The Gentleman Corn Husker
Robert was a native of the great state of Nebraska. As fate would have it, he didn’t literally grow up on a farm, but he was raised on several of them. One of six kids, he was the only son of a agriculture broker. His native land was mostly home to buffalos and Native Americans before it was descended on by European settlers. He loves his home state, not with the pride of a lawmaker or man of power, but with the pride of a native son who truly believes that it is the best place on earth to live. Lincoln and Omaha were far cries from the streets of the D.C. metro and ones on which he was far more comfortable.
Only in Nebraska could one of the 20 largest cities, the word city is loosely used here more of a town really with a population just under four thousand, a town where by 20 on average all but nine girls that age have moved away, to other cities some to other towns, some to cities like Omaha and a few who dared to places where they could be anonymous. At the same time the towns population of women between seventy and one hundred was 476 women who had largely made their lives and raised their families here, a lot of widowed women would never find another to share their companionship with based on the fact that the men died young here, dropping off dramatically after the age of sixty. There were only two hundred men in the same age range of those women, and their grandchildren were leaving en masse especially the girls.
He knew the corn business inside and out, he understood the cattle business but hated it. The smell, the cruelty, the deranged and maniacal series of gates used to herd cows through large filthy yards to the slaughter. Did they know? Could they tell? They had to smell the blood as they drew near, complaining in loud disturbed moo’s. Corn didn’t need to be killed. Had he actually grown up on a farm, he would have realized that animals were meat and we were meant to eat them. He would have raised capons and chicks, calves and lambs only to sell as food or butcher them and eat them himself. Had he actually grown up on a farm, he would have participated at 4-H events and attended Future Farmers of America Meetings and socials would have been a given. Fools who think food comes from supermarkets with out blood sacrifice and surrendering their lives for our sustenance never lived on a farm, never suffered through a dry year or herd filled with disease that would put the family’s modest income in peril. These are the people he loves, that he serves, that he longs to get back to each time he arrives for session. He’d rather be sitting at the Main Street café in Lincoln, talking with the local farmers and worrying about how much rain they have or haven’t had. Fishermen always seem to tell fish tales about the one that got away. Farmers do the same thing with rain, especially when it’s dry, embellishing an eighth of an inch here and quarter of an inch there. Sitting in a local place in the morning after the work had been started and the day had begun fueling their bodies for the long days in the fields that were to come, the endless puttering and hoping that entailed farming. They laughed, jokee and spun tales to keep themselves entertained and amused during the unrelenting journey that is a life. Farming to feed an ungrateful and presumptuous world. Farming was at first only for one’s subsistence, then for their towns and now is dominated by conglomerates that have all but swallowed the small family farm into its ranks, preying on bad years buying farms out of bankruptcy and taking away generations of memories. Sending those families to toil fulltime in other businesses that dot the landscape, giant retailers, home improvement super stores. It is the corporate equivalent of trading beads with the natives before sending them to reservations to keep the problems to a minimum and the trouble well off to the side. These are his friends, the people he tries hardest to please. The place he feels he belongs. Home is a far cry from the crime, failing schools and misery that is most often associated with the nation’s capital. Lincoln is a simpler place with mostly genuine people and enough size to blend in, but small enough to always have a friend around the corner.
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copyright 2008 Michael Malflic
