Quote for the Day 3/24/08

Over supper tonight, Lowell chatted while he was waiting for a ride home. He had brought a big round hay bale from home with the tractor for the cattle who live here right now.

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Lowell: Have you seen the pasture lane? It's so full of branches (from last winter's ice storm) that you can hardly pick your way through it. And when you're having to step high, and you're about 50, you get about an inch near as high as you needed to. I went splat tonight out there.

The calving is in full swing, so I'll probably be checking the cattle about twice a day. We've got five on the ground.

Hiromi (puzzled): On the ground?

Me: Calves already born.

Hiromi: Oh. How many parents do you have out there?

Lowell: 18, but one of them is the bull. He doesn't know he's a parent. I think we'll be getting about 12 more calves.

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Lowell: My fishing expedition in Costa Rica turned out about like mine usually do. No one had any trouble getting caught up on the cleaning when we brought in the catch.

Hey did you hear about the big one Joey (his eight-year-old son, my nephew) caught in Salt Creek after we got home? He got a 23-inch catfish–by far the biggest one he’s ever caught. It spit out the hook just as he landed it, but it didn't get back to the water.

Lowell (later, on the phone, with Joey coaching him): Don’t tell anyone where Joey caught that big fish. We don’t need 17 little boys with fishing poles lined up there the next time we want to go fishing there.

(I honestly don’t know where he caught that fish. Salt Creek crosses nearly all of Reno County. It could have been anywhere along its length.)

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Shane: So did you get a look around at my house? (On Sunday a bunch of the family saw his place in Abbyville for the first time. Shane wasn't along.)

Lowell: Yeah. Looks like a nice little place. Too bad though about that red paint in the kitchen. I guess you don't have much choice though. Just have to live with it I suppose.

Me: Hannah (his daughter) thought it was lovely.

Lowell: Well, teenage girls. . . . You won't have any teenage girls in the family anytime soon, but if you did, you'd see that they can get some really far out ideas.

Me: We're not having teenage girls. They're going to be older than that. But, before the summer is over, we'll have one in the family. And she likes that red paint in the kitchen. She and Shane both. That's why they picked it.

(Lowell knew that very well, of course--that Shane and Dorcas chose that red paint and Shane did the painting.)

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Lowell: Hobbs (Nathan) is going to Lancaster to work this summer, so I’ll have to get someone else to work for me.

Shane: I’ve been there and I have some friends there, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Lowell: Harry Shenk’s Mom said once “Why would anyone want to live in Kansas, unless they were born there and just never got around to moving away?" But I’m thinking about Lancaster that people living on top of each other and traffic piled up on the roads. . . .they can just have it. I think probably a lot of them were born there and just never got around to moving away.

Shane: I used to get a little defensive when someone dissed Kansas, but anymore, I keep my thoughts to myself and really don’t try to persuade anyone it’s a great place. I kinda like keeping our little secret.

Lowell: We especially don’t need people here with attitudes like that. Right?

All of us: Right.

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Yesterday, after Easter dinner at Myron and Rhoda’s house:

Lowell: Myron, remember the time you were going to show Kenneth or Lloyd or someone (Iowa cousins) how fast you could back that old green pickup? The barn was still standing after the demonstration, but one corner of it didn’t look too good. And the pickup door got bashed in enough that it never opened again–not until the guy from the junk yard came to pick it up. He got inside it and braced both feet against it and pushed till it popped open.

What was that deal though where you didn’t quite keep the truck on the road and left some pretty impressive tracks in the ditch up near the Hill place?

Myron: I think one of Joe’s boys was with me then too (same Iowa cousins) and I was going to show him how close I could get to John Griffin’s mailbox without hitting it. I didn’t hit the mailbox, but I got into the other ditch when I pulled away from the mailbox–just drove right out though.

The funny thing was that several days later, I was riding past that place with Dad and he said “Looks like someone took a little trip into the ditch there.” I said “Yeah. Sure does.”

Dad (Grinning): I think this confession was pretty long in coming.

(Ruefully) It sounds like parental discipline was lacking a little.

Myron: No. No, I think that time it was just the right amount.