Victor Davis Hanson
Since antiquity farmers have been characterized as boorish (Greek agros, “farm/field,” English “agrarian”; Latin rus, “countryside,” English “rustic”), as if nature coarsened those who worked with it.
My experience of more than six decades on the farm is that such impressions certainly can be true. I remember the old ditch tender, whom I’ll “Bud.” He would drive up in his beat-up, 1956 Chevy pickup, roll down his window, and keep it short. “You want the water?”
I’d say, “yes.”
And he’d answer, “Well then, take her down a foot below the baffle and it’s yours for five days.”
And that was that.
If I saw Bud that week driving down the alleyways, he would lift one finger from his hand on the wheel as his greeting and then expressionless pass on by. When I once complained that a neighbor opened the gate two days too early and cut in on my turn, destroying my pressure and drying up 200 valves, he’d stop, grimace, get out of his pickup, and walk back to the bed. There, he’d hunt through a pile of old steel valves, broken concrete pipe, huge twisters, and assorted bronze fittings until he found a length of chain and a padlock with a rusted key in it.
Then Bud would hand it to me and mutter, “Lock her up, till you’re done.”
Translated I took that offer to mean something like, “If you want your full turn, then you’re going to have to make sure you have it. So go over to your gate and padlock it open. My job is to allot your turns, not be your nursemaid.”
If I complained a bit about the water stealer, he’d grimace and grunt, “Yep, he’s been known to do that.”
Bud owned 20 acres of Thompson vines. He farmed them while working for the irrigation district and at 70 was both too young and poor to retire and too old to care much about diving into the water wars among all the conflicting agendas on the communal ditch. He knew there was too little mountain runoff water to irrigate too many acres among too many cranky owners.
Bud never referred to any of us on the ditch much by name. There was only a reference to “the Portagee,” the “Armenian,” the “Hindu,” the “Oriental,” and us, who were not Swedish enough to be known by him as the “Swede.”
So, most of those whom I’ve been around for 40 years in the age before corporate agriculture (where the managers are more polite, more professional, and less interesting), were a bit rugged from working hard and making little.
But then, just when you descended into stereotypes, the quite astounding could appear. When I was a boy, my grandfather took me on his weekly errands (He insisted on hand-delivering in person his check payments rather than mailing them). One stop was at an electric motor repair shop, where there was a wizened old man, in a dusty store, full of wrecked electric motors, ancient steel motor hulls, and rewired motors. Some of the repaired motors were scattered on shelves with name tags on them and seemed unclaimed. As he aged, I saw that he had taken on a young helper, a soft-spoken Mexican-American mechanic as a sort of apprentice.
Discussion (12)
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Log In to CommentThe federal government dangles the carrot but they can do that because, in large part, the states, afraid to raise their own taxes or discipline their cities, have become hooked on sucking at the federal teat. Why shouldn't the federal government push an advantage with additional control that it has foisted on the people of each of the several states with nary a peep in objection by those states?
I know western WA well. Allyn, Hood Canal, Bremerton and Tacoma, not to mention a commute up the 405 to Bellevue every day to work for the big software outfit there. The politics of western WA drove me nuts. It has only gotten worse since I left 25 years ago. Enumclaw is rural, however.
Good one, Jim.
So admirable. Sorta reminds me of grandpa taking me with him to the cattle auctions in Enumclaw.
That fellow was no Bud Light. Had to say it.
Dear Dr Hanson Your writings and speeches remind me that even in this chaotic and greedy world there have been and are people striving to do things right. I really appreciate your teachings on both deep and daily things. Thank you. Sharon Tomlinson.
Victor, you could probably write a similar memoir about the mayors and city councils of small towns a hundred years ago. They repaired the roads, built new roads, extended the power and water lines, and managed to do it without submitting grant requests to Sacramento, let alone Washington, DC. They had to be much more self-reliant and consequently much better connected to the reality they were immersed in. No longer. If the federal government decided to grant construction money to buildings that had six small one-foot square windows in each room, no window lower than 6 feet from the floor, you would be amazed at the number of new buildings that had lots of tine windows tucked in just below the rain gutters. We are creatures of our environment, and money talks.
What a memory. The motor repair shop in Mess AZ that could fix, including rewind any motor. Long gone, just like me. God bless the engineers and technicians who are no longer to be found. I was once rich in knowledge of how to get things done by knowing who could do it.
A highlight of my day is coming here to get my daily fix of VDH. It's especially enjoyable when the agrarian Hanson shows up. I've admired Victor Davis Hanson's mind since the early days of the Dennis Miller radio show. He seemed like our precious secret then. I am happy to share him with the world oh so many years later. Thank you, Farmer Hanson, for keeping this rancher of fish in good spirits. Keith Koerner Big Fish Farms bigfishfarms.com
Victor, I have come to so enjoy the stories and characters that you bring to life of that bygone era that will never return. Please keep writing about something I can only imagine being a city kid whose only contact was our Sunday drives into the country to buy fresh eggs and vegetables. Those drives with my family with my beloved Uncle Mike and Aunt Betty and Mom are sorely missed, seeing I'm almost 74 but are times treasured for sure. I say thank you with a tear running down my cheek......Joel
VDH, your writing has always given me fresh hope in humanity. You are a special breed.
Dear Dr. Hanson: You know, things just managed to get done somehow. That somehow was people making things happen. Maybe it was not glamorous; however, there is something to be said for just getting it done! Everyone seems to be all about the glamor these days. Working on a farm or in a garden can be quite "grounding."