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Monday, April 13, 2015

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 13th 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 39th 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 21st 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.