77 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
77 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
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HE CAN AFFORD TO THROW IT AWAY
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By M.L. Verb
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The first thing I noticed recently about the old garage on the farm where my
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father grew up is that it wasn't there. But I wandered around back of the barn
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and milking parlor (where the cows aren't anymore) out by where the train tracks
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aren't anymore, and there it was, a machine shed now.
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When things in my house -- and yours, too, I'll bet -- get old and useless we
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throw or give them away. But farmers -- especially in this bum agricultural
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economy -- can't afford to do that. Oh, I guess my uncle, who runs the farm in
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central Illinois, could afford to throw away a lot more than he does, but years
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of resourcefulness have made it hard for him to pick up such new bad habits.
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Where that old garage used to be he's built a fancy new garage with room for
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his Corvette, which he'd be glad to sell you, his Seville and maybe a pickup
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truck or two. Not his old red Chevy pickup, which was new for about a day and a
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half back in 1951 or so. That has been recycled into a place to sit out in what
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used to be the old milking parlor, which in turn has been recycled into a tool
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shed and fix-it shop.
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I remember years when he recycled part of the barnyard into a slick new
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milking parlor. My uncle was proud of it. He wouldn't mind getting visitors up
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at 4:30 or so in the morning to show them how much the cows liked it.
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He sold his dairy herd a few years ago to concentrate on corn and soybeans,
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and has recycled the new milking parlor into a shoe store warehouse. He didn't
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exactly mean to, but one of his sons-in-law owns some shoe stores and needed
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place to store extra shoes, so there they are.
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The farm is like a clever puzzle that's constantly being pulled apart and put
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back together in a new way.
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My uncle thought about tearing down the old barn but changed his mind.
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Instead he ripped out the hay loft, thus making space to park the tractors and
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other tall machines. Then he jerry-rigged a big back door on the barn by
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recycling the rollers off the old garage door.
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Out back of the barn there used to be railroad tracks. Even used to be a
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railroad. My father thinks it's either funny or philosophical to tell about
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being a boy there watching the trains go by with either his father or
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grandfather. When the final car had passed the old man would say to the boy,
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"Well, the last car was behind again."
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Anyway, not long ago the railroad went bust or something and tore up all its
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old tracks and sold some of the right-of-way to my uncle, who has recycled it
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into an addition to the corn field.
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The rule seems to be to use everything at least 100 times and when you've got
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a problem, try something, no matter how goofy it sounds.
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An old house that isn't there any more is a good example. When my grandfather
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took over the farm from his father, he needed a bigger house, so he simply moved
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the old house a few dozen yards closer to the road for my great-grandparents to
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use.
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When my great-grandparents died my grandfather gave their old house to a
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relative on the next farm south, whose own house had burned down. They simply
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moved that old house again, and there it stood for decades.
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Recently, however, it had fallen into considerable disrepair in its role as a
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tenant rental house. (Apparently it was in roughly the same shape my uncle's
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old ed pickup truck is in now.) There was some discussion about saving it but
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for once the prevailing opinion leaned in favor of demolition.
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So someone called up the folks at the fire department and suggested they come
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out and burn it down. Which they did. My uncle says the fire department there
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gets lots of calls to burn things down. It's good practice for them, I guess,
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and it means a dead house can be useful unto the cold- cinder end.
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All this recycling and resourcefulness impresses me. In fact, I am mulling
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over the idea of arranging to be sent to the old family farm at the apparent end
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of my usefulness in life in the hope that someone can salvage me somehow. Just
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as long as it doesn't involve my being burned down by the fire department.
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