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Monday, August 10, 2020
9:00PM
Visited Dad at the farm. He reported a small adventure on this warm summer’s day: he made three round trips out his quarter-mile driveway and beyond, with two not-consecutive legs of those trips being on foot. He had first set out with his lawn tractor, to get his mail and to mow the grass along the sides of the driveway, just one pass up and one pass back, but, when he got to the mailbox, he decided he might as well mow a little ways more, to the top of the hill on Town Line Road. When he turned to cut one more swath on the way back, the mower bottomed out on the rain-softened road shoulder and got stuck. He raised the mower deck high as it would go, but, no, the tractor stayed stuck.
Dad hiked home to get the RAV4 to tow the tractor free, but he could not find ropes, chains, or tow straps where he thought they should be. He did find, in the white garage, a set of winter tire chains for some long-forgotten vehicle, and those rusted chains, though inelegant, were suitable substitutes for the task. He pulled the tractor onto firmer ground, drove the RAV4 back home, hiked back out to the tractor, and mowed his way to his house again.
Other than overworking his fluttery heart in the August heat, Dad’s only injury was an inch-long gouge out of his back, apparently torn when he lay on the ground to affix the tire chains to the RAV4 hitch.
When I got to the farm, close to five p.m., I inspected Dad’s wound and trimmed the skin with the toenail clippers I carry in my camera bag. I applied bacitracin and a Band-Aid. All is well.
That’s the top of the news of the day from Fjord, Wisc. How does it compare with David Muir and today’s excitement of gunshots fired by Secret Service agents during a presidential news conference slash presidential back patting?
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Now, this all reminds me of one thing more. Did I ever tell you why I always report the “News of the Day from Fjord, Wisc.,” pronounced just that way, “Ford Whisk”? Well, maybe I told you. I’ll tell you again. And, of course, anyone who lives anywhere near Galloway County already knows Fjord is pronounced “Ford,” but one time, when we Fischer kids were up here at the farm, up here from Virginia or Kentucky, maybe the summer after my seventh grade or eighth, we all went with Gram and Grampa to the Firemen’s Picnic at Firemen’s Park, and the featured entertainment that year was a professional stand-up comedian from somewhere. He wasn’t anybody anybody’d ever heard of, but someone must have heard he was good, and I can tell you, he really was, he was hilarious from his very first line, which I have never forgotten.
When the emcee introduced the comedian to the crowd, we all applauded, and people full of beer whistled and cheered, and this guy, in suit-and-tie, stepped up to the microphone, grinned real big, and said, “Thank you! Thank you, folks! Boy, it sure is wonderful to be back home! Back home again in, uh”—and here he paused, and reached into his pants pocket and brought out a scrap of paper and peered at it and said—“yes, back home again in Ford! Ford, Whisk!”
It’s a line I shall never have a chance, myself, to use, but it has given me great pleasure to recall it, many times, in these many years since.
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