Looking at the dark side of life

My neighbor John stopped by to visit me on Monday.

Timmy was home from school as it was the end of the quarter. John used to stop by every single day until Tom and I got jobs away from our farm. John lives alone on his farm five miles from our farm. He lived with his mother until she moved to town about 15 years ago. I asked him how he was doing and he said, "Oh, fair to middling. My water froze up when it was cold, but that was to be expected. I had the plants in the house upstairs to keep warm, and they froze a bit too."

"Didn't you have your furnace on?" I asked.

"Well, some. I tried to keep the house heated with the wood stove in the living room. I guess it wasn't warm enough," he said.

I then asked him how his cattle were doing.

"Oh, pretty good. I am going to run out of hay this year. I will have to buy hay for the first time," he said.

"How many cattle do you have?" I asked.

"Twenty-two, plus the two draft horses," John said.

John's dad, Keith farmed with draft horses until he died in 1980. John doesn't use his horses; he just likes having them around. His dad, Keith was a reader and a deep thinker and felt that people needed to use less energy and take care of the land hands-on. He was extreme in his thinking and rather ornery in that it was difficult to work along side him.

My husband, Tom went to help him one summer when he was threshing oats with an old threshing machine. Keith had a tremendous amount of energy and moved nonstop. Tom was impressed with how the machine worked and the large stack of straw it made. Tom couldn't work around the dust from the straw and grain very long as he has asthma.

John had a hard time working with his dad, as Keith lost patience with him. My impression of John's dad was that he felt that no one could work as hard as he could.

Keith's work ethic didn't rub off on his son. John takes each day slower and will not be pushed. He doesn't like to fuss with machinery and is limited on what machinery works on his farm.

John mentioned that hardly anyone puts up small bales of hay anymore and he doesn't have the equipment to haul large bales of hay to his farm. He has to figure out some way to get the hay to his cattle. I asked him how some acquaintances of ours were doing and he said, "Not so good. They are having money problems and can't keep up with the upkeep on all their buildings."

I asked him about a few other people, and they had problems too. I didn't want to hear depressing news about anyone else. John always brings up the negative news about any and everything.

In his house his mother had a plaque that had Murphy's Law written on it. Murphy's Law states that anything that could go wrong will go wrong. That is John's philosophy in life. He relishes the fact when things do go wrong he isn't surprised as he figures everything will usually go wrong. He is more amazed and suspicious when things turn out right.

Since I didn't want to hear any more negative news that made people look bad, I gave John a book to read and went about my work. He read for about an hour and a half. He stopped reading for a while when he ate lunch with Timmy and me. I talked to my daughter Bridget on the phone after John left. I told her that John had been to visit and that he had spent most of the time reading a book. Bridget said that she would like to be able to go to someone's house and just sit and read.

"That sounds really relaxing to do because then nothing is expected of you," she said.

"Yeah, I guess it is nice," I said.

I then thought that John must be surprised that he had a positive visit. But knowing him, he will say something negative about something to someone later on. That's just his way.