Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [85]
I shouldn’t have turned down the work Sylvan had offered on the pig house—such inspiriting activity might have been just what the doctor ordered. Instead, now Mr. Miller shifted me from cutting cedars to digging a drainpipe trench in a cow pen oozing with recent defecation after a rain.
The first time I went over for the project, Caleb was feeding calves a short distance away. I heard a din that sounded as if a building had come crashing down, and looked up. The calves were all crowding around a bucket of grain that Caleb had placed in their midst, and one of them must have kicked it. After I’d been digging for a few minutes, he sauntered over, and I accosted him.
“I know you’re jealous of me having all this fun here.”
He paused and smiled. “Can’t say that I really am.”
“Well, if you ever get jealous enough, you’ll be more than welcome to come and take over some of this.”
He smiled and edged a little closer.
“I can’t believe how little I’ve got done.” I glanced over my shoulder at the measly ten-foot-long-trench that seemed to be filling back in as soon as I dug it.
“How long’ve you been at it?”
I looked at my watch. “Oh, about an hour.”
“What do you think’s making it go so hard?”
Oh, oh, I thought to myself. He acknowledges I’m not getting anything done. “It’s not really that hard. It’s just that I’m slipping and sliding. See here.” I put one foot on the edge of the bank to show how slippery it was. He nodded superciliously. “Well, I guess I better go back before they eat it all.” He must have been talking about the calves.
A few minutes later, he appeared again, smiling, shovel in hand.
“Oh, you didn’t have to do that.” I had only been joking. When I saw that he meant it, I said, “I bet you’ll outperform me.” But soon he was slipping and sliding just as I was. And with his slight build he couldn’t get as good a grip.
“So now you’re about to turn…How old are you, Caleb?”
“Thirteen.”
“Oh, I was gonna say you’re about to turn thirteen. But I guess you already did.”
“Not long already I’ll be turning fourteen.”
“When?”
“February twenty-first.”
“My, I’ll have to be sure to be here that day to see you shoot up another four inches.” He lowered his head shyly, and we worked a little longer in silence.
“What did you learn in school today?”
“Oh nothing, really. It was mostly review.”
I asked him a few more questions as we continued shoveling until I seemed to tire the subject out.
“Do you get grades?”
“You mean do we get a report card?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Do they give you A, B, C, D, and F?”
“Yes. Well, A, B, C, E, and F.”
“What does the E stand for?”
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t rightly know. I never got one.” I looked to see a huge grin on his face.
“Do you speak German in school?”
“Oh, it’s about half-and-half, German and English.”
Then a few more questions back and forth.
Suddenly he became more animated. “Guess you’re looking forward to your new garden.”
“New garden?”
“Yeah. You know the old one was so packed down, three horses could barely plow it. So it’s gonna be where the orchard grass was.”
I hadn’t yet been advised of this development. And spring seemed a long ways away. Caleb went on to talk about the hardpan problem the mechanized farmer across from the schoolhouse was having. So compacted was his soil that water could not seep below the surface; it would just collect on top and form a lake. Everything he grew there died. First he tried disking the ground over and over again to fluff it up. But the tractor he was using was the one that had compacted the soil in the first place—it was enormous. The water still collected there. Then he tried taking a chisel plow through it, three feet down. But again he used the gigantic tractor and undid his own efforts.