Rural Delivery

Out here we pretty much ignore the TV weather forecasts. They aren’t accurate more than half the time, so we’d do as well flipping a coin.

It’s not that meteorologists in these parts are poorly trained or that our weather is particularly tricky. They’re just demographically handicapped. They forecast weather for their primary viewing audience, the “big city,” which is 25 miles away and 600 feet lower.

Folks like us in outlying rural areas are on our own, which is how we like it most of the time.

We don’t follow the “news” much, either. It’s all about city life, mostly, and one ghastly murder after another. There’s not enough minutes on the TV news to tell us about all the shootings and robberies and child abuse going on. There’s not enough pages in the newspaper.

No wonder the media never gets around to reporting on how our neighbor’s breast cancer miraculously went into remission or how the Kiwanis constructed a band shell for the park. Some small towns have a weekly newspaper that prints news of kids that aren’t in trouble and local governments that aren’t corrupt, but they don’t sell many copies.

Around here, when folks want “up-to-the-minute” news they don’t subscribe to CNN, they buy a scanner. For less than the cost of a couple months of cable TV, a person can buy an emergency frequency scanner that tunes into the radio calls of police, firefighters and ambulance crews. The guy who runs the local gas station has one, and so do several neighbors.

If we need to check on winter road conditions we huddle around the scanner down at the Co-op and listen to the snowplow drivers chatter at each other. If there’s an accident somewhere, we’ll hear about it on the scanner long before it’s news.

Some folks, like the neighbors we play cards with, leave their scanners on night and day. Over pinochle on a Friday night we listened as a crime wave swept through our town.

First, the local police stopped a couple cars for speeding — out-of-staters, of course — and checked on a barking dog down by the gravel pit. We all knew which dog they were talking about.

Later, there was a call about a suspicious person behind the bar and the Sheriff went to investigate. After a few moments he called for a backup. The “suspicious person” he went looking for was nowhere to be found, but a young kid he questioned outside the bar had gotten mad and was using “loud profanities,” the Sheriff said. The 16-year-old boy was arrested.

After that, the night was quiet until the State Police were contacted by a woman who had been traveling northbound on the state highway when a dark-colored van passed her recklessly. As the van passed, a passenger yelled at the woman and made an obscene gesture. A patrolman said he would investigate.

As we folded our last hand, we reflected on how fortunate we were to live where the most serious crimes of that particular night were bad manners.

• Rural Delivery

Hard frost again last night. My footsteps leave dark impressions on the ground. The breath of the cows rises in clouds as they huddle together like football players at Soldier Field on a December Sunday.

Fewer grasshoppers now, I notice. They used to scatter through the wheat stubble on my approach. Only a few stragglers remain. The rest have died or gone off to hide from winter.

The crisp night is giving way to a warm morning glow. It will be an “Indian Summer” sort of day, the kind we missed out on last year when winter dropped in early. Some of our coldest weather came in November rather than January, where it belongs.

Most of nature depends on a steady progression of seasons.

These cool nights encourage the growth of fat and fur on dogs, cats, horses and most other warm-blooded critters. My beard and waistline, too, seem to grow more readily this time of year. By winter solstice, or late December, we’ll be well acclimated to the cold.

Reptiles, insects and other creatures make similar adjustments. Many bury themselves in the most protected spot they can find and slip into a deep torpor, like hibernation, which lasts throughout the winter.

Even no-see-ems — those nearly invisible biting midges that infiltrate lawns and campsites, nibbling at whatever skin they latch onto — have a nifty wintertime adaptation. Their bodies start producing a protein this time of year that acts as a sort of antifreeze.

Scientists don’t know exactly how the no-see-em, or Culicoides variipennis sonorensis as they call it, accomplishes this winterization. They have discovered that if the insect is suddenly exposed to a temperature of 14 degrees for two hours it will die. But if the no-see-um is first exposed to 41 degrees for an hour, it can survive at 14 degrees for up to three days.

This wintertime acclimation, known as “cold hardening,” is also found in the pesky fruit fly and the common house fly. It is one reason why a hard winter won’t always kill off an insect population and the diseases it carries.

My own cold hardening begins with snow tires on the truck, weather-stripping around the windows and doors, and a couple cords of firewood split and stacked. There’s still gloves and boots to buy, trees to prune, feed to stock up on, and garden beds to mulch. I don’t have any antifreeze proteins in my system that I know of, but I’ve noticed that 30 degrees isn’t as chilling as it was a couple weeks ago.

Call me Pooh Bear.

My three-year-old son is Piglet. We walk side by side, the best of friends, in pursuit of adventures. All things are possible.

Some days I am Rabbit, who frets and worries, or the bouncing Tigger, especially after a cup too much of coffee.

Then there are those somber, feeling-sorry-for-myself times when I’m accused of being Eeyore. “Thanks for noticing me.”

Benjamin, my son who is sometimes Piglet, depending on his mood, sees people as animals. This is quite normal, the childhood experts assure me.

Young children dream animals too, or so I’ve read. Owls and bears and cows and dogs impersonate people in their fantasies. The courage of the lion or the stubbornness of the goat matches the traits of family members or friends.

No one has to teach children to make these connections. They do it naturally. It probably comes with being human.

Some Amazonian native peoples believe that when you are born there is an animal born with you at the same time. It lives with you and protects you, even if you reside in the city and it dwells in the jungle. When you die, it dies with you to guide you back to the spirit world.

Most cultures have animal guides of one sort or another, whether it’s Coyote the Trickster, a witch’s black cat, or Flipper.

As a species, we moved out of the jungles and the forests long ago, but there are still wild places within us. Our brains have gotten bigger and more complicated, but there’s still an animal brain at every stem that’s watching out for snakes and getting anxious about dinner.

If you hunt or fish, you’ve probably experienced this animal more recently. Stalking a prey or butchering a kill exercises a bond that’s as old as human history. Eating the flesh of an animal, whether baked or broiled or fried or barbecued, can be a spiritual experience. Life succumbs to life.

Vegetarianism, for all its merits, lacks this primal communion.

As a parent, I find that one of my more distasteful chores is shattering illusions and reinforcing our culture’s agreed-upon realities. When Benjamin runs around on all fours, barks and starts to drink from the dog’s dish I must remind him that he is a boy, not a dog.

There are no ghosts in the dark, I tell him, and no spooky pumpkins hiding under the bed. Pretend lions are not real and hyenas are not likely in Idaho.

And no, I am not Pooh Bear.

• Rural Delivery

First, you start with a pumpkin seed, but not just any pumpkin. Seek out seeds of a Halloween or Jack-o’-Lantern or Spookie variety. You want a pumpkin that matures to the size and shape of your own head.

Sow your seed just before the last frost in mounds of soil and manure. And as you plant, reflect on how deeply the roots of pumpkins sink into history. Native to the Americas, pumpkins fed Indian tribes before Columbus landed and gave white settlers in frontier cabins sustenance through cold, dark winters.

Grow pumpkin vines in full sun with plenty of water. When they sprout small pumpkins, pinch off the tips of the vines. When the pumpkins are six inches across, pick all but one pumpkin per vine.

Turn your pumpkins gently in their final weeks of growth so they don’t grow flat on one side. If one becomes your favorite, reflecting in its ribbed surface something inside your soul, scratch your name or initials in its skin.

Pick pumpkins after fall frosts have wilted the vines. Find the one you personalized, or select another you find most interesting and cut it from the vine with a knife, leaving at least a three-inch stem. Wipe its surface clean with a damp towel.

The first Jack-o’-Lanterns were large turnips grown in Ireland long before pumpkins crossed the Atlantic and, according to folklore, Jack was a sinful blacksmith who had played one too many practical jokes. Neither Heaven nor Hell would have him and Jack was doomed to walk in darkness until Judgment Day.

Just before he was thrown out of Hell, Jack was eating a turnip. Thinking quickly, he snatched up some of Hell’s burning embers and put them in the hollowed out turnip to light his way through the darkness.

Cut an opening around the stem wide enough for your hand. Pull on the stem to remove the lid and then scoop out the seeds. Washed and dried, pumpkin seeds can be baked at low heat on a lightly oiled cookie sheet for a half hour. With a little salt, they make a pleasant snack.

Next, draw a face on your pumpkin. Let your imagination loose. Give free rein to any feelings or emotions. The best pumpkin faces express something unspeakable.

With a sharp knive, carve out the features. Notice how easily the blade moves through the pumpkin shell and how quickly the face emerges. What was once plant is now part animal; the pumpkin becomes a Jack-o’-Lantern.

Place a cat food or tuna can inside the pumpkin for a candle holder. Light the candle and close the lid. Turn off the TV and stereo. Turn out the lights. Watch and listen.

In the dark you may feel the onset of winter and its long nights. In the glow of the candlelight you may face demons. And in the silence, if you listen carefully, you may hear the shuffle of Jack’s footsteps — and ours — crossing the darkness.

• Rural Delivery
• In Season: Pumpkin
• Pumpkin Pop Quiz

“Logs to Burn! Logs to Burn!”
“Everyone needs logs to burn!”
Hear the woodman sell his wares.
What trees they come from, no one cares.Ah! But here’s a word to make you wise,
When you hear the woodman’s cries.
Never heed his usual tale
That he has good logs for sale,
But read these lines and really learn
The proper kind of logs to burn:

“Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year.

“Chestnut’s only good, they say,
If for long ’tis laid away.

“But Ash new or Ash old
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold.

“Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last.

“It is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.

“Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
Even the very flames are cold.

“But Ash green or Ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown.

“Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.

“Apple wood will scent your room
With an incense like perfume.

“Oaken logs, if dry and old,
Keep away the winter’s cold.

“But Ash wet or Ash dry
A king shall warm his slippers by.”

What? You cannot take the word of puppets
Who speak their truths in rhyming couplets?
Will you, then, accept it plain
If we rhyme these facts in smooth quatrain:

“Oak logs will warm you well,
If they’re old and dry.
Larch logs of pine will smell,
But the sparks will fly.

“Beech logs for Christmas time,
Yew logs heat well.
‘Scotch’ logs it is a crime,
For anyone to sell.

“Birch logs will burn too fast,
Chestnut scarce at all.
Hawthorn logs are good to last,
If you cut them in the fall.

“Holly logs will burn like wax,
You should burn them green,
Elm logs like smoldering flax,
No flame to be seen.

“Pear logs and apple logs,
They will scent your room,
Cherry logs across the dogs,
Smell like flowers in bloom.

“But ash logs, all smooth and grey,
Burn them green or old;
Buy up all that come your way,
They’re worth their weight in gold.”

Ash it is, then, as you see
The best to burn since days of old.
Go now and find yourself a tree,
Make sure it™s ash, as you™ve been told.

Cut and split and laid to hearth,
This fire burns from logs that last
All through the night, it warms the heart
Such good advice from anonymous passed.

There’s a place down by the river where the bank is wide and sandy. It overlooks a low-lying rock dam over which the river spills. Behind that dam, the water is flat and calm — perfect for skipping stones across.

My son stops here every time we come by on walks or bike rides. He scrambles down to the water’s edge, scavenges for flat stones just the right size to fit between his palm and forefinger. This is where he learned to skip stones.

I started skipping stones as a toddler beside a reservoir in Montana. My family spent many weekends camped along its shore. As soon as I grew bored watching the folks fish, which didn’t take long, I took to skipping stones — well away from the anglers, of course. I threw for hours.

Mastery of the art didn’t come easy, I am sure. My son struggled through many unsuccessful attempts to imitate my slicing sidearm motion. His stones always fell into the water with a thud, making a single splash, until one day — quite without warning — he sent one skimming across the river one, two, three and four skips. He’s been skipping without coaching or instruction ever since.

Finding the right stone is the real trick to successful stone skipping. It needs to be heavy enough to carry well, but also small enough to fit comfortably in yourhand. It should be flat, with rounded edges, the kind that most often lie along the banks of rivers. Locating a good supply beside a lake, far from moving water, can be difficult.

You wedge the stone along its edges between your forefinger and thumb, lean over to the side, and fling the stone sidearm while letting go of the thumb first to encourage a fast spinning motion. The stone should fly from your hand horizontal to the water and barely skim across the surface as gravity gradually brings it down.

A French physicist, Lydéric Bocquet, reduced the skipping action of the spinning stone to a mathematical formula. His equations showed that the faster it is travelling, the more times it will bounce. To bounce at least once without sinking, the stone needs to be travelling at a minimum speed of about 1 kilometer per hour.

The spin is critical, because it keeps the stone fairly flat from one bounce to the next. It also has a gyroscopic effect, preventing the stone from tipping and falling sideways into the water.

To match the world record of 38 bounces — set by Jerdone Coleman-McGhee on the Blanco River in Texas in 1992 — Bocquet calculates that a stone 10 centimeters wide would have to be travelling at about 40 kilometers per hour and spinning at 14 revolutions a second.

My son and I are not throwing for any records, but we do keep count of the bounces and with each successive throw we try to match or better our day’s best. Sometimes it’s just the beauty of the motion that captivates, or the thrill of seeing the stone arc through space.

I’ve heard that the Inuits of Alaska skim rocks across icefields and that Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia do the same thing on sand. In Scotland, the World Stone Skimming Championship is held each September on the island of Easdale, famous for its slate deposits and the millions of flat water rounded pebbles on its beaches.

There must be something powerfully primal about an activity that compels young boys to forego video games and grown men to set aside their ambitions to engage in a sport without prey or pay. Our genetic memories keep bringing us back to these shores where we’ve played for millenia. The same stone, perhaps, that flew from the fist of a pre-Columbian child is pulled from up from the earth by this 21st century youngster, wedged between his fingers and flung back out into space, skimming one, two, three, four and five (!) times across the surface before sinking back down into the depths of time.

Fatherhood ages a man; parenthood, in general, does the same.

Before we became parents, my wife and I lived somewhat outside of time. Days and years went by, seasons came and passed, and we went about the business of pursuing degrees and careers oblivious to the passage of time. We got older, but didn’t notice.

Now that we have a little boy who was recently a baby and is about to become a preschool child, we see time rushing through us with the urgency of a spring runoff. As the marks on his growth chart climb higher and his shoe sizes double, I feel the present slipping into tomorrow. If only I could hold on to this moment a little longer…

Folks who live their lives in extended families, with grandparents sharing the same roof or living and laboring nearby their children and their babies and grandbabies, probably experience the passage of time more strongly than those who don’t. They can feel the aging of parents and grandparents when they hold a hand or kiss a cheek. They can see the weakening, shrinking and wrinkling effects of time and recognize that they, too, will follow this course.

My parents and their parents were all raised in families such as these and so were my wife’s relations, but our parents left the family fold like so many other Americans after World War II to pursue their fortunes in far-off places and never returned. We grew up at a distance from our grandparents, seeing them on holidays once or twice a year, and experienced their deaths as sudden disasters rather than as part of the flow of life.

Now that I recognize these things and can see how this kind of lifestyle, divorced from the family farm, has become the norm in American society I wonder if some folks avoid family in order to avoid time. If we live where life’s seasons are less noticeable, as in southern California, will we remain young?

Getting away from family can be liberating, of course, and most of us have been ready, like Huck Finn, to “lit out for the territories” where we’ll be free of obligations and expectations. We’ll also be free of context and history and, perhaps, meaning.

A nation of Huck Finns would be truly independent, each person responsible only to himself and his own self-guided moral code. There would be no taxes, no schools and no government. Life would be a series of adventures lived fully in the moment, with no thought of past or future, because this is all we can be sure of, here and now.

Life, after all, arises from nothing and ends in timeless oblivion….

But that’s not how things are at all! The sun doesn’t rise out of nowhere and set for eternity. It dawns again and again and again. The seasons, the tides and the phases of the moon don’t begin and end, they rotate.

Plants don’t emerge from nothing and die back into emptiness. They rise from the seeds of seeds of seeds of plants whose decomposed bodies help feed them. And, in the same sense, our lives are rooted in a past which emerges in the present to flower and fade tomorrow.

Time, as I see it, is more a circle or a spiral than a straight line, repeating itself endlessly with slight changes in every turn. Parenthood and family don’t turn the clock, but they certainly make its movements more visible.

When my little boy asks, “What’s tomorrow?” I look into our common future and forecast: “Tomorrow will be a lot like today, but with a few surprises.”

• Rural Delivery
• Family Gathering

Plants get sick. They develop soft rot and leaf spot and cankers of all sorts. They suffer ulcerous lesions, mildews, and various wilts and scabs.

Apple trees get fire blight, which blackens their leaves and twigs and is sometimes fatal. Potatoes are susceptible to late blight, as 19th century Ireland learned too well, and grapes are vulnerable to powdery mildew, which nearly wrecked the French wine industry.

In the U.S. alone, there are more than 25,000 known plant diseases causing crop losses of several billion dollars annually.

Figuring out how plants defend themselves against disease and bolstering those defenses has been a priority for agricultural researchers.

Much study has been done on the activation of the “defense genes” which encode the proteins of plant cells with protective functions. Using gene splicing techniques, scientists have learned how to activate the cell’s defenses before a pathogen attacks, an important breakthrough in crop protection.

Yet, while scientists have looked closely at the cells of plants and figured out how they protect against disease, until lately they passed over one peculair aspect of resistance: cell suicide.

When a disease appears on a plant the cells at the front lines often collapse and die. This has been called a “hypersensitive response” because it happens before the cells have actually been attacked.

At the Salk Institute for Biological Studies scientists closely observing the hypersenitive response noticed a buildup of hydrogen peroxide inside the cells.

The scientists watched as the hydrogen peroxide caused a cross-linking of structural polymers in the cell wall, making it tougher and harder to penetrate, much like a self-sealing tire. The chemical also triggered the pre-programmed death of the suicide cells, if you will, and alerted other nearby cells to the presence of an invader.

By checking the advance of the disease and alerting other defense cells, suicide cells give the plant a chance to produce antibiotics and raise other defenses. Their sacrifice, in some cases, makes a life-or-death difference to the plant.

Knowing how the hypersensitive response works will lead to techniques for stimulating it artificially. Plants will soon be genetically engineered to produce hydrogen peroxide in their suicide cells more readily after a pathogen attack.

How this will effect crop protection efforts and food supplies remains to be seen. But unlike attempts to control disease by attacking pathogens, this approach delivers its prescription directly to the plant: Get well soon.

• Rural Delivery
• Sacrificial Cells
• Plant Cell Poster

Moving to the country? You’re going to love it… maybe.

If you are anything like the thousands of folks fleeing the “rat race” of city life each year by taking up residence in some small town or rural county, then you probably have some romantic notions of country life.

You expect to find less crime, less traffic and more friendly faces. That’s possible. But don’t come out here looking for Green Acres or Northern Exposure. There are no Martha Stewarts on these farms. You won’t find espresso bars or vegetarian bistros in most small towns.

All across the country, in rural places from Maine to Mendocino, there are terrible conflicts raging between folks who have lived in these places all their lives and newcomers who want to change them to better meet their expectations.

Some novice ruralites want to look at cows grazing in a pasture without having to smell them. Others expect farms to operate without machinery and harvesting to occur on bankers’ hours. And a few even want to recreate our small town business districts with boutiques and tourist attractions.

These are three of the “Top 10 Ways to Irritate a Rural Community.” The other seven include:

1. Honk If You’re Angry. Hereabouts, when someone honks a horn it’s either because they know you and are honking to say ‘Hello!” or because there’s some impending disaster.
2. Know It All. Until you’ve been around for a few years carefully avoid speaking like a local authority or tour guide.
3. Ignore the Obvious. Local customs are not that hard to figure out if you’ll just take the time to watch and listen.
4. Overpay. Rural economics are different from those in the city. Pay more for than the going rate for a house or tip a waitress too heavily and you disrupt the local economy.
5. Complain. “If you don’t like it, why did you move here?”
6. Give History Lessons. Any sentence with the phrases “Where I come from…” or “Back when I was…” is likely to be received poorly.
7. Phone Your Lawyer. Nuisance lawsuits involving pre-existing farming operations or other businesses are rarely successful, are always expensive, and are certain to make you unpopular.

As for those of us who already live here in the country, we need to talk to these newcomers, get to know them and let them get to know us.

“Good communication builds trust and allows people to discuss problems in a peaceful and respectful way,” says Dr. Timothy Kelsey, assistant professor of agricultural economics at Penn State University. “It helps neighbors learn that you are approachable and interested in their concerns. If a neighbor has a complaint about your farm, it is better that they feel comfortable enough to approach you directly instead of your hearing of it second-hand.”

Newcomers are frightening. Who knows where they came from? Who knows what they are capable of?

The best way to deal with these anxieties is to remember the story of Big Jake. It begins with a cowhand in a small town of the Old West walking into a saloon to quench his thirst. He orders a beer and while he’s standing at the bar waiting for it the saloon doors swing open and a cowboy comes in yelling, ‘Big Jake’s coming!”

Within seconds everyone in the bar clears out, leaving the cowhand standing at the bar waiting for his beer. And sure enough, a huge seven-and-a-half-foot 500-pound cowboy comes swaggering in, tearing out the front door frame with his broad shoulders.

The cowboy looks around the saloon, marches over to the cowhand, grabs him by the scruff of the neck and tosses him over the bar. “Gimme a drink!” he bellows.

The cowhand obeys, pouring a shot of whiskey and placing the bottle down next to the glass on the bar. The cowboy tosses back the shot and then bites off the neck of the bottle and drinks its contents.

The cowhand, shaking in his boots, asks, “Sir, would you care for another?”

“Nope, I gotta go,” the cowboy declares. “Big Jake’s comin’!”

Your new neighbors may look strange and do things differently. They might even be critical and hard to get along with. But at least they’re not Big Jake.