The Christmas trees of August

The "dog days of August” is not a specious phrase. In northwestern Pennsylvania, August brings intense, sweltering sun, high temperatures, and soggy humidity. The dogs, indeed, wilted along with us.

In spite of this, there was work to be done, and when our own farm chores were complete we hired ourselves out. A local entrepreneur, known to us from church, owned 30 acres or so of hilly Christmas tree farm off to the south. The trees were growing in rows that meandered up and down the rugged terrain, and more to the point, were nearly strangling in a sea of Queen Anne’s Lace, burdock, golden rod, orchard grass, and any number of other vigorous saplings and scrub. For the trees to form their proper shape and remain healthy, the offending undergrowth must be removed.

This was a complicated operation that had many moving parts. First, Mom got up early and made a pile of egg salad sandwiches. Long before the local food movement, the eggs came from our own chickens and the bread was baked in our own oven. She had filled plastic bottles with homemade root beer and frozen them overnight. The frozen bottles, placed in a cooler with the sandwiches, helped to keep them chilled but also slowly melted and provided icy relief during the hot afternoon. Packing everything up and securing to our old fat-tire, single speed bikes, we raced the four miles into town and joined a few school mates while the sun was just peeking over the horizon. Clambering into our employer’s venerable (even then) 1947 Ford pick-up, we fit ourselves in, a few in the cab and the rest wedged among several walk-behind power bush hogs. Then the trip south, perhaps 12 miles, to the remote hilly farm.

If you have ever pushed your way through a thicket of pines with bare forearms, you will recall the scratches and sticky resin that, per force, caused us to wear leather gloves and long sleeved flannel shirts even in these dog days. The heavy duty mowers made short work of the thick undergrowth, but even self propelled, exhausted us as we wrestled and navigated the steep, twisting terrain. We almost envied the other guys whose job it was to trim the bottom branches of the trees using hand saws. But in the end, the perfume of hot oil and exhaust and the thrill of reciprocating power made mower duty the preferred choice.

Finally, a break. Long draughts of water from a large galvanized can, who cared that it was warm? Grazing the forested field edges to pluck and suck the juice of warm, sweet blackberries as large as your thumb. Pulling some Queen Ann’s Lace from the ground, breaking the root to appreciate the scent of wild carrot. Likewise with small sassafras saplings, the odor of root beer rich and pungent from the roots. Then, back to work for we didn’t get paid to commune with nature.

Later, after our lunch and well into the afternoon, towering cumulonimbus clouds move in from Ohio and points west. The sun is doused, thunder rumbles, and an intense downpour commences. Our patron, sensing that not much more can be accomplished, helps us load up the equipment and we head back north, the vacuum wipers beating a cheery tune as we descend but slowing to a crawl as we struggle up the long inclines.

By the time we get back to town, the rain ceases and leaves a clean, fresh smell that enervates us as we propel our clunky bikes along. Home is welcome, even if some chores remain – those chickens demand to be fed in exchange for all those delicious eggs. Then a late dinner and early to bed, for tomorrow holds more of the same. Tired, but a good tired, born of honest labor, and sleep comes fast and deep and filled with pleasant dreams.

What I did on my summer vacation

In current times, kids are excused from school for the summer, but for what? To play Wii, spend hours on Facebook, accompany their parents to Florida, and otherwise squander their free hours away? It obviously has nothing to do with industriousness – just try to hire a generously-allowanced neighborhood kid to mow your lawn.

Not so, many years ago. In farm country, we were let out of school in early June and didn’t return till early September. In between, we certainly found some time to camp out in the woods and ride our bikes down shady lanes, but that was not the main event. No, we were let out of school to work. Whenever our own farm work was completed, we hired ourselves out to the neighbors. As the season progressed, we went from picking strawberries to harvesting raspberries, blackberries, and grapes, each in their season. The pay was minimal – a few cents per quart basket – but it added up as long hours passed in the hot sun.

But of course the main event for the older children was haying. A serious affair, for cows must survive the long, cold winter and continue to produce high quality milk throughout that dead season. The only way to ensure their health and productivity was to feed them stored sunshine in the form of hay.

There are typically three harvests of hay – roughly May, June, and July. First, tractors pull mowers through a fragrant mix of timothy, alfalfa, red clover, and birdsfoot trefoil. Then the freshly mown hay is conditioned (crimped and fluffed) to encourage drying. If the hay were baled and stored with too great a moisture content, it would be subject to spoilage, or worse, spontaneous combustion. More than a few horses have succumbed to the former (cattle are hardier) and many a barn lost to the latter.

After a few days, the hay is raked and baled into rectangular bales weighing about 75 pounds, just enough so that the older teens, mostly high school football players and wrestlers, grunted while heaving them up onto the truck. A younger kid could be put to work guiding the truck, in double-granny low, between the rows of bales as they were heaved up and stacked. No need for short legs to reach the brake, clutch, or accelerator pedals… the only requirement was to steer through the gently winding rows of bales. At the end of the field, one of the farmers or an older teen would jump into the cab to wheel the truck around and another pass would begin.

This was hot work, and the farmers took care that their charges had plentiful water, both for drinking and for pouring over glistening, sweaty faces and bare chests and backs. It was a rare pleasure when a hayfield contained an ice-cold spring, usually marked by a green thicket on a hillside, containing a small pool of brilliantly clean, frigid water burbling straight from the earth. Almost as good were the fields that bordered on a farm pond, where cannonball dives were performed amid great uproar during short breaks from the relentless, dusty bales.

When the truck was full, it was driven slowly over farm roads to a barn where it must be unloaded and stacked into a hayloft. If the crew were really lucky, the barn was built into a hillside so the truck could be backed directly into the second-story loft. This part of the operation was, if at all possible, even hotter than those preceding as the barn baked in the midday sun. But given the resilience of youth, a brief pickup basketball game often formed around a rusty hoop nailed to the barn planking after the stacking was done.

So were our summer days, such that a late supper on a wide farmhouse porch, as the gloom thickened and temperatures moderated, was treasured as much as today’s trip to an air conditioned mall on a sultry afternoon.

An Independence Day to Remember

In northwestern Pennsylvania there is a small, blue-collared lake community that in summer draws hot, tired urbanites like flies from Erie and Pittsburgh. The lake is surrounded by forests and fields and it is not unusual to see deer or even a black bear make an early morning pilgrimage down among the cottages for a refreshing slurp of water.

We are there for a festive family reunion and one night the community stages an impressive fireworks display, funded by intensely loyal contributors who, by golly, love their country and their fireworks. As the skies slowly darken (10pm for full nightfall in this region), the children dance about and swoosh and swirl their sparklers, anticipating the big show. Then it begins, with glorious cascading colors and earth-shaking booms from the ridge above the western side of the lake. But to the great discomfort of Yogi, a little black Schipperke who thinks the world is coming to an end. He is barking incessantly, in distress, and definitely not enhancing the experience of the assembled throng.

So Yogi and master retire to a car parked down by the road. There, ensconced with the windows rolled up, he feels safe and relaxes while master still has a stellar view of the proceedings. Clicking on the radio and randomly tuning the nearest station, the lovely strains of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony Number 4 blend with the muffled bangs and pops and colorful, flowing blooms in the sky. As both symphony and grand finale come to an end, smoke drifting away under the stars, the radio announcer thanks the source of audio loveliness, a live orchestra at the Chautauqua Institute, only 50 miles away.

Chautauqua is at once a county in western New York state, a lake, a village on that lake, an Institute, and a cultural touchstone. In 1874, businessman Lewis Miller and minister (to become Bishop) John Heyl Vincent started a summer camp on Chautauqua Lake to “educate and uplift” the public. In the days before television and radio and the internet, these programs became immensely popular and “Chautauquas” were mimicked around the country. Touring Chautauquas came into being, bringing lectures and music and poetry to the small-town, rural masses, all to great acclaim.

At their peak in the mid-1920s, Chautauquas educated, informed, and entertained over 45 million people in 10,000 communities in 45 states. Although traveling Chautauquas are a vestige of the past, the Chautauqua Institute persists to this day and caters to over 140,000 people each year with concerts and lectures and courses in art, music, dance, theater, writing skills and a wide variety of other interests.

Later, near midnight, driving back to our pet-friendly motel 15 miles distant, we witness a fantastic display of lightning from a storm rolling in from Lake Erie and points west in Ohio. Cloud to ground, ground to cloud, and cloud to cloud lightening rend the western sky with blinding streaks of light. Towering cumulonimbus clouds are lit from within with flashes of purple and red and white. It’s as if God, after witnessing our puny fireworks a bit earlier, is saying “behold, this is the real thing!”

On microclimates and Sunday afternoons

San Francisco has nothing on us. Eccentric Californians brag of the Golden Gate City’s microclimates as if they were of their own doing. Stolid Kansans, on the other hand, are quietly satisfied with their widely spread, mostly predictable weather.

New England is more in the San Francisco camp, with sometimes wildly divergent conditions (Mount Washington; currently 36°F with fog at the time of this writing).

But we need not venture so far afield to establish New England’s street cred. Our local newspaper reports of “heat-related issues” at a nearby Wrentham, MA, graduation ceremony (“Hot times at area graduation"). Fourteen audience members were reported to require treatment for heat exhaustion at the outdoor ceremony on Sunday, June 5. Proximate cause: temperatures in the mid 80s with a hot, blazing sun.

At nearly the same exact time, 20 miles to the south as the crow flies, a sound sailing yacht departs her slip on the Providence River for an afternoon sail. Conditions are initially comfortable, with a high, hazy sun and moderate winds. Proceeding south into the upper reaches of Narragansett Bay, the breeze freshens, reporting 17 knots with gusts to 20 out of the south. Tacking down past Rocky Point, the wind strengthens further and the clouds thicken. As we clear the wind shadow of Patience Island, the full force of the wind, having a straight shot up the bay from the open ocean, brings us the chill of the Atlantic deeps. Reported conditions: cloudy, 62°F, and with gusts to 23 knots, the wind chill is in the low 50s. Time to don long sleeves, fleeces, and jackets.

Tacking into a strong breeze is always challenging. The boat’s forward velocity is additive to that of the wind, and with the wind chill and salt spray, it can be quite nippy. The boat heels dramatically as the bow plunges into the waves, lifting huge sheets of spray that are (mostly) deflected by the dodger. The wail of the wind in the rigging and the pounding of the hull can be near deafening. Having reached the limits of our comfort zone, we come about and head back north. Now, with a fine breeze at our back, the relative wind drops dramatically as the boat’s speed is subtractive. The vessel returns to an even keel and moves gently with the swells, noise abates, quiet and warmth return; it seems, as if by magic, a new day.

A few hours later, tied up in the quiet comfort of our slip, the crew relaxes. With a few rays of the setting sun peeking from beneath the clouds, we celebrate our warmth, unaware of the “heat-related issues” not so far to our north.

On being green

I guess we were green before our time.

Down on the farm, we recycled anything that might be useful. Clothing was handed down from eldest to youngest, knees and elbows patched and sewn with fresh buttons. Some of the other kids teased us at school, but we maintained our equanimity based on our innate sense of exceptional efficiency. Any surplus clothing or shoes was boxed and shipped, once or twice a year, to exotic, far-flung relatives in Sicily. I don’t know if they were teased or admired, but at least they had good American denim for school, patched as it may have been.

Vegetable peelings and table scraps (meat and fats excluded, but including eggshells), went into the compost heap. When properly tended, the compost literally combusted, but unhurriedly, and reduced its contents to a rich, black soil, populated by enormous quantities of ravenous red earthworms whose effluence enriched that soil. Any excess meats and fats, not suitable for compost, were supplemental delicacies for the farm dogs who were responsible for rodent control, protecting the chickens from varmints, and general security and hilarity.

When baking foods in the oven, any other item that might hitch a ride took advantage of the heat. For instance, a pot roast bakes for 3-4 hours, and several loaves of bread could share the last 30 minutes. A fabulous book expounding this principle is “How to Cook a Wolf”, by M.F.K. Fisher, a prolific food writer of the mid-twentieth century who offered instruction in efficiency and good cheer to a war-weary America.

Bottled soda pop was a luxury. Kool-Aid made from our own, delicious well water and the powdered mix was a favorite beverage. And Kool-Aid poured into ice cube trays with popsicle sticks inserted yielded tasty, cooling, frozen treats a few hours later. No air conditioning in summer, but broad porches welcomed picnic-style suppers in the waning heat of the day as the sun surrendered to the night, crickets serenading loudly, and heat lightening flickering on the distant horizon.

Lights were turned off when not needed. The upstairs rooms were not heated in winter, but thick layers of blankets provided more than adequate warmth. In summer, cooling was provided only by ventilation from the open, screened windows.

Finally, sternly instructed to sleep, at least one wayward child eagerly consumed the transportation and mystery of good books, under the blankets, burning up a flashlight’s D-cell batteries.

In spite of that, overall, we were deeply green. We just didn’t know it.

Sanitary antics

“Employees must wash hands before returning to work.” This sign was found in the restroom of a famous Seattle-based coffee franchise. Why do they focus on employee cleanliness? Because even a short list of foodborne illness vectors contains such delicacies as campylobacter, hepatitis A, shigella, E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, and other lovely organisms. And if customers were to become ill from eating at this establishment, that would not be good for profits.

One of the most simple, cheap, and effective means to prevent foodborne illnesses is to have employees practice strict sanitary hand washing procedures. Hence the signs. But there is one small problem – the public often share the same restroom facilities with the employees, and the sanitary habits of the public cannot be underestimated.

Knowing that, the food service provider posts a sign instructing her employees to follow a strict hygienic procedure. The instructions on this sign are as follows:

1. Water
2. Soap
3. Wash (for 30 seconds)
4. Rinse
5. Dry
6. Turn off water (with paper towel)

Why turn off the water with a paper towel? Obviously, because if a previous user of the facilities did not practice good hygiene, the faucet handles might be contaminated with one or more of the lovely aforementioned disease vectors. Gee, I wonder if that applies to the door handle as well?

There were a few problems at this particular establishment… in spite of the sign, there were no paper towels. Only a hot air hand dryer. And the door most unhelpfully opened inward. So how is one to shut off the faucets and open the door without contaminating your hands? And if you, a customer, can’t do it , then how can the guy behind the counter do it?

I recommend that when you run into a situation where you can’t satisfactorily exit the restroom with assuredly clean hands, you need to complain to management that his employees can’t either.

Fun with numbers

The publisher of our local paper entertained us with some numerology in his most recent column ("Unfollow this link shortener", Feedback section).

Among the baubles are this one: “Take the last two numbers of the year of your birth, add what your age is this year, and you’ll get 111.” Except when you don’t.

No magic here, after all, because we are only saying that the year of your birth plus your age should equal the current year.

But to get 111 in particular, another condition must hold – that “you” must have been born in the last century. My nephew, for instance, born in 2001, calculates out to 11, not 111. And Abe Lincoln, born in 1809 and 202 years old, yields 211.

The leftmost digit (hundreds position) does carry some information, however. In the case of Abe Lincoln, 2 indicates how many centuries his birth is removed from the current one. And in my nephew's case, zero hundreds likewise indicates that he was born in this century.

Number puzzles can be fun. For me, the most fun comes from decomposing them and poking around the edges. Not mind-bending stuff, but pleasant over a cup of coffee on a rainy Sunday morning.