WADE'S REMEMBERAMBLE FOR TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2026

GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

I hope this day finds you well, and glad for the rains we had yesterday, and praying you had no weather related damage. Here in Garfield, we had needed rains often, for most of the day, no extreme winds nor a single thunder clap. It was a terrifically fine napping day. Speaking of thunder, I am reminded of mama telling of my brother Joe, who was two years older than me, around the time I was born, reacting to a tremendous thunderstorm. Mama said he had his hands over his ears, running around the house making loud "aaaaaaaayyyyy" sounds to try to drown the sounds of the thunder. Mama reached out and grabbed him as he made a pass through the front room where she was sitting, pulled him over to her, and said, "stop, thunder won't hurt you!" Joe looked at her as if she was a dolt, took his hands from his ears, and said, "It will pop your BRAINS OUT!!" He then put his hands over his ears again, and returned to his run about the house. He said it with profound declarative positivity much as Judy did once years ago as we visited Hofwyl Broadfield planation, and I decided to take a shortcut through a pasture where a single cow and her calf resided. Judy was terrified of the cow, that was harmlessly chewing its cud. She was holding onto my arm with such vigor that her nails were almost drawing blood. I stopped, looked at her and said, "it's okay, a cow won't hurt you." She looked me in the eye and said, firmly, "they will BITE YOUR FACE OFF!!" Carl was a small boy, but he "got it," so we were both cracking up laughing. It was so over-the-top and melodramatic that we laughed hysterically. Even she was able to laugh about it later. I was thinking of something yesterday that I really do not know the answer to, and perhaps some of you could answer my question: was there ever a time when farming was "good," by which I mean a sustained span of a few years when farming was almost assuredly profitable? If so, I know I could not identify such an era. It seems that farmers have always had to live on the very edge of profitability, with seemingly the entire deck stacked against them, so-to-speak. I suppose if, based on my limited knowledge, I had to identify a proverbial "happy time" for farming, it would be for a portion of the immediate post war era consisting of some part of the decade of the nineteen-fifties, as well as some years of the following decade of the sixties. The Civil War period and Reconstruction era devastated southern farming. The turn of the century at the dawn of the twentieth century brought financial panics, the first world war brought more economic hardships to the southern farm economy, the war was short-lived and soon after, there were financial panics causing many southern farm families to lose their farms. The twenties saw the boll weevil's advent, and on the heels of that came the great depression. The lead-up to the second world war, as we were helping our allies, Russia and England with Lend-Lease and as well as grain and meat shipments, there might have been good years, but the red-hot economy pulled hundreds of thousands of farm laborers from the southern farms and into the industrial cities' factories. Labor shortages increased the hardships on the farm, but women and children, as well as the elderly who could, did their part to keep the farms in high volume production. The war demanded more from less! Gasoline, tires, lumber, fence wire, fertilizer, chemicals, plow points, nuts, bolts, flat belts, tractors, parts, and a thousand and one other things farmers needed were either rationed, in short supply, or not available at all. So, here we are back butting heads with the above mentioned nineteen-fifties, having come full circle in delineating my haphazard, fluffed up, barely knowledgeable examination of farming in the past. It goes without saying that the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties were generally terrible times for farmers, and are well remembered by most of us. I hope if my brief history of the hazards of farming is pretty much a crock of guano, at least it sounds good. Hey, in lieu of brilliance, baffling with bull sh*t or bird guano, will do in a pinch. I have enjoyed this morning foray into pseudo-history, and hope you found it of interest too. Thanks for your participation. God bless...

Romans 8: 38-39, KJV

we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me