The Old Farmer

For over eight years my best friend was an old man. Huel Powell moved in across the street of the lake house in 2000, I didn't get to know him until 2001. A bunch of old guys would fish off the big dock down to Goody's resort, they would lay in old Christmas trees in the dock slips to attact crappie in the winter months. I would join them in adventurous winter fishing on my off days from work. I'd drive 139 miles from Kansas City to do this in the dead of winter. We'd devise all sorts of strategies to keep our hands warm while catching winter fish. The bite was good and we suffered through. One day I was with the oldsters and they started talking about Mr. Powell, they said, "He's a reader." I was immediately sold. I piped up, "I'm a reader too."

Huel and I connected on that cold dock and expanded our friendship into summer. In summer he would show me his fishing techniques and I would share my own ideas. They never meshed. He fished the deep points, I fished the cover. We both caught and gave our catch to Maynard, our neighbor with the bad heart.

Huel had been a farmer for 42 years, we talked about crops, cows and hay. In the seventies Huel had two boys to put through college so he quickly established a dairy operation. Dairy farming is onerous, hard, repetitive work. Mr. Powell hated it but it was profitable enough to pay the tuition. He grew interesting hay, flecked with clover and timothy. He imported English heifers and had an immaculate milk house. A local dairy sold his milk and he put his boys through school. The minute the youngest graduated he ceased dairy farming.

Huel went back to grass farming, growing hay, hay seed and feeding livestock. Feed the cattle good grass and they will make tasty beef and nutritious milk. Mr. Powell would not grow Fescue hay like all of his neighbors. Since he harvested his own seed he was able to compose designer hay. This was his secret formula and he took it to the grave. His cattle never saw a feed lot, they grew fat on his special grass. He had them butchered by a neighbor down the road and sold the cuts to local eateries. Cut out the middlemen and you can sell beef on the cheap and still make a handsome profit.

Huel read western novels by the bushel. His son was a professor at the U of Nebraska and would deliver cases of used books gleaned from the university library system. Mr. Powell taught me to read Elmer Kelton and Zane Grey and I exposed him to Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry.

Mr. Powell was politically astute; he was both a liberal and a libertarian. The man was irreligious but spent a lot of time worrying about his soul. He admitted to cheating on his wife and leading a lusty life. I'd tell him, "I forgive you. If it's that easy to do for me imagine how God will laugh."

He had a spinal stroke a few years before his death. It happened in winter while he was fishing off the big dock. It crippled his legs pretty bad but he got around slowly with a cane. The spring after the stroke he crawled out to the back yard and put in his garden on his hands and knees. If he fell when I was around he wouldn't let me help him up. "Damn boy, you won't always be around, I've got to figure how to stand on my own."

He got sick at age 89 and faded quick. Before he would become a burden he put a bullet in his head. Yes, we even talked about this and I convinced him to buy a .22 rather than splatter his brain pan with the old deer rifle.

I buried him with this poem.

The old farmer
sits on the porch
and worries over
the state of his soul.
I've never been much
of a churcher. Weddings
and funerals at most, even then
I felt ill at ease.
If churching is a
requirement for heaven I am
surely bound for hell.
I worshipped from inside a pickup
and on top of a tractor.
I did penance in the milk barn
and prayed along the fence line.
In winter I've seen the beeves
and wild beasts in nativity.
Did I get a glimpse of God
in the eyes of wary critters
or where they watching over me?
Lord, let me wander eternal
fields of hay with an old dog,
enjoying the sun,
counting the cattle,
forever walking my farm
home.