Edgar Considers Black Walnut

by Eric Chaet

At the Farmer's Friend, Edgar sits down next to me at the counter. He seems to like me. He got a good laugh, one morning, when I told Jack—he & I enjoy sparring with one another about politics—who was sitting across the corner of the counter from me, that either his politics was wrong, or else his religion, since they contradict one another.

Edgar's kind of boyish—tho probably at least 10 years older than me—but with more mass than a boy. A little chubby, side-burns, open face; moves a little in slow-motion; voice low, without strain; chuckles easily. He wears flannel shirts & jeans, & the same kind of baseball-type caps most of us wear, who don't wear suits, around here.

He's talking about the extra cost of building a manure pit, due to 2 government workers whose entire job is watching the 10 guys who are doing the actual work, to make sure regulations are being followed.

I commiserate with him, but point out that, if the government didn't treat us all like we're cheaters, the cheaters would get away with building, for instance, leaky manure pits. But that those of us who are honest are always being offended at being treated like cheaters, while those inclined to cheat are never offended.

"They find a way to get away with it, anyway," Edgar points out.

Another day, Edgar told me that he makes money buying & selling old Studebaker cars. He uses a trade paper to find them, goes all over the country to pick up the ones he buys, & fixes them up himself. His kids do most of the (dairy) farming, now—tho he still helps out a lot.

Today, he says that he doesn't have any money, but he has a lot of land—he sank whatever money he did have into the land.

"Probably worth a lot now," I offer.

"Probably," he says, without enthusiasm. "When I started," he says, "we got $12 & something for milk. That lasted about 10 years. Since then, it's gone up & down a little, but it's been mostly where it is now, down around $9. Can't make any money that way. But it's a good job. If you like it.

"For the first 30 years, my wife & I never took a vacation, or ate in a restaurant."

He's eating, now, 2 eggs over hard, with "home-made" toast, butter, & coffee. He says he doesn't guess the price of milk will ever go up again.

"Sure, it will," I say, "but not until they've driven all the small farmers out of business."

Edgar grunts in agreement. "Then they'll be able to set the price," he says.

.

Another morning: Edgar says his son-in-law has lost his electrical engineering job—they moved the plant to Mexico last year, but kept on 8 designers. Now those jobs have gone to Mexico, too. But Congress just extended unemployment benefits an extra 13 weeks, & he has a boat, so he's looking forward to the warm weather.

Edgar stores that boat in one of the sheds on one of his 2 farms: it's a big one, 38 feet.

One boat he stored once got destroyed by red squirrels chewing thru. Fifteen gallons of oil spilled out & ruined the white finish.

Edgar has a running feud with varmints. He just killed a raccoon that was staggering around in the driveway in front of his garage, & showed no fear of him—in case it had rabies, which has cropped up around here, more than in most places. In fact, Edgar's killed 3 coons recently.

He had two bales of hay in a barn—he found two inches of raccoon shit all over it.

"They make themselves to home, & if you corner them, they'll fight."

He let a trapper friend into the barn, & he trapped 7 of them.

"Mosquitoes—you can't go out of the house. I'm thinking of building a shelter for bats. I heard that they'll eat mosquitoes."

I said that bats sometimes get rabies—that's how this whole conversation got started, I now remember.

"People worry about what they eat too much," Edgar says. "Just eat a little of everything, not too much of anything. Used to be, every farmer had some pigs & chickens. I used to dunk my toast in bacon grease, when I was a kid. Now, there are those huge hog farms. The price of pork is so low, that's the only way to make money."

Those big operations really stink: I remember spending an unpleasant time hitchhiking along a highway ramp in Illinois, once, next to one. The first whiff is the worst—it's hard to imagine you'll be able to breathe.

Besides knowing all about Studebaker cars, Edgar works on the antique tractors he buys at auction.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time," he says, "I can make any old thing operate."

Once, he was given an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle that he couldn't make go. He kept moving it around in the garage, to get it out of the way, while he worked on cars, tractors, other motorcycles. Finally, he sold it for junk.

Today, he'll be working on someone's jeep.

He knows how to work with iron real well, but wood, he's not so good at—there's less tolerance. Cabinets, for instance. His son-in-law, the one out of work, will be making new cabinets for Edgar & his wife's kitchen. Edgar can make sheds around the farm—no one cares if the right angles are exactly right. But not cabinets.

"They don't make things like they used to," Edgar notes. His house is 40 years old. Just now, they're replacing a counter-top. The workman carried it in under his arm. Edgar laughed: "That won't last 10 years." Too light-weight, not built to last. The way almost everything now is built. Expensive, too.

Edgar's church had a bunch of black walnuts—several bushels. The minister gave them to Edgar, who spread them out in his woods, hoping the red squirrels would plant them—& they did. When Edgar plants them, no luck. But the squirrels did the job.

"No one wants black walnut wood these days—it's too dark," Edgar says. "And the nuts are too bitter. But the squirrels like them."

Copyright © Eric Chaet 2004