May is a time for disking.

The typical disk harrow has an X-shaped frame, and on each of the four arms, there's an axle with concave steel disks - think of 12" dinner plates - clamped to the axle at 4" or 5" intervals. The front two arms dice up the soil about 3" or 4" deep, and pull it slightly to the center, and the back two arms dice up the soil again, and push it back out again.

It depends on your soil how you till your soil. The land where I grew up had a really heavy, really wet clay, and you could only plow the soil in the fall, because plowing would make it clump into really hard lumps. Over the winter, the freeze/thaw would break up the clumps, and in the spring, all you could do is disk the land to prepare the seed bed. Those with sandy soil could get away with spring plowing.

Plowing Is Evil

Of course, we know now that plowing is an evil thing. In fact, disking is somewhat evil as well. It takes a lot of power to break up and move around that soil, which means a heavy tractor, which compresses the soil, which is A Bad Thing. These days, smart farmers know that plowing destroys the structure of the soil, and bring weed seeds from prior years to the surface. Farmers try to do minimal tillage, so that the soil remains looser, and easier for roots to penetrate. And they try to spend less for tractors and for fuel.

Half a century ago, though, I'd rush to the fields as soon as school was out, so I could disk. The ground is often wet in the morning because of dew, so there wasn't much time lost. On Saturday, we'd work from 1 PM until 9 or 10 PM, so if I didn't get started until 3 PM on weekdays instead of 1 PM, it wasn't a really big loss.

Ambivalence

I was always ambivalent about disking. It was nice to be of value to the family, doing a man's job, but on the other hand, disking is rather boring. I kept trying to figure out a way to sneak a book onto the tractor, so I could disk with one eye and read with the other, but I couldn't manage that.

Instead, I spent a lot of time watching clouds. You can look at the sky, and think that there's nothing going on, but if you stare for very long, you realize that the winds at altitude are fairly swift. I made the same observation today, while waiting for Blondie.

I Drove Her To... Dentistry

I took her to an appointment with the dentist. She needed me to drive her, since she no longer drives, and she wanted me around in case they would ask questions she couldn't answer or they explained things she couldn't grasp. They bounced me from the room when it was time to take her X-rays, though, and when I went to the waiting room, a rude jerk cleaning the fish tank told me that I couldn't sit in his half of the waiting room, because he needed all the space, and the other half of the waiting room had people stacked up like cordwood. I gave my cell number to a girl at the counter, and told her to have my wife call me when she needed me.

I comment about my bad hip every so often, but there's also a problem with my right ankle. When I drive a lot, my ankle gets too much exercise, and it feels like my ankle has been stabbed with a steak knife. I came to the conclusion that if I tilted back the seat as far as possible, I could support my right ankle atop my left ankle, and the pain would mostly disappear. So I sat there in the driver's seat for an hour, listening to WSOX and watching the sky.

Not Entirely

Well, not entirely watching the sky. I was doing some people-watching as well, although I was watching the sky enough that it brought back memories of disking. The dentist's office had a sign on the door saing "This is a non-smoking facility" which in this case meant "There's no place set aside for smokers indoors, so you get to run a gauntlet of toxic fumes if you want to enter or exit the building".

And it was funny to see the expressions of people as they realized that they had to endure that smoke. Not funny ha-ha, more funny-wierd, in a "they must be proud of themselves for annoying the hell out of smokers and non-smokers in one fell swoop." There was a nice-looking lady who smoked a Newport, then as she was putting it out, someone new came by and lit up, only to have her ride appear just as her cigarette ended, and as the transient smoker left, another Newport was fired up. Again, she no more than discarded her butt than someone else showed up 30 second later, lighting up a Marlboro. A guy showed up and went inside with her while her cigarette still had an inch to go, so she took a really deep drag, and threw away her butt. Thirty seconds after she disappeared, the Newport lady fired up a third cigarette.

My Imagination?

Is it my imagination, or are most smoking done by females these days? Once in a while, I see a guy with a fag, but not often; usually, it's a woman. And if you look at people's faces, you can see the deep radial wrinkles around the lips of someone who smokes a lot. It ages them a lot. You'd think that women would be vain enough to want to look young and wholesome, rather than looking haggard and used-up.

Eventually, Blondie was done. We arrived for her 12 PM appointment at 11:45 AM, and she came out of the building at 3:25 PM. As you can imagine, I was clouded-out. She, on the other hand, was quite impressed with the dentist's professionalism. It was almost 2 PM before they took her X-rays, and the time-management practices of the office didn't impress me as highly professional, but I didn't say a word. It's not the duty of a husband to rain on his wife's parade, and it's damned near his duty to avoid it on those few occasions when he realizes that's what his natural inclination would do.

We Hadn't Eaten

Meanwhile, it was late afternoon, and we hadn't eaten breakfast yet, because Blondie was afraid that if she did, she might belch in the dentist's face. That's kind of her, but my blood sugar was approximating that of a corpse 20 years in the grave. I shouldn't be driving very far in that condition.

I considered stopping at Burger King, but I didn't want to eat in the car, and the last time I went in, BK was raucous, and filthy, and the staff was discourteous to everyone who entered. It's bad enough when people are rude to me, but when they are rude to everyone, I want to play Donald Trump, walking up to them and screaming "You're fired!"

Instead, we went to Friendly's, where we hadn't been for years. The waitress was a tall trim black woman, I'm guessing in her late 20s or in her 30s, who was both friendly and efficient. Boy, that's nice. Our food arrived quickly, and I was once again impressed with it, in general.

Great French Fries

The french fries pretty much meet my idea of what french fries should be, and if the bacon cheeseburger could be better, it'd only be by using August tomatoes on it instead of May tomatoes. On the other hand, I asked for unsweet tea, and it should have come with a warning from the FDA - it was obviously made from a powder, with a lot of lemon. It is so easy to make good iced tea; why would any restaurant serve crap to their customers if they were bothering to serve well-cooked food?

It's now about 2 AM and my right ankle is still aching. Blondie was just up to go to the john, and I asked her about upcoming appointments. She said the rest of the week is free, and suggested maybe staying off the ankle tomorrow would go a long way to make me feel better. Boy, am I glad that I didn't criticize the dentist. She knows my ankle hurts, and she knows why it hurts.

She rubbed it earlier this evening, while telling me how much she appreciated what I do for her. That's not always the case. She is sorely aggrieved that she can no longer drive, and life seems terribly unfair to her. And it is, to all of us. But lately, she seems to think I'm part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

A Great Massage

Until recently, she constantly harped at me, telling me that I was taking the wrong routes to go places. I try to avoid downtown because I constantly have to move my foot from gas pedal to brake pedal. Between my hip and my ankle, that hurts, and I worry about becoming an unsafe driver if I do a lot of that - so I don't do a lot of that.

Finally, she seems to understand. When's the last time a husband said to you, "My wife understands me"?

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Burger King - clouds - dentist - disk harrow - Friendly's - no-till - school - skeletal pain - smoking