White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1935-06-13


kill. See if with your pitchfork you
can snatch his from his hand. If you
do, "Half-pint!" Everybody yells this
battlecry of the harvest, and the mar
who has lost his fork is supposed next
pay day to make good with a half PIN
of some brand of rye whisky, from
Wight and Hylands store in those
days; today, from the hills.
And so I was learning about farm
ing-the heady physical joy that oc.
casionally it instills; the toll of it, the
dull ache; the numb and rather help
less wonder at those immense, intri-
cate and still secret processes by which
great deal of air, certain amount
Of water and very little Of earth
combine into elaborate living structures
for people to eat.
These processes proceed with a re-
lentless and terrifying efficiency God
knows his business. It is only man who
is the blunderer, trying to understand
and to keep up. Until man takes
hold of land and tries to make grow
ing do his bidding, there are never
any serious questions as to soil fertil-
lty, plant diseases, insect control. In
the natural order, all such things
operate against one another toward
the end desired maintenance of fer
tility and the survival of the fit.
The minute man takes hold of a
piece OF land he stirs up trouble. He
ploWs. The rains smite upon his I'M
protected earth and frisk away, q par
ticle. at a time, tons of his best top
soil, His heaviest labors go to enrich
delta far away. Consider also gray
itation-that guardian force of soil
fertility, drawing back into the earth
all that comes from the earth: GRAY
itation fights against the farmer all
the time. When he bends to pick up
the rocks from his field, it tugs at his
arms. When he puts up his hay to
the wagon, and then again up to the
stock or loft, he feels the earth pull
ing nightly against his shoulders.
cThe land wants its hay back" Sam
once said when we had upset load
three times, trying to get 1t across a
ditch out of a hillside field.)
Five years passed. Sam went to a
place OF his own. I was fifteen years
old now, and in the third year of an
agricultural high school that had been
opened five miles up the road, near
Sparks. We had new man-Ernie
Ernie hated cows. Cows were the one
thing in the world that could, even for
moment, sour him on life and quench
his zest for living. In any other COM
pany he moved cheerfully, his tongue
prattling, his mind disporting itself in
considerations far afeld.
had talked and worked with him
nearly a year before I found out that
ne could not read. The Baltimore Sun
came to him daily in our RID. box,
and he was forever leading me "as he
into long discussions of thu
more romantic features of the news.
It was John Tawney (the gently sar-
ionic one-legged man who scrupulously
Kept house for his three motherless |
children, in the cottage by our west |
sate); it was John who pointed out
20 me that Ernie's discussions of the
news always took start from something |
one could make out from the pictures. |
After that, he just led you along until
ne knew as much about the thing as
I he had read it all. Then he would |
tart in to do little talking. Ernie
vas always ready to listen first and
mpart afterwards; and he never cared
much what the talk was about: lust
o it continued.
We rarely talked farming; only ag-
lculture, or something even more gen.
raj. AS for farming, Ernie was neither
or nor against it; it was simply some
hing you did, offhand, for the things
ou needed at the store. But he would
raw me dry 0of the last long scien-
ltlc word and theory that / was ac-
ulrlng up there at that agricultural
Ugh school,
That was easy. There was good
eaching under way at that small
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