Becoming Country
Seven o’clock Sunday evening, I’m driving down country roads at twenty miles per hour. Everywhere I look, I see hay and tractors. To my right, a reaped field, hay lying in long, heaped-up rows. To my left, someone mowing their back field with a bona-fide tractor. Here’s a guy with an automatic baler — he just drives along while huge hay bales shoot out the back of his tractor’s contraption and into a big wagon. And in front of me, there’s about a hundred and fifty bales piled high on an old wagon, halfheartedly lashed down with rope.
I wonder if the whole thing could fall over, and am morosely intrigued.
My father-in-law Frank is piloting this 18-wheeler-sized hay grenade. At twenty miles per hour, we’re making very languishing progress toward my house. Toward my barn. And driving behind this wall of hay, cut and bruised and tired and with plant matter lining the inside of my nose, I realize that this is not a place I would have expected to find myself. I’ve never been a city boy, but I’ve never been this, either.
There are three steps to baling hay. First you use a machine to mow the hayfield. Then, after a day or so, you use another machine to flip it over. After letting it dry, you then use a third machine to pack the hay into bales.
I’ve learned all of this, thanks to my wife.
If snakes or rats get packed into the bales, you should pull them out. Do it carefully. They’ll be very flat and very dead, but it’s important not to pull them in half. Obey the warning labels on the tractor at all times. A label on one attachment shows a stick-figure man crawling along with a stump leg. Above the stump is a blade. Above the blade, detached and floating magically, is a foot. So don’t put your leg up under the mower, ever.
On a tractor, and only on a tractor, it is acceptable to wear a straw hat.
I’ve learned all of this. I’m taking notes. I didn’t grow up in the city or suburbia, but I’ve never slopped hogs or milked cows either. I still haven’t, but I’ve got horses and the neighbors have horses and chickens and sheep and I wonder if someone still has the hog-and-cow thing in store for me. Last summer, Frank and I built a barn. And I mean, WE built a barn. As in, there was a helper or two from time to time, but no professionals. For the most part, every nail, board, shingle, pipe, and wire out there was put in by our hands. I’ve helped with sheds. And this was the third year I’d baled hay, and I’m thinking, how long before I start wearing big belt buckles and listening to country music?
To one side of our barn is a gigantic mountain of horse manure. For those of you who have never cleaned out horse stalls, horses have very prolific asses. We’re talking almost a wheelbarrow-full per horse per day. Robin handles all of this. She fills her wheelbarrow and then runs it up the top of the crap hill and dumps it over the side. The crap hill thus grows.
And I keep thinking, am I now a farmer or something?
See, “farmer” is not an occupation. It’s an attitude. If you think a backhoe would be a good investment for household use, you’re a farmer. If you have various machines that have gigantic wheels (excluding monster trucks), you’re a farmer. If you know to put netting over blueberry bushes and a fence around your garden, you’re a farmer.
If you solve pest problems with a shovel, you’re a farmer.
Robin and I once alerted Frank to the presence of a possum in his barn. It was eating cat food and scaring away the cats. Ten minutes later, we noticed him slinking around with a shovel. There was some sort of activity and then a loud WHANG! and Frank returned to announce that he’d handled the possum dilemma.
Yesterday afternoon, I was pulling these forty-pound bales of cut grass off of a chute and tossing them up seven levels for Frank to stack. Then we’d trade. And I thought, I’ll never need to go to the gym again. Up front, on the tractor, was Uncle Jim. Jim is almost seventy and looks fifty. He’s missing his right index finger, which is a pretty hard-core injury. And again I think, this farmer thing isn’t so bad. You lose digits but gain years. Not a bad trade.
And I realize, yes, I’m kind of becoming a farmer.
Here’s how I know: I drive past new subdivisions and think, too many people around here. I look at our five acres and think, I want more. What I wouldn’t give to be able to say, “I’m going out to the back forty.” I want like five hundred acres so I can be completely isolated. I don’t want to farm it, so I guess I’m just getting the farmer attitude and not the career ambitions. But I figure I could grow a hayfield, at least. Then I could bale it and try not to lose a finger.
Last week, I stopped working at my computer long enough to go out and help the horse vet and the farrier, who needed to remove some horse shoes. A few weeks before, I went out when Herb the sawdust guy showed up to dump a huge truckload of wood shavings in a corner of the barn. All of these folks know each other. “Herb?” the farrier said, “Yeah, I know Herb. He just had me out to his place to look at some mules.”
Our realtor, he had mules.
I still don’t like country music. I can’t stand it. But everything else is suiting me. We didn’t unload the bales from the wagon last night; we get to do that tonight. We’ll spend a lot of this summer moving dirt around with the front-end loader and digging a ditch for a second length of drain tile. I’ll be helping to reshingle Frank’s garage. I’ve discovered that I don’t mind the work. I’ve also learned that horse manure doesn’t normally stink because it’s all grass. I find Mondays relaxing. All I do on Mondays is sit at my computer. This isn’t work. Weekends, that’s the time for work.
I’m trying not to develop a farmer tan. I’m saying “Yep” more. So it’s an ongoing process. Today, the vet again. One of the horses cut herself. This happens often with horses because they’re stupid. So this is what my life has become. I didn’t see it coming. But it’s progressing now, and it’s only a matter of time before I get that back forty. And overalls and a big shotgun, I suppose.
It's Raining Babies
Years ago, when my wife Robin was still in high school, her father gave her some sage advice on children and pregnancy.
“Don’t bring it home,” he told her.
This was paired with his advice on what to do when accepting dinner from a boy, in order to stay out of a position where she might feel “obligated” to said boy.
“Don’t order the lobster,” he said.
These axioms — neither bring it home nor order the lobster — sum up what I, in different words, have always understood on these subjects. But things have changed. Now, I’ve got a mother who keeps asking me where the babies are. Robin’s got a mother who asks the same.
I told Frank, my father-in-law, about this. He said, “Yeah, they would ask that.”
Even with the male contingent holding firm to their opinions (my own father swears good-naturedly when I mention this), the new opinions of our mothers have me perplexed. And after years of being told to not order the lobster and not bring it home, they’re surprised that we aren’t just falling in line on the whole baby issue.
My friend Carl was the first of my friends to have a kid on purpose. This happened not too long ago. I’ve heard of other people from my high school who are now having children. On purpose. And all I can think is, This — this having of babies — is okay now?
Take a trip back in time with me, if you will. Back in high school — and even a few times in college — someone or other would get someone pregnant. That was the terminology: “Get someone pregnant,” as if the person who got pregnant had no say in it, as if the person who “got them pregnant” just sneaked up behind them and then ran off, laughing. At these times, when someone got someone pregnant or someone became pregnant, the reaction was this:
“No!”
“Really?”
“Do his/her parents know?”
“What is he/she going to do?”
“Is she going to keep it?”
Etcetera.
I recently learned that my friend Sarah, has one of these baby things brewing. My first reaction, which I stifled by dropping a stapler onto my groin, was to ask her if she was going to keep it. I could be shocked. I could and should say something like “Ooh… I’m so sorry!”
Then a little voice in my head said, She’s twenty-six! She’s married!
Ditto Carl and his wife: I think they wanted to have a baby!
The dissenting part of my brain opined, ?!?
Yeah! That’s what a lot of people do at this time in their lives!
I thought, ?
It’s okay now!
?
That part of your brain, you can’t teach it anything.
So I called my mom, who’s always loved Sarah, and I said, “Here’s some interesting news. Guess who’s pregnant?”
She went, “Ooooh!”
I realized that I had misspoken, so I said in my most monotone, semi-irritated voice, “Not Robin.”
“Oh.”
These mothers, they forget how expensive we were. Robin and I both did everything correctly. We most certainly did not bring anything home, and now everybody but my dad and Frank wants us to do just that. This is difficult to understand. Old habits die hard and besides, we’re broke.
I asked my mom, “If we have a grandchild for you, will you pay for it?”
“Well…”
These mothers, you can’t teach them anything.
So all of a sudden, there’s this huge paradigm shift. Up until now, there’s been this big neon sign in the sky that reads, BABIES ARE BAD. Now, married and with all of my friends tying the knot, that sign has changed to read, BABIES ARE GOOD. HAVE MANY BABIES. I’m looking up at that sign, considering the fact that I’m completely and totally immature and that I don’t really want to deal with a screaming something that can’t use a toilet. I think, You’ve got to be kidding me.
I think, ?
Carl, he’s got this gonzo I.Q. and an insane lust for money. He’s been talking stocks and bonds since junior high and I wonder, does young Aiden yet have Baby’s First Guide to Mutual Funds? What about the Fisher-Price Stock Options Portfolio and Compound Interest Calculator?
I’m imagining this guy I used to know, who one of our teachers affectionately called “My little pervert,” and I’m thinking that he’s now responsible for a human life.
And I’m thinking, !
Sarah, she’s got this dog with like five teeth who’s pretty much a roommate. She says the baby kicks the dog through her stomach while the dog is on her lap and that the dog holds his furry little ground when this happens, seeming to want to say something dry and derisive about the whole situation.
Sarah and I watched The Crow about ten times when it first came out — just her and me. We posed together for photos in our yearbook and went to prom together, platonically. We hung out at Frisches’ Big Boy with a group we called the Flame Squad. At these times, Sam Quinto might be in attendance, daintily pulling the breading off of his onion rings. Kyle would sometimes talk to a can of Vannee brand barbecued beef. He’d hold conversations with it. Sarah would chime in. And now, she’s having a baby? And it’s a good thing?
I’m thinking, !!!
All of these people around me with kids in their bellies or their wives’ bellies, they’re just giving my mom more ammunition. What about you? she asks. When are you and Robin going to have kids?
I defend myself as best I can.
There are babies everywhere now. Seriously. It’s like one of those sci-fi films where aliens come out of pods from space and take over the world. They’re closing in. I’m being attacked from all sides, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold them off. I’ll try to keep this channel open for as long as I can, but the invaders are closing in on my position. Hello? World? How far have the fetuses advanced? Have they infiltrated Chicago? New York?
I’ll just stay here and man my position, and I’ll try and keep you updated on this expanding crisis. Maybe I’ll be all right if I just stay inside and don’t order the lobster. Just maybe.
The Duck Spa
Driving down the street, over a small hill and toward the state route, I always see these ducks. There’s a whole clan of them, strutting placidly about in someone’s yard. I’m not sure if this person owns these ducks; they may have just settled in. They’re fearless, as ducks are wont to be, and they always look at me as I pass, unconcerned with the fact that I’m behind the wheel of a dangerous chunk of steel. If they’re in the road, they stay there. If they’re by the side of the road, they allow me to pass without stirring — and I do mean allow me to pass, as I always get the impression that they want to stop me and check my papers. They’re surly ducks, with white feathers and bad attitudes. They’re content ducks, too. The world, she’s their oyster.
The ducks are the only ones who feel this way, because it’s been raining here for six months. You know, kind like what would have happened had God forgotten to turn off the flood on Noah.
My dad tells me that they have a drought on the east coast. I love droughts. I remember one summer back in high school when it didn’t rain in forever and all of our grass died. I was elated; the mower stayed in the garage pretty much all summer. And what did I care? I could still turn on the tap and get water to come out. The lawn was brown and I had all sorts of free time. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
Our grass is not brown this year. It’s lively, especially in the places where our dog fertilizes it. It’s a foot tall, in fact, because we can’t mow it. If we try, the lawn tractor sinks.
“The mower is broken,” Robin said last weekend. This is the other reason our grass is thriving: the mower is as surly as those ducks.
“It’s out of gas,” her dad said after inspecting it.
Even when full of gas and theoretically operational, our mower has a faulty ignition switch. If you hold it in the start position for too long, it backfires like a shotgun. My father-in-law says not to fill the gas tank and then start it right away because, you know, it might explode or something.
Here’s a question: Who decided that grass needs to be short in the first place? Why wasn’t I asked? I would have advocated leaving grass long so that every trip into the yard is an adventure. What’s lurking under the grass today? Snakes? Pigs? Civilizations of elves? And the bonus would be that every time you ran through the grass to get the mail, you’d feel like you were on an episode of Little House on the Prairie.
Down the street, the ducks have moved into the drainage ditches. I see them all along the road: these little white heads with bright orange beaks visible from the neck up, like a hot tub convention. I want to stick my head out the window and yell at them not to get too comfortable because there’s a dry spell coming. But I don’t yell. I don’t want them to be able to taunt me if I’m wrong.
Last summer, we had a barbecue. Last summer, we played croquet. Last summer, my friends Ted and Greg launched a bunch of fireworks and I wondered if they would set the back field on fire. They didn’t, but it was nice to know that it was possible.
Our horses, who would balk at fireworks this year, have their own complaints. They can’t go outside when it’s really wet because if they do, they sink. Then they sit there, knee-deep in mud, and stare at me. They seem to say, “Yeah, you just try and get me back inside. You let me out, and now I’m staying here forever.”
Under their breath, they add, “… sucker.”
When I don’t let them out, they yell at me. “Take it easy,” I say as they whinny and thrash around. “At least we got you gutters.” Until last weekend, there were no gutters on the barn. The torrential rains sloughed down the roof and fell in pools along the sides, making a sort of moat. Now, it’s only as wet outside their doors as it is everywhere else, but they don’t appreciate this. I don’t think they’ve even noticed.
Here’s a horse fact: Horses get a lot of gas from eating all of that hay and grain. If you pen them up for a few days and then let them out, they will sprint around in the mud, bucking their rear legs up in the air behind them. As they do this, they will fart loudly and with great exuberance. Over and over. It’s almost worth getting them wound up when you see it.
The horses might be going out today, and they might not. I might get to walk the dog today, and I might not. It’s all up to Nature’s whim. I only know one thing: when I see those ducks, they’ll be hot-tubbing in the ditches on the sides of the road. They’ll watch me pass, regarding me with something like contempt. And I, being a landlubber by comparison, will have no choice but to accept their stares.
They’re not at all like those ducks in The Sopranos. They’re kind of jerky.
Fly the Unfriendly Skies
I hadn’t flown since September 11th. It’s not that I was afraid to fly, or at least any more afraid than normal. It’s that I don’t like hassles. The president urged us to do our part and accept inconveniences in the name of security. I went one step further and decided to avoid inconveniences altogether, which has basically the same effect. Who needs me in those airports, making lines longer and planes fuller? I figured it was in everyone’s best interest for me to keep away, so I stayed on the couch and ate nachos. This was my duty as an American.
Finally, wanting to visit my dad in Philadelphia, I gave in. I called the airline and told them, “I need to get to Philadelphia, and I’d like to fly with my wife on the 18th of April. Do you have anything incredibly inconvenient?” They said that they’d be happy to oblige.
We arrived an hour and a half early as instructed. Security moved quickly and didn’t blink at my suspicious-looking insulin pump, which resembles a beeper I’ve tethered to my skin. Even stopping long enough to pay eight dollars apiece for bad cheeseburgers, and even allowing the time it took us to walk the three miles to the absolutely farthest gate from the terminal, we were there with more than an hour to spare.
“Do you have your ticket?” the gate agent asked me on check-in.
“It’s an e-ticket,” I told her.
“Are you sure?”
I handed her what Northwest had sent me. Across the top in large print, it read, E-TICKET.
“The computer says you have a paper ticket,” she said.
“This is paper,” I told her, waving what they had given me.
“But it’s not a paper ticket.”
“No? Then what is it?”
“It’s an e-ticket. But the computer says you don’t have an e-ticket.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “This thing here says ‘E-TICKET,’ and I HAVE it. So how do I not HAVE an E-TICKET?”
“Go to customer service,” she told me.
The woman at customer service looked at Robin’s ticket, which was identical to mine, and declared it valid. Then she looked at mine and shook her head.
“Call the number on this alleged e-ticket,” she said, pointing at a phone.
The phone prompts kept changing, trying to foil me, but I eventually tracked down a human being. He told me that he couldn’t change me to an e-ticket because I already had one.
“The folks here disagree,” I said. He mumbled, did something, and declared the problem solved.
“The problem is not solved,” the woman at customer service told me. She got on the phone and debated sending me three miles back to the main terminal for a paper ticket. Meanwhile, in the background, I heard our last boarding call.
“Explain something to me,” I said. “You have me listed as being on this flight. The gate has me listed as being on this flight. The guy on the phone has me listed as being on this flight. Nobody disagrees that I am supposed to be on this flight, which is about to leave. What am I going to do with a paper ticket, anyway?”
“After I give it to you, you’re going to give it back to me,” she said.
We boarded. The plane was tiny, with two seats on one side and one on the other. We pulled away from the gate and the captain announced that we would be delayed for a half-hour. A half-hour later, he promised to update us in a half-hour. A half hour after that, he said it might be another half-hour. After the third half-hour, he promised to update us in a half-hour. A stewardess served drinks. Just before she got to us, something started to drip on Robin. I asked for a napkin. The stewardess told us to buckle up and ran away. The plane took off, and we got wet.
This might be a good time to point out the lunacy of flying. You’re zooming through the air in a gigantic piece of steel. The steel jumps over air pockets and spills your drink in your lap. If the steel has problems, it cannot pull over. It cannot slow down. If the air gets rough, it goes faster. If the steel falls, you’d better hope you packed some aspirin. Yessir, I hate flying even under the best of conditions, and on this flight, we flew into a thunderstorm.
Lighting flashed on the left. The cityscape bounced by on the right. Our skinny piece of steel moved not only up and down but also side to side, like a car on ice. All I could think of were those ultra-fast hydrofoil boats — the ones that they show on Fox caught-on-tape programs that accidentally catch some air under their front edge and go and flipping end over end. I discovered that I had gone rigid in my seat and thought, If we’re going to crash, can’t it at least happen on the flight AFTER the vacation? Eventually, we landed bumpily and the crew thanked us for flying Northwest. I wanted to give them the finger.
We hailed a cab outside. Our driver had a bumper sticker on the Plexiglas partition which read PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN AND A SIKH. Above this was a photo of George W. Bush shaking hands with a half-dozen men in very large turbans. I mention this for no particular reason.
On our return flight, the gate agent told me that our seat assignments, made well in advance, had been scrambled randomly because the airline hated us. Robin and I sat apart. I gripped my seat for another rough landing, fifteen minutes late. This left us twenty minutes to get to our connecting flight, because we of course had to change planes in Detroit even though Detroit is farther from Philly than Cleveland.
We got off at Gate A7. Our connection was at A73. I’m not kidding.
When we made it home, I announced that I was never flying again. Robin said that I was wrong, that I would. I agreed, hating the airlines for having me so firmly in their clutches. I tried to remember that this was my duty, to accept inconveniences in the name of security. I wondered, Can I choose my inconveniences? Does it matter? Because if it doesn’t, I choose next time to stand in line at the BMV. At least that’s on terra firma.