Dreams, Dreams, Dreams

Posted on 25/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

There has to be a formula for what a person does to stimulate dreams, like eating a particular food or drinking a specific beverage. In my case, none of that is key. Although I know I dream if I eat late or drink too much. Last night was no exception. I drank the exact wine I always drink, in the same quantity. I ate the same portions for supper, but I had a milkshake with Lovely. If it was the milkshake, then the dreams were somewhat happy. The theater of my mind showed films of times past when I was young and still in college. The scene occurred in a field on the International Harvester Research Farm during a summer internship 1958.

A group of starched white shirt IH executives came to the field to watch a demonstration of a new machine called a hay crusher. The function of the crusher was to split the stem of green hay. Lab experiments proved that doing so would speed the drying process and allow the hay to be baled much sooner and with more nutrients preserved. My part was the least important of the execs and engineers. I drove the Farmall 560 tractor with the crusher attached over a windrow of newly cut hay. I made one pass, and the crowd of white shirts all ran to the crushed hay to pick up a handful for first-hand observation. A consensus was that the machine did a credible job of crushing. Then, one of the higher white shirts asked, “What happens if a farmer runs the machine through a muddy field? Won’t the mud mixed with hay plug the machine and jam things up?” One of the lower white shirts asked me to drive down to the creek with a five-gallon bucket and to fill it with mushy mud.” I did as requested and returned. The highest white shirt himself spread the mushy mud along the top of the windrow of newly mown hay. He wouldn’t be ambushed by some youngster who improperly applied mud. My direct supervisor took me aside and told me to drive to the end of the row and proceed forward upon signal in fifth gear and at max throttle. (At this point, I must explain that the hay crusher was a simple device consisting of two counter-rotating rollers: one was smooth, and the other was a cylinder with a series of ridges welded to it. The hay fed through the rollers was crimped and crushed between the rollers.)

I sat on the Farmall 560 at the end of the row, waiting for the signal to advance. Then, it happened: the top white shirt dropped his hand holding a white handkerchief, and I moved the throttle lever to full speed ahead and hung on for dear life. The tractor built speed and bumped down the windrow, crushing hay. As I hit the muddy section at full speed, the tractor never slowed, but mushy mud hit my back and flew all over. White shirts ran in all directions to get out of the line of fire as the counter-rotating rollers were slinging mud far and wide. I wanted to laugh but feared for my job instead. It was a successful demonstration, and no one got hurt, but they sure got dirty. The dream ended because I woke myself laughing out loud.

Filed under: Biography, family, Gardening, Humor, Manufacturing, Technology | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Still On Schedule

Posted on 21/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Every year, I set a goal to read four books per month, and I am happy to report that I am still on schedule. The most recent is titled “Life in Five Senses” by Gretchen Rubin. Ms Rubin is a remarkable writer with a vocabulary she is not afraid to use. Yet, her writing is completely readable, understandable, and entertaining. In this work, she does an outstanding job of reporting the results of her research to explore her five senses. In one experiment, she sets a goal to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art daily for a year. In another, she visits five delicatessens with her daughter and mother-in-law to explore different tastes. This is an easy trip for her because she lives in New York in Manhattan, where everything is in her immediate neighborhood. For me, this would be an all-day adventure involving driving over a hundred miles to five different towns near me. The same goes for visiting the Chicago Art Museum, which requires a forty-five-minute drive and a twenty-dollar parking fee. Nevertheless, I enjoyed her narrative of the many experiments and descriptions of how she involved her five senses. She also makes a great point that we too often overlook the small things in life that make it more exciting and enjoyable.

I recommend this book if you want to know where you stand in paying attention to your five senses.

Filed under: Biography, Book Review, Education | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Sad, Sad, Sadder

Posted on 20/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

The last book I read is The Adventurer’s Son, by Roman Dial. A true story about a man who lived his life on adventures to exotic places in search of answers to questions of biology. He raised his son and daughter to be much like him. At age twenty-eight, his son went on an adventure to the jungles of Central America, specifically the jungle in Costa Rica. Like most good sons, he messaged his father about his whereabouts and itinerary. He planned to spend four days in a specific region of the jungle, which was dense and also recommended to go with a guide. Being an experienced jungle hiker, he opted to go solo. The message he sent his parents was the last time they heard from him. He vanished. His father left immediately on a course to find him. The remainder of the story involves the search. For me, this story was a page-turner. I could not put it down. I rated it five stars on my reading list, and recommend it to anyone interested in biographies, adventures, and scientific discovery.

As a father, I don’t know if I would drop everything to go into a jungle to hunt for my missing son. I certainly sympathize with the Dial family on the loss of their only son, but I’m not sure I would have gone to the trouble that this man and wife did to find their kid. The story is a sad one, and the ending is sadder.

Filed under: Biography, Book Review | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Pencil Stubs

Posted on 16/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Yesterday, I started a new Intarsia project. It’s been a few months since I completed ‘Libre’ the Bald Eagle, and my weary bones yearn for the woodshop. My projects always begin with a model. Usually, it is a photograph of something that moves me. This time, the subject is a piece of art I bought on one of our trips to Arizona. It is a three-dimensional, life-size rendering of a Lotus leaf. The artist found the leaf in the Far East and then used it to cast a mold. He then filled the mold with an epoxy ceramic material to form a hard rendering. On this casting, he applied various colors. While the paint was still fluid, he spun the casting to move the paint outward from the center. The effect is similar to that of a tie-dyed shirt, with the colors spread through the various veins within the leaf. It has been one of my favorite pieces, and I have promised to give it to my stepdaughter as part of an inheritance from her mother.

The next step in my process is to make a paper pattern of the model. In this case, I used a digital photo of the artwork and projected the image using my computer. I taped a large sheet of vellum paper to the screen and began tracing. I dug around in my desk drawer for a pencil and found a Number 2 yellow wood Faber Castel with an eraser that is petrified to the end. The pencil had been sharpened using a hand crank sharpener, giving the tip a perfect conical shape. The lead was rather blunt from prior use, and it needed resharpening. That is when my brain kicked out a memory from seventy-five years ago. I was ten and using a similar yellow pencil to do my homework. My Grandpa Jim was living with us for the winter and sat in the armchair reading his four-week-old Hungarian newspaper in the living room. The memory is somewhat sketchy about why I threw a tantrum to get my pencil sharpened, but it needed sharpening. Grampa Jim pulled out his pocket knife and chipped away to give me a stubby-looking sharp point. My problem was that I insisted on having a perfect machine-sharpened conical point. He shook his head and let me go about screaming and hollering for a perfectly conical point. I left him to carry on with my mother for a conical point. After she ignored my demands, I returned to the living room, and Grandpa handed me a pencil with a perfectly conical point. He had taken the time to carve the wood into a perfect cone with lead to match. I was shocked, amazed, and satisfied that he had done it for me.

I don’t own a hand crank pencil sharpener anymore, and I didn’t even have a portable plastic jig with a blade that, when twisted around the end of a pencil, will result in a perfectly conical point, but I did find a pocket knife with a somewhat dull blade that I used to resharpen my number two yellow pencil. I hacked away the wood, scraped the carbon into a point, and traced the work while remembering Grandpa’s patience and skill with a pocket knife. It was a mellow moment.

Filed under: Aging, Grampa Jim, Hobby, Memories | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

My Father’s Snack

Posted on 08/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

This morning was different for me. For once, Lovely was up by nine o’clock and ready. to go. I finished my bowl of Cheerios, and we were off to Darien, about forty minutes away. She had an appointment with a Paralegal who helped her submit a document to the government of Lithuania. The document states that she is still alive, living in a foreign country, and she still needs her pension.

On the way home, we stopped at a delicatessen called Old Vilnius. We cannot ever pass by a foreign delicatessen. Lovely shops for her dark rye bread, which she swears is only available in this store, and some other European foods, which she swears are superior to the same item made in America. Believing that European butter is better than American butter is hard, but I play the game to keep the peace. While she shopped for her goodies, I shopped for mine. I found two items, which I put into our basket. We have had a long-standing argument about what vodka is made from, and I always lose because Americans don’t know about European liquor. I found a bottle of potato vodka that went into my basket. In the cooler section, I found some slab bacon cured in salt. My parents made this delicacy at home when I was a kid, and I often sat with my dad when he had his after-work snack, and we enjoyed pieces of salt-cured bacon fat on pieces of heavy rye bread. It is delicious.

Once we left the deli a hundred dollars poorer but with a hundred dollars worth of delicious junk food, we happened upon the Frankfort Farmer’s Market. Although it was a chilly 50 degrees with a wind to make it even more refreshing, we stopped. We found some fresh organic garlic. At that booth, they also featured smoked garlic, which I had never had before, so I bought smoked garlic, Lovely bought regular garlic to make her pickled cucumbers. The young lady who waited on us was from Wisconsin, and I discussed how to plant and grow garlic with her. I learned a lot. She then sold me a loaf of freshly baked garlic rye bread.

At the next booth, I bought a couple of ears of sweet corn and a single Hungarian banana pepper. The wind chill affected Lovely’s attitude, so we made a beeline for the car. Except, I stopped at a booth selling apples, blueberries, and a few vegetables. I made the fatal mistake of asking where the man in the booth was from. It turns out he, lived within two miles of our family farm in Covert, Michigan. I’ve never found anyone who knows that Covert actually exists, much less to be your neighbor. We talked about the chilly weather, and he told me that last night in Covert, they had sleet. Sleet, for the uninformed, is frozen water falling from the heavens. Talking about frozen water was the final nail in our Farmer’s Market coffin, and we then did high tail it to the car.

Once back home and warmed up, I had to try my purchases. I made a small plate of garlic rye bread topped with chunks of salt pork, and a shot of potato vodka on the side. It was delicious and reminded me of sitting next to Dad while he cut the bread and the pork into little chunks for us to eat. Dad never drank vodka with his snacks, and come to think of it, he didn’t drink vodka at all. The next generation always has to add a new dimension to the story.

Filed under: Biography, Cooking, Food | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »