NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON

We watched a 2013 movie starring Jeremy Irons, Night Train to Lisbon, and recommend it to anyone. Made me feel old since I was an adult in the times that it sort of referred to as "the past," the time in Portugal that was under a brutal dictatorship. The years 1971-1974.

All the characters that were involved in that time were old, which of course does not apply to me. Te setting was "current day."

Made me think of my parents. The 1930's. I thought of their time as ancient history. May 1934 was HOT! The corn did not reach "knee high" because it dried up way before that. Their marriage was in Yankton, South Dakota and the heat was way above 100.

It was hard to make a living back then. My dad somehow scraped enough money together to buy a truck and he would haul livestock, cattle, hogs, whatever, to Omaha. It was the days of the Missouri River packing plants, and the lines were long such that he would load in the late afternoon, drive to Omaha, inch along the lines and arrive back home in the early morning in time to go to the field. "If he was lucky," he would work all day, drive all night for three days in a row. Equals NO SLEEP!

Sounds like Bernie supporters, right?

And then the 1950's and 1960's. My country, one-room school was decimated as people dried out, went broke and moved to California. Think of their progeny and you wonder why California is home to the greatest breakthroughs but huge dependency. We would not have made it without the dairy operation. And it is no secret that when I went to college and my brother went to the Army, the cows went to market. Incidentally, my graduating class had 17. Of them, one National Merit Scholar and two Alternates. Twenty-percent. Sort of like the consolidated schools with all the good equipment?

Regarding the dairy operation, upside, I was a fashion statement well ahead of my time--I never had a pair of jeans that didn't have chlorine bleach stains. Distressed jeans long before my time.

I never knew about American Bandstand and Dick Clark because it came on at 5:00 Central Time and we were milking then.

My kids often tease me about the number of jobs that I held, but we took everything we could get. The fertilizer company was a good gig--my only "documented" 100-hour + week--I worked 104 hours the week of the 4th of July in 1965. Sleeping in a pickup, moving like a zombie.

Just to show how things have changed, after the fertilizer season was over, the week after the 4th, typically, my future brother-in-law, Rich, and I worked for a company that built bridges replacing the ones washed out by floods. Rich was aristocracy because he took a welding class in high school and got a few more cents per hour, but we worked 11 hours per day (6 am to 5:30 pm, half hour for lunch), six days per week. Sixty-six hours per week, $1.35 per hour, no overtime (we could file a claim, I suppose). It was miserable work, the constant and intense burning of the creosote on our skin, but we were glad to get our gross pay of just under $100 per week.

It was hot. And we were always in a hole because the bridges were in low spots (duh!) and the back walls were dug out. Limited the breeze. I can't imagine the money we made for the contractor who expected less and got a couple of farm boys who showed up and worked diligently for every day.

That's not the only crappy jobs I had--I remember roofing on a cool November day when I had the flu, coughing, and was extremely high on codeine cough medicine. Wonder I didn't fall off the roof. Or the weinie line. It was 1968, we graduated from college, I worked second shift from 4:00 PM to whenever. I would come home to my new bride, park in the car port, strip naked and take a 30-minute shower...and still smell like a weinie.

Or a bell-hop at the Cornhusker hotel. Lots of other nasty jobs. But a good job! Manager of a beer store. Lincoln had a number of archaic and interesting liquor laws, and one of them was that beer could only be sold at designated stores. I managed one of them. I went to college in the day, managed the store from 2-10 PM six days per week. I thought it was pretty good, as I got $1.50 per hour and stole quite a bit of beer (we called it "breakage" but we didn't abuse it like the politicians abuse their ability to claim stupidity). I would come home to the Capehart housing and watch the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson while I ate a bit. Interestingly, my grades improved as I had NO TIME other than the scheduled work, class and study.

While I remember some of the atrocities that were happening in the world back then, including the assassinations in our country of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, I really can't identify my recognition of the Portugal situation. Therefore, I suggest you watch the movie.

Cheers.

DAD'S HAT

My dad grew up in a day when a man wore a hat, not a cap, for work and for more formal occasions. In fact, I remember him saying that he couldn't remember going out without a hat.

When he died, I kept his hat in my closet for many years. Just in case.

Today, our dog Baron crossed the rainbow bridge. He was nearly twelve and one-half, but the cancer got him.

I think I'll keep his leash in its place in the coat closet. Just in case.

Baseball, Politics and Bill James predicts Trump for President 16 years ago

Donald Trump predicted to win Republican candidacy...in 2001

This is too good to pass over. Bill James (think Money Ball, but arguably the preeminent statistician in baseball) commented on the statistical inevitability of Donald Trump or Warren Beatty getting the nomination just as Rafael Palmeiro had won the Gold Glove at first base in 1999.

You see, Palmeiro wasn't even the best first baseman on his own team! He was a designated hitter. But the voting system is an unrestricted plurality, so even if you get a small amount of votes, if the votes are spread out among a lot of candidates, you don't need much to beat the next guy.

Just as The Donald did.

But how random that James (in 2001) would actually say "...someone like David Duke, Donald Trump, or Warren Beatty would be elected President."

Nearly as miraculous as Posnanski's 2011 prediction that the Royals would win the 2015 World Series.

http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/donald-trump-bill-james-2001/

SHUDDER

Do you ever have an unbidden thought flash through your mind and give you an unpleasant moment? I just had one that should have passed sixty years ago, never to be remembered again, but there it was. Vivid. Shudder.

The migration from the Nebraska farms to California is a topic covered here and many times, but I have usually characterized it as just the farmers who went broke. There was another reason, though, for Frank and Anne Waters.

Frank referred to his move from Missouri to Nebraska as "coming over," like it was from the Old Country, a reference that amused my dad. They settled as sharecroppers on the Kent & Burke Ranch owned by the banker and a prominent merchant in Genoa, and no one was ever to explain why a plain old farm was called a "ranch."

In the days when manpower exceeded machine power on the farm and when crews were needed for certain seasonal tasks, common practice was to join up with neighbors to form those crews. Late August/early September as the corn ripened but had not yet "turned" (when the leaves died), the crews would move from farm to farm cutting the whole corn stalk and ear, chopping into a salad that was then stored in silos where it fermented and provided a rich diet for cattle throughout the winter.

The crews were long ago replaced by more powerful, integrated machines and today, that part of the world has no need for silage--there are very few farms that have livestock of any kind.

Silage cutters were machines powered by the tractors that pulled them that chopped the stalk off near the ground, fed it into a chamber where knives sliced it into pieces approximately 1" long. There were a couple of principle designs, but a company named Gehl (say it like "gale") made one where the knives were integral to the blower that spit the finished product up, through a chute and into a wagon pulled behind. Frank had a Gehl. It was pulled and powered through a PTO from an International model M.

The time frame was defined as about the fall of 1953, I would have been eight, since it was before we had a TV (they had one, we visited from time to time to watch theirs).

The crew had assembled to "fill silo" at the Kent & Burke Ranch, things were underway by noon as Frank pulled the Gehl and the M into the yard to work on it during the lunch break (called "dinner" at that time...supper was in the evening). He opened the hatch on the housing of the blower/knives combo, reached in to clear some of the debris...when the M backfired.

Sliced most of his right hand off, leaving only the thumb.

That event, although I was not a witness, has played in my head for more than 60 years. Why didn't he wait? Why didn't he take the PTO out of gear? Why didn't they have a Super M (I think it had "live PTO" that was geared differently). Why didn't he do it after dinner?

Before the days of a lot of things--OSHA, even primitive safety equipment. A rougher time. I vaguely remember the prosthetic hand, but it wasn't long and it became evident that Frank could not perform farm work. They moved to California, I saw them once many years later when they came back.

They were gone, but the event has played in my head. Ever had that happen?

Soupçon

The word of the day is soupçon because...well, it's a useful word and fun to say. "Just a dash," "a little bit," and that second syllable is through your nose.

Well, I think I have realized a soupçon of understanding about what is going on with the 2016 political races! Yep, only a little understanding.

So, here it is: first the Republican candidates, then Hillary and Bernie.

Rubio has a really tough path in that it is perceived that he is imitating Obama's course in 2008--get elected to the Senate, don't vote on anything, in fact don't even show up. Just proceed to campaign for President. Be pretty and say some cool things. It seemed to be working until Trump showed up.

What's the deal with Cruz? Nobody likes him. Aside from the ultra-right wing stuff, he doesn't seem to be such a bad guy. But apparently, to know him is to hate him.

Then we have Donald Trump. If you hated him from the beginning, you just hate him worse now. Sort of the A.J. Pierzynski of the race (his manager was asked what his teammates thought of him and he said, "They hate him less.") Despite the best efforts of the "establishment" he steam rolls along saying ridiculous things that are quoted in the absolute worst way by NYT, etc.

Here's where my "soupçon" enters in. I have recently read a piece by Peggy Noonan, a couple of others including one by NYT writer David Brooks, who is really quite a dunce and seems to think his audience is pretty dim, too. Mining these writings, I think the term that Noonan used, the "unprotected," is about the best. It refers to the group of citizens who are tired of hearing only about the antics of Ferguson, the Kardashians and Bruce Jenner. These are the people who are not given special "protection" that certain groups are given. Groups like Washington insiders, politicians. Groups that are protected according to racial or sex and "promoted" because of their access to "minority-owned" or "affirmative action." They hate "politically correctness."

They are not heard, but they hear Trump saying things that they think or would like to say. Ironically, they include people that the protected class thinks are against him, like the Mexican people who are working in this country legally. My friend in Phoenix does not hire whites or blacks to work for him because "they just stand around and watch the Mexicans work." You would never, traditionally, hear a candidate say something like that, but it has a ring of truth. Whose job is the illegal going to take? Not the WASP intern in Washington, DC. The guy who is working a construction job in Phoenix.

These unprotected cross racial, social, educational and economic lines. They all possess a smoldering anger at political correctness that tells them they cannot mention their frustration at being skipped for a promotion in favor of a less-qualified employee. Or that they cannot complain about their daughter being forced to share a bathroom at school with a boy who claims to "identify" as a girl.

Also, there is a scientific study that is being touted as the answer. Apparently, Trump supporters like order and respect authority. The NYT take on that sort of person is that they are basically puppets of the next Hitler. When anyone, liberal or conservative, plays the "Hitler" card, I'm immediately suspicious that their argument is weak.

OK, Bernie and Hillary. Shouldn't Hillary be under indictment? And Bernie isn't even a real Democrat, he just "caucuses" with them because there aren't any Socialists or Communists with enough clout.

Can't we come up with something better? On both sides? Trump at least has the benefit of being beholden to no special interest groups. So, if you like George Soros or the Koch brothers, Donald is not your guy.

If Trump becomes President, can he garner more disdain than the public seems to have for Congress?

NANCE COUNTY DISTRICT 12, BIG CUT

The day before I started kindergarten, the building blew up. They had just remodeled Big Cut, District 12, and the soft copper that connected the tank to the basement leaked (that's why they now have laws and regulations about that), the propane is heavier than air and deposited a layer in the basement. When the water well pump kicked on, the spark ignited it and kablooie.

So we (there were four of us that year) started in one of the abandoned houses that would become even more numerous in the 1950's as people failed at farming and moved to California or Oregon. Think about that one for a moment--California and the left coast are populated to some degree by the failures from the Midwest in the 1930's and on.

Off topic, sorry. That was the last time I had a classmate until the 8th grade when Tom moved in. Tom's family had a set of values that were not well-accepted by society. His older brothers were in prison and the last I heard, if I were to have an 8th grade reunion, it would be in the Michigan penitentiary.

Big Cut was named for an excavation the Union Pacific railroad made through a loess bluff near the school and near our farm. The family story is that my great grandfather, Samuel Peterson, bought an additional farm after he and his team of oxen proved better and more productive than the horse-drawn equipment. Workin' for the man.

I have no idea how much it cost to run that school, but I do know that there were many highly productive citizens who were pupils there. The smart kid in our high school graduating class was a National Merit scholar (there were two alternates as well that year out of the 17 graduates) was a product of another Nance County country school, the Skeedee if I remember correctly. About 10 years ago, living in Kansas City, I investigated the economics of that horrible school district and found that they were spending about $18,000 per pupil per year, not counting any expenses for facilities. Give me $18,000 per pupil, 15 pupils (about what we averaged) and I will give you a high-quality education, facilities included.

Kansas City had more administrators and special ed personnel than classroom teachers. At that time they were being run by the state under orders from the court, a fairly constant state of affairs since the court took over in the 1980's.

I have never understood the whole hair-on-fire urge to consolidate. Read a recent article about the high-performing schools in Nebraska, and most of them were the small town schools. Wonder if anybody looks at results? My view is probably not acceptable, though.

UPDATE, AUGUST 2020: I never quite felt that my date of 1950 was correct about the school blowing up and our attending school in the abandoned house, but a school mate corrected me--it was August of 1952.

The brain, even when we see and hear things first hand, is sometimes not accurate. Careful, folks.

JOE POS AND BEING A DAD

I don't know how I missed this the first time, but Joe Posnanski reposted an essay, Katie the Prefect from five years ago.

http://joeposnanski.com/katie-the-prefect-revisited/

He is not only a terrific writer, but a wonderful dad.