Music; from the past and present

So I've missed a couple weeks and all that's been going up is the Line O' the Day.  That will be remedied next week.  Anyway SXSW was a couple weeks ago and that stole a good amount of time from me, or I suppose I gave up that time willingly.  Regardless I've spent the last couple weeks catching up on other stuff and the blog got shuffled down the priority list.  So for now I have an old little music related piece I must have typed up one night for the hell of it.  The file says it was created in '05, so it's old, but not too bad.  The file's name is Life's Song.

Why is someone always singing the trials of my life? I mean at every stage of my life it seems that someone is singing about what I’m going through. The hardcore rap fueled my growth from well adjusted youth to well adjusted young adult. The country music of my childhood was perfectly fitting as background noise to running through cornfields and playing with hound dogs. A redneck child should listen to redneck music. But that is so far in the past, yet it is at my fingertips.

Everyone sings my song. Currently it is Neil Young who steals my thoughts and puts a score behind them. Granted he wrote my life a decade before my life began, but it is me he sings about none the less. Call it coincidence call it clairvoyance it doesn’t matter because it is feeding me my own soul back to me. At times it tastes bitter then sweet; rotten and freshly prepared all at once. I hear it and I know it, and I know it is my mind he’s pulling his words from. How did he get in there, fuck I have a tough time sorting out the mess most of the time, and then I hear him tell my story and I sit astonished. The son of a bitch is stealing from me. But then I can’t get mad cause I enjoy his take on my life.

Then I think shouldn’t I get bored with this crap; I mean I’m already experiencing it so what the fuck do I have to have it recited back to me for. I love it though, it ain’t that I don’t find it interesting the first time through, but I guess it’s the outside eye. If Neil or Willie or Jimmie or Paul find my measly little life worth writing about who am I to argue. I’m just a nobody sitting there listening to them make something out of what I know to be nothing, and that is the true talent they possess. Who will sing my life next? I’m sure they already know, but fuck I don’t. Merle might have a shot at it, but I’m doubting I go to prison. The Beatles maybe, they already tried once, maybe it was too early or maybe they just couldn’t read me. I guess it don’t matter in the end because I’m going to be the one doing what the song is about. If I didn’t live my life who the fuck would they sing about, some douche bag down the street?  I can’t have that now can I.

That was from six years ago.  And as you might expect more folks have sung my ongoing story, but I'm not gonna get into what that tale is or who those talented artists have been.  The piece stands on its own I think and I'll leave it at that.


Now then a quick run down of SXSW and what has backed me up so much.

Went to see Debutaunts early in the week, because of this video.

After their solid set GPWFLY played and they were unforeseen, awesome, and just plain fun. 

Then later in the week I saw She Keeps Bees.  Stellar duo.  Saw them Thursday afternoon and then again Saturday night.

Ended up running into and hanging out with the gracious as hell boys from Grand Prize Winners, who took me to see Grandchildren late Thursday.  Powerful is the term I'd use.  Ended up catching them again Sunday evening.

Missed Superhumanoids Thursday night, but caught them Saturday afternoon for a short set.  I dig'em, if you don't I don't really care.

Missed Smile Smile and Childish Gambino due to lack of time/scheduling snafus.  Kinda sucked, but you can't win'em all.  Sure I missed a bunch of other cool shit I didn't even know about too.  But that was my week.

Next week I should have a couple farm stories ready to go.  As well as a more writing oriented post about the value of distinctive personal voice as a worthwhile tool in writing.  Particularly my predilection toward off color language.  Sort of a challenge to my mother's one critique of my little stories on here.

Line 'O the day - August 20, 2007

I once found myself the day before my reality changed. The mind works in a paradox.


Present day note:
It probably ain't just me, but this happens often. I think I figure something out about myself and then shit changes, and I gotta start over again.

Line 'O the day - July 17, 2007

If only I had the will power to be willful.

Line 'O the day - July 5, 2007

Hey man that ain’t funny! My mom OD’d on sarcasm.

Making money, 7 cents at a time

My older brother, Jake, is four years older than I am and he turned 16 in the fall, and so the next spring my working life outside my old man's farm started. I was just turning 13 that summer and we started hauling hay for a couple farmers near us. My brother had done this for a couple years prior with other neighbors and older friends of his, but once he got his license I was brought on. Plus at 12 I wasn't exactly a physical specimen and couldn't keep up during a normal working day. The point being I started my working life not getting paid by the hour or on salary, but by the bale.

It's well over 15 years ago now, but I'm fairly certain that first summer I made 7 cents a bale. Depending on certain circumstances that rate could be decent or it could be shit. On some days we could do a thousand bales in seven hours, that works out to ten bucks an hour. Not bad money for a 13 year old. Other days we might only get through 300 in the same time. At that point I'm way under minimum wage, but I didn't know the difference. I was a child and had literally no expenses. Every dime I made at the time went right into my pocket. Which was nice at the time, but now thinking back it's just frustrating, as nearly every dime I make goes to either my landlord or the various banks that own my ass.

Now then, the value of hiring me along with my brother is our ability to work together. We were trained to be farm hands by the same master (as I mentioned previously), and so we inherently worked well together. The down side of being the second man to your teenage older brother is that this cat you love and hate all at the same time is sorta your manager. He would set everything up and these old fellas we worked for directed instructions toward him. All I did was stack hay, sweat my balls off and take lip from Jake. We would jaw on each other all day long; in the field, in the barn, in the truck driving between the two. In subsequent employment I've tended to keep my mouth shut if a coworker is slacking or screws up. I do this because I tend to be pretty direct and harsh in such situations. Going toe to toe with my brothers for the first decade of my working life instilled the idea that if you can't take my criticism for botching your job, well then I'm gonna make fun of you for getting huffy about me taking the piss out of you in the first place. It creates a vicious cycle.

You would think this might have an adverse effect on our productivity. In fact it has the opposite effect. Hauling hay, driving a tractor, generally a lot of ranch and farm work is monotonous. And verbally taking shots at each other puts the work in the background, and you just do it, at speed, without thinking. A lot of different professions have a similar system of camaraderie, work hard and talk shit while you do it. Perhaps that closeness and viciousness between my brother and I was what made us better than most other folks in that particular job. We would occasionally work with other high school age boys who did the same summer work. I don't care if it was a crew of four boys, Jake and I would work them into the dirt. We'd work faster, smarter and better than most chumps, and be spitting venom at each other the whole time. The old farmers we worked for loved us, and they were happy to shuck off a few bills at the end of the week to a couple kids. And a farm boy's work ethic starts in moments like that, working your ass off getting paid seven cents at a time.

Line 'O the day - May 17, 2007

In a world of darkness there is a light, and all that is needed to turn it on is to open your eyes.

Born to be a hired hand

What I'm about to lay out here is not true. Well, certain points are true, but to say that my parents' intent was exactly how I'm going to explain it is not. They truly love and cherish their three strapping sons and in no way saw us as beasts of burden created simply to work the land. For now though that's how I'm gonna make it seem.

My birth was designed by QuickBooks. Okay, it wasn't around yet, but if mom would have had it back then I'm sure she'd ciphered out growth and profits and at what point they would have needed to have an extra hand around to fetch the old man the water jug, then advance to feeding hogs and get promoted to running the chisel plow. What I'm aiming at here is that from the time my older brother was about 13 till my little brother hit say 21, 22 my parents always had a dependable hired hand (Dad might balk at the idea of dependable, so for his sake I'll say readily available). Basically a good 17 or 18 year span where they've got from one to three of us available to do their bidding.

We were trained in the ways of the hired hand from a young age. Sure it all seemed innocent. When you're seven and mom says 'Dad's outside working on the tractor, go see if he needs any help' you go running with a smile on your face. That's how it starts, first you're handing the old man a little ol' wrench and asking curious little kid questions about how the tractor's PTO works. Next thing you know you been in the same field all day, the lights fading and you've still got dozen more bales worth of hay to roll up before you can head home. The young mind absorbs everything like a sponge, and they know this. You go with dad and watch him grind feed when you're five, its fun. He gives you the little spade shovel and you playfully toss corn into the grinder when your nine, its fun. Then you're 15 and the old man ain't nowhere in sight, and you're heaving a ton of corn with the massive scoop shovel into the gnashing, loud as hell gears of the grinder. No one taught you how this insanely dangerous machine works, but you've seen the old man do it enough and whether you were paying attention or not you damn well ought to be able to get the job done.

Now I say the old man ain't nowhere in sight. That's not because he's kicking back having a cold one, rather he's out expanding the whole operation. And expand we did. I'm not going to, but I could probably go back into Ma's aforementioned QuickBooks and chart out the growth of the family business and find a peak at some point when I was between the ages of 18 to 22. At that time I was at the prime working age and yet to move on to my own job or move out of the house. My older brother was still available if we were truly in need. And my little brother was at the age that driving a tractor and other such things he was easily capable of doing unattended.

Ma and Pa had themselves three genetically controlled farm hands. Who were capable of performing tasks nearly exactly as the boss wanted them done, as they had seen the boss do those tasks over and over again for a decade and change. Country Osmosis is the technical term I literally just made up for it. Now each of these three quasi-clones have their own strengths and weaknesses. One is as big as a bear, but about as personable. Another will always get the job done, but he ain't in a hurry to do it. And the third is the smartest of the bunch, but a little too headstrong most of the time. So while it was pretty easy to create their work force, just by hitting the sheets, our parents also have to take responsibility for creating their employees' shortfalls. Something a normal HR department can shy away from.

I loved working on the farm. Sure it was hard work a lot of the time, but it was infinitely better than working at the GAP, or Olive Garden or where ever the hell else high schoolers work. And I was born into it. Shit, if you listen to what I said above I was bred specifically for it. I've since left the farm, but my little brother is still with it. Reckon he'll try and make a go of the farmer's life for as long as he can. And like our dad who was brought up the same way we were he can say he was born to be a farmer. And sure other folks can say the same about their chosen line of work, but it's the rare discipline in which you're literally training on the job when you're five years old. And that's what I mean when I say we were bred to be farm hands.

Elbow Deep

The last one was about piglets, so we'll stick with babies. Probably won't try to keep linking each one of these to the next, but for the moment.

Pulling calves is a troublesome thing. I only ever actually had to get my hands dirty with it a few times. A couple were DOA, but a couple made it. I remember the first one rather well.

The old man had recently gotten back into raising cattle. He had for a while long before I was born, but had stopped, then about the time I was 12 or so he bought a bunch of cows and a big ass Charolais bull. We had some issues with calves from that bull, if I remember correctly. A number of the cows, especially the heifers (if you don't know a heifer is a cow who has yet to have a baby. After that they're just a cow.) had difficult births. So by the time the instance I'm talking about here happened I had watched dad pull a few calves.

I occasionally went out to check the cows with dad, who did it every morning. One of the younger cows was about due and dad had seen her off by herself down in the bottom (read 'bottom' as small valley for those who might not know country terms for terrain. Maybe I'll do a post on the various ways to describe land.) the night before. We walked down to see if she had the baby and she was basically where he had seen her, in the corner of this little pasture off to the side of a big field. I remember walking up on her as she lay on the ground. Most times a cow will make a little nest or hole in some tall grass and give birth sorta secluded like. When we walked up to the cow there was big area, maybe like a twenty foot wide circle, where she had smashed down the grass. She had been moving around for a few hours probably, wallering in one spot and then pacing and laying down again as she struggled to have the baby. And by the morning she was about spent.

She didn't try and run or anything when we walked up to her, she was just plopped over on her side. Dad walked around to her backside and checked what was the trouble. Sometimes the calf is turned around backwards, and that's a bitch. This calf was the right way round, but instead of coming feet first one of his legs was folded back along his side, which makes his shoulders wide. There was one foot and a little bit of his snout sticking out. Dad reached in to see if he could feel what was wrong. He could and he tried to sort it out, but he couldn't get the other leg to right itself. That's when he turned to me.

I had little spindly arms, which might allow me to make the necessary adjustment, where the old man couldn't. Again I had seen him do this a few times and it usually consisted of just reaching in and tugging out the calf. So he grabbed the tail and held it out of the way, and I got down on my knees and slipped my hand alongside the calf's head inside the vagina. I was about up to my elbow when I felt the shoulder and was able to get a grip on the calf's leg. There wasn't much in the way of room to maneuver the leg in there, and after a minute of trying dad told me to stop. 'Can you get a grip on it?' was the next question, I could. He had brought some heavy twine with us and made a loop in one end and told me to slide it as far up the good leg as possible. I got it up above the elbow and cinched it tight.

Now the task was just to pull it out and hope that we didn't break both its front legs in the process. They have an apparatus that's made for pulling calves, I even think we had one, but not right then. With the cow tired and not exactly lucid on her side there, I reached way back up in there and grabbed the crimped leg as tight as I could with one hand and grabbed the protruding little hoof with the other. Dad hunched over the top of me with the twine in one hand, the other ready to guide the calf's head out. Then we just pulled on the sum'bitch. I remember having to sorta press the folded up leg tight against the little guys body as we inched him out. Once the head was out, and dad got a proper grip on the straight leg, the rest of the job wasn't too bad. When his second elbow came out we got the other leg facing forward and the little guy slipped right on out.

You ever see in nature shows about lions and wildebeest and shit, when the wildebeest or gazelles have a calf the little fella jumps right up and starts walking. Cows are usually about the same, but after the long ordeal that calf was about gone. Dad cleaned out his nose and mouth of all the nastiness that goes with birth, rubbed his chest and got his lungs going. And after about another ten minutes had the little thing stirring, but not quite on his feet. Dad prodded the young cow to get up and ushered her over to the baby. Instinct tends to overrule anything else and despite her being dead tired and sore as shit, I assume, she started licking him and cleaning him up herself. We hung around watching them for a bit longer until he finally got up on his wobbly legs and started to nurse. After that the young cow just eyeballed us until we headed back for the house.

That time was a positive outcome; doesn't always go that way. Stillborn births happen for various reasons. Or you help pull a calf and the momma won't nurse or take to the calf, in which case you raise the calf yourself. Having a bottle fed calf on occasion is fun, I mean they're cute and playful and it's something different for a couple months. But hopefully you get the babe out alive and the old cow does what she's supposed to do.

Now I want to say I got back to the house and jumped in the shower, but most likely we just rinsed off at the well, changed shirts and went about the rest of the day.

Line 'O the day - April 26, 2007

Last night I dreamt that I came up with a cure for epilepsy in cats. Do you think I can make a profit on that?