Flashback Friday - Uncle Ed

I've had this post queued up for quite a while now but found it difficult to put the words down.  I felt I wouldn't or couldn't properly capture the man well enough and I didn't want to fail him.   Uncle Ed Rader, my Dad's sister's husband was my boss during high school, college summer jobs and even days off after I started at the Mary Davis Home.  What a guy.

A Minnie-Mo like Ed had.  He was the only farmer I knew who had this brand of tractor.  While I was working for him he finally had to upgrade and went with International.

He called my parents house in my junior year at high school.  He needed Mark or I to help him on the farm,  he didn't care who.  Since Mark already had a summer job, I was selected and headed out to the "Rader Range" the next day thinking I'd help him do a some stuff and didn't think it would last more than a few days.  It lasted 20 years.
My first day I rode on top of a tractor fender while he showed me the ropes on how to maneuver a big honking Minneapolis-Moline.  They had a farm dog , a dalmatian mix called Yip.  He's go bounding across the field chasing birds flying overhead.  Stupidly, I asked Ed if he'd ever caught one.  He replied, "Nope.  Can't jump that high."      

Me and Ed at daughter Jan's house for a one of Ed's birthday's.

My first job was cultivating corn.  After asking that stupid question I was surprised he didn't send me home, but guess he needed me.  Turns out he needed me every day each week until school started again.  He had a hay-baler so we'd go around to various local farmers and help them get their hay taken care of.  He also had a corn sheller, so we'd do the same thing with the same farmers.   The other farmers in our circle were Howard Shike, Wendell Dillavou, Jim Orth, Tobe Greer,  Larry Greer and Bub Greer.  Bub and Ed were old buddies and Tobe and Larry were his sons.  Howard, Jim and Bub are gone now, but I saw Wendell at church in Seaton when I was back home in December.  And of course Wendell talked about working with Ed.  That first summer I baled hay, shelled corn, cultivated corn, fixed fences, fed cows and sheep, and while it was hard work, I had the time of my life with Ed.     

He had a Hitler mustache that I never asked about.  In reading I discovered that sometime before the war lots of people had that style of 'stache, and then I came across an old picture of Ed as a young man, and there it was.  He had a tattoo on his left forearm i never asked about either.  I saw him cry once, when his buddy Merlin Shike, and fellow farmer down the road died.  He wasn't silly funny, he was dry funny.  Sometimes he didn't have to say anything at all to make me laugh.  

We usually ate at home and before every meal Glady's would tell us how lousy the food was.  Of course it wasn't, and I see now it was some sort of fall-back if ever she did screw it up.  This was where I learned to drink coffee.  With cream and sugar of course,  eventually becoming black with time.  Its where I discovered he could make Christmas fudge without a recipe.  I don't even remember how much I got paid, and I never asked for a raise.  I wouldn't take the money once I got out of school and came over for a day on an empty Saturday.  I enjoyed the manual-ness of it, and a day with Ed was therapy.  I wish I could have another one of those days.   Eventually we formed a kind of comedy team with me the straight man.  We'd walk into the restaurant and someone would always say, "You got something following you," and he'd always turn around, act surprised, and say, "I'll be damned, there is".  I was the butt of a lot of jokes and I didn't mind a bit.   

A corn-shelling outfit not quite like Ed's You can see the drags however mentioned on yesterday's blog. 

I got mad at him once and he got mad at me twice that I remember.  Hack Greer from in town, and occasional helper of Ed's,  brought a bag of puppies out and threw them into the creek that ran through the farm.  I couldn't believe the cruelty, and after work I went home, got my own shovel, returned to the farm and buried the poor drowned things.  I'm pretty sure I gave Ed a sound but respectful verbal thrashing.  I was young, and this was a working farm, with friendships to people in town, and to hack.  Ed let me have my say, and we never spoke of it again.  And it never happened again, either.  

Ed yelled at me once for not taking enough time rounding a vicious curve in the rows of corn while cultivating.  Doing that is a kind of geometry - you must swing the cultivator perpendicular to the rows or you will tear out all the seedlings.  I really screwed up that section and wiped a lot of corn out.  The geometry of it eluded me.  The other time we were working with barbed wire and I was starting to get pissed off over his instructions and the cuts on my arms.  Not too bad, I reckon, in all that time.   

He liked to drive and then just for the Hell of it veer into the ditch and ride that for awhile.  Eventually I did all the driving.  We spent the summers baling hay for ourselves and other farmers.  He always kept me on the rack instead of having fun in the mow.  Guess I was needed to drive into Aledo to get parts if the machine broke down.  It was hard work,  complete with snakes in the bales once in a while, but I liked the sense of community.  Butch Greer usually was with me on the rack and he was a lot of fun, too.    We shelled corn the old fashioned way, and my memory of cleaning out a section of the crib and having all those rats running with the final scoopfuls was eerie.  Had one run up my pants leg once and the instructions were to grab it and squeeze until it was dead.  The sounds of shovels slamming those suckers stays with me, too.  Again, and not to belabor the point, it was hard work and long days, but looking back I enjoyed the labor and the company.   

We always had time to take a break in the shade and coolness of the barn, a couple of 5 gallon buckets serving as stools.  We talked about all things.  Serious subjects about politics, feelings, about Dad's not always acting perfect, and in between laughing at jokes, about each other, and bonding for life. 

Sitting on those 5 gallon buckets through the summers and then some, I learned he went to a one-room classroom and he had to come in early to get the fire going because he was one of the few who had a horse.  I learned he took Latin and only remembered one word, agriculturo.  I learned he graduated 9th in his class.  There were only nine students.  I learned about life, hard work, about humor, about friendship and about meaningful things that stay with you a whole life.  Ed's stayed with me my whole life, and the lessons of growing up on the Rader Range.  

I saw the life and death process of birth on the farm, and the cycle of growth.  He knew each one of his cows by sight and their ages.  I learned that sheep are truly God's most stupid creatures and that snakes like to crawl on hot metal in the sun to warm.  

When I had kids and my visits to the farm became less convenient, he and Gladys would drive over to G-Burg and he'd say to get in the car and off we'd go.  I'd ask where and he said he didn't care.  Like a biker, it wasn't the destination - it was the company and the ride. We always stopped at Virginia's ice cream or someplace like that.  He'd come with M & M's for the kids and they called him the M and M man.   

Ed died in 1989.  A week before he had been over and in my absence had thrown a bunch of apples from an apple tree in the yard onto my front porch.  He'd had bouts with some cancer but was still pretty healthy and still  working.  Turns out his heart gave out.  At his funeral I cried like a baby, imagine a grown man just bawling.  I'm sure I made a spectacle of myself.  Not long after,  I painted his portrait and entered it in the Mercer County Fair Art competition.  It won best of show that year.  

He taught me about life, honor, humor, about social comportment.  He taught me the reverence of silence, about being a friend, about hard work.  He taught me.  He taught me.

Even now, when I am back home, I drive by the old place.

I guess I loved the man.