is always the same — submit to the will of an external authority. Believe that you’re inadequate. Give away your power. Follow their rules and procedures. Live in fear for the rest of your life, and hope it will all turn out okay in the end.

When you practice faith instead of conscious living, you live under a cloak of fear. Eventually that cloak becomes so habitual you forget it’s even there. It’s very sad when you reach the point where you can’t even remember what it feels like to wield creative freedom over your own life, independent of what you’ve been conditioned to believe.

Stop trying to comfort yourself by swallowing religious rubbish. If you really need something to believe in, then believe in your own potential. Put your trust in your own intellect. Stop giving away your power.

Dump the safety-in-numbers silliness. Just because a lot of people believe stupid stuff doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid. It just means that stupidity is popular on this planet. When people are in a state of fear, they’ll swallow just about anything to comfort themselves.

Source: Written by Steve Pavlina on his site www.stevepavlina.com

What are your thoughts on this? Is all religion somewhat toxic to spiritual growth?  Is there a middle ground?

“Religion is the belief in someone else’s experience.  Spirituality is having your own experience.”

- See more at: http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/10-reasons-you-should-never-have-a-religion/#sthash.mihftvNa.dpuf