Rememberin' Back When

I’m changing this up a bit from my usual dribble. I spent a little over 40 years in the feed and grain business along with milking cows.

In 1971, I walked by the Ypsilanti Farm Bureau in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It was a full time feed and grain co-op. It was massive and from my apartment I could hear the grain dryers running or the feed grinders grindin’.

I was looking for a job and, being from a very rural background in Ohio, I spent some time in a small feed mill. I thought, hmmm, maybe I should ask for a job. The big retail store was on one side and the feed and grain operation was on the other side of Forest Ave.

I was 23 at the time and just had graduated from Eastern Michigan U. It took a while since I had some interruptions. But I was kinda timid, those fellas in the mills were a tuff lot. Yet I couldn’t just walk by so I took a deep seat and walked into the store.

A young gal asked if I needed some help. I told her I was lookin’ for a job. She pointed to a man smoking a pipe standing by the office. Rudy Yost watched me approach blowin’ smoke rings from his pipe.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

In my most manly man voice, (at 23) I said, “Well maybe, I’m looking for full time work.”

Rudy stared at me for what seemed like ten minutes, put his pipe to his mouth, blew out another friggen smoke ring and simply said, “Tomorrow mornin’ 8 o’clock.”

Rudy and I would later work together at another mill ten years later. But for the moment I froze in time. What the? No application, no talkin’ too. Just a be here tomorrow at 8. Wow.

Now in those 40 or so years I’ve met some people worth remembering, well at least to me. One was cranky Paul Meyer.

Paul it turned out was on the board of the co-op and he just died not long ago being close to 90. He and his wife Betty, who was even crankier, were frequent customers since they had a dairy operation.

Paul had a hook like Captain Hook on his right hand, well where the hand shoulda been anyway. He lost it in an auger a few years before when he was fillin’ a silo. His boys later the summer after found it in the silage when they were feeding.

The hook didn’t slow Paul down tho’. Paul and Betty always called me Angie so that helped endear them to me. Only my folks and siblings ever called me that.

Well, twenty or so years later ol’ Paul came into the Dexter Mill in Dexter, MI. (Ypsi was long gone) He came in to get some herbicide for his pond. He was way retired by now but I noticed his left hand was bandaged and in a light cast.

I looked at that and said, “Paul, what in the world did ya do to your good hand?”

Still walkin’ he said, “Had to stop an auger Angie.”

I said, ever being the wise guy, “Geeze Paul, if ya had to stop the auger why not just jam your hook in to stop it?”

Paul of course looked at me in his famous ‘how can anyone be so stupid’ look and said, “For God’s sake Angie you know what a hook costs these days?”

When I left Montana I revisited the old timers that were left to bid adieu. Paul and Betty were home. We had a great visit and so glad I stopped. Now I won’t see ‘em again till they are in the grain line at harvest in the sky. If I hear “Hey Angie” I won’t even have to turn around.