Posted on 03/12/2008 5:32:36 PM PDT by SJackson
City living doesn't appeal to farmer By Al Batt
Hartland, Minn.
(Freeborn County)
At the age of 18, I left the farm and moved to Minneapolis, where I attended college. I came home whenever my classes, my job and chasing girls would allow.
My parents never came to visit me. My father lived on a farm and confined most of his driving to rural roads and the streets of small towns.
Once when I was home, I mentioned to my mother that she and my father should at least come once to see where I live. I didn't think much more of it, but Mom must have thought it was a fine idea and immediately went to work on Dad, because about two weeks later, she called me. My parents were going to visit me in the big city of Minneapolis.
I waited for them. I even cleaned my room. They were three hours late.
Dad got out of the car and said, "I don't like driving up here."
I told him I didn't think he was supposed to like driving in Minneapolis; no one else did. They were late because they had gotten lost. They had never really been lost before, so they didn't know how to stop and ask for directions.
I inquired as to how the drive up had been, other than the part about becoming lost, of course. I shouldn't have asked.
Mom said she hadn't seen Dad so nervous since the last time they had danced. The drive had been hard on my father. It was difficult to drive as fast as the rest of the traffic and still try to see the sign for his turn. Dad was surprised that his old car was able to go so fast.
My mother said it really bothered Dad that he could not wave at everyone he saw. Back home, Dad waved at everyone on foot, horseback, bicycle, tractor or in a vehicle.
My father said he didn't swear, but he could see where it might come in handy if a man was going to spend much time driving around Minneapolis.
"Your father even had to use his turn signals," my mother said. "It was quite a change for him. At home, he never needs to use them. Everyone knows where he is going to turn. I looked at the faces of some of the other drivers and they looked awfully grim."
"That's for sure," my father pitched in. "They appeared to be in a big hurry to get someplace that they didn't really want to go. We drove past a couple of golf courses. What a waste of good pasture. A fellow could raise a lot of cattle on those greens. We went by a couple of lakes and saw all kinds of people running around them. Why are they doing that?"
"They do it for the exercise," I answered.
"Exercise?" snorted my father. "Why don't they just get a job if they need exercise?"
My father said he was hungry. I didn't have anything to eat - I was a college student. I suggested we walk to a restaurant and give my father's nerves a chance to settle down a bit. I don't think I could have gotten him into the car again. Even a bus would have been out of the question.
"Where do you want to eat?" I asked.
"Any place as long as they have meat and potatoes," he said.
We walked to a fast-food restaurant - a famous one. My father had never been to a fast-food place before. He was definitely a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and this restaurant had French fries. They were most certainly potatoes. They had hamburgers, and they might have been meat.
My father ate the French fries and part of his hamburger, mumbling that if what he was eating was really a hamburger, they must have expanded the definition.
After eating, having a brief tour of the campus and a quick look at my what-was-clean-for-me apartment, my parents prepared to head back home to the farm. There were cows that needed milking.
My father said he was glad to see where I was living and going to school, but he hoped I wouldn't be offended if he never came to visit me again. I told him that a lot of people live in Minneapolis.
"They just think they are living," said my father, and with a wave he was gone - driving the wrong way down a one-way street.
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Good read.
My grandparents lived on a small farm on the outskirts of a indusrialized city. It was only a couple of acres but they had small farm animals that provided them with fresh eggs and hassenpfeffer, a vineyard for wine making, and a lovely clear stream that ran through the property that provided water for their extensive vegetable gardens when it was dry.
The state took their property by eminent domain to make way for the neighboring state college. They had to move into the city. Within two years, they both were dead.
I think they not only died of broken hearts, but of the inability to cope with city life.
Sad story, I'm sorry to hear it.
Didn’t mean to be macabre ... just reflecting on the article and how “you can take the boy off the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.” ;)
You weren’t. Lots of similar stories out there.
Put me in the city and I’m a shooting spree waiting to happen. No thank you.
“Exercise?” snorted my father. “Why don’t they just get a job if they need exercise?”
We have the same Dad, LOL! (Thank God!)
My thoughts exactly. Those living in cities and suburbs aren't living, they're just existing and being entertained.
The author of the story, Al Batt, is/was an insurance broker. He got me a great deal on car insurance back in the days when I was considered a “risk”. I met him once at the Freeborn County Fair and he was a nice, personable, friendly guy.
This story could have been written about my grandparents or many of my aunts and uncles, who lived just as Al’s grandparents did.
Great read! Thanks for posting it.
My parents lived their entire lives in a big city. When dad retired they moved to a very small town about 4 hours away. After a year or so they were no longer comfortable driving in the same big city that they had just left.
I am a city raised girl that lived in the country outside of a small town for 16 years. It was a nightmare, I hated every minute of it. We have been back in the city now for almost 30 years and I will live here till I die. I absolutely love it!
I can respect that. I’ve lived in big cities and enjoyed the culture parts of it, but always had a longing for the ambiance of country living while I was there.
It’s the subsistence part of the country that I can’t get out of my blood ... bare feet, the critters, drit under my fingernails from the garden .... nope. Can’t beat it. ;-)
I guess it is the ‘small town’ aspect that I don’t like. I certainly don’t object to all the things you like about country living but if you must rely on a small town for all your services like school for your kids, shopping, banking, the doctor, then you have no privacy.
My next door neighbors, here in the city, don’t know or care how much money I have in the bank, what the doctors report said, if my kids got in trouble at school, or any of the other things I did today. But small town people talk constantly about their neighbors whether they know what they are talking about or not.
You small town gossips out there know what I mean I hope you are ashamed.
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