2024, Business, Farming Update, Seasons

LIFE!!!

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

This weather! AC one day, heat the next. We had the windows open Monday and the wellhouse heater on Wednesday night.

Sigh. Lately… Every single thing is just a pain. I’m on the struggle bus. Software upgrades before I can proceed, mandatory password changes that take a while to implement, slow drivers, red lights, carwash lines… all very first world problems, but man, it’s exhausting. 

Monday my friend Jason and I spent the afternoon on the roof of the Rep Theater hanging over the edge, mounting a metal strip into which, a line of ‘LED’ lights will go. It’s the usual flat, tar roof, and we got a little dirty. And I have a tender spot by my underarm on both arms…

It’s gonna be really cool when done and working. I’ll have pictures when we get to that point.

I have done several stupid things this week. Fixing all the dumb things I’ve done keeps me occupied.

We have this new heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system (HVAC) at the Rep Theater. It all got turned on last Thursday. Then Tuesday I was doing stuff and out in the lobby I stopped to look at something. I was carrying a piece of gel; A red piece of plastic that goes in front of the lights to give them a color. I had removed a ‘return air’ vent cover on the wall, because we were repainting the wall. I laid the piece of gel in the hole of the vent and walked into another room to check something in there. And of course, that’s when the furnace started back up. And the piece of gel was gone. “Great”, I thought, “you’ve had this for 3 days and already sucked a piece of gel into it.” But I figured, it’s plastic, what could it really hurt? I checked the big air exchange unit, and it wasn’t in there. Oh well.

That night I realized I should check the filter at the bottom of the furnace. Yep, there it is, inside there… but that slot is only an inch wide. I poked at it with a stick until I managed to shove it further up inside the duct. Twenty minutes later, after removing two shields off the furnace, I could get my arm in there and retrieve the gel. Whew.

As part of this whole HVAC project, we removed all the suspended ceiling tiles upstairs. Which exposed all the old telephone lines, old thermostat lines, and the plethora of internet wires the former tenants had used.

Most of which can be removed now. I have tracked down the actual internet line we ARE using for the phones and computers, so I know which one that is. While working on lighting for Hamlet, I cut a couple old phone lines I knew we’re not using so I could get them out of the way.

And then the general manager asked me why the fire alarm panel was beeping. Sigh. Crap. “Communication Error Line 2”. Took me a while to realize even though the phone system is using an internet provider, I still need a regular phone line between the modem and the fire alarm panel. Sigh. Of course I cut three lines; two of them had 4 wires in each of them and one was the size of your pinky finger and had 48 wires in it. Guess which one goes to the fire panel?

Yep, the big one. Phones are low voltage and they are wired using ‘pairs’ of wires. This was all coming back to me as I worked on it. The blue wire with white spots, and the white wire with blue spots are generally the first pair. Then it’s the Green and white pair, then orange and white pair third. Another trip to Menards for phone wire connectors and 40 minutes on a ladder with a flashlight in my mouth and I had that working again.

Did I mention the wind grabbed the side door and broke the door closer linkage? A mile up the road is a door place. Lukas is my buddy in there. I’m a regular. They had the part. Didn’t take too long to replace that, but it was just another thing.

I remember Dale and JimEd talking one morning and JimEd said he needed a sign: “WARNING! TWENTY FOOT CIRLCE OF EXASPERATION!” That’s me lately. Placating myself with chocolate covered peanuts isn’t the best solution, but it’s a yummy one.

Give us a telephone memory. First phone? Favorite phone? Childhood phone number?

72 thoughts on “LIFE!!!”

  1. Oh Ben, I feel your pain, but I have to admit this report made me smile. Laugh out loud, even. This despite the fact I’m feeling like shit this morning. I’m sure glad that one of the sentiments you’ve learned from your mother is that’s it’s all going to be all right.

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  2. tuxedo 8-2002

    my grandpa in fargo had party lines we thought were so cool

    other people talking on there was so much better than the call we were gonna make ,after a minute the person on the line would yell at us to get off. How did they know?
    is your refrigerator running ? Better go catch it?
    is max there ? Is max there is max there hi it’s max have there been any calls for me?

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    1. Oh dear – we used to do some of those during freshman year of college, I’m embarrassed to say. Ours was “Is Tracy there?” 

      Oh dear – we used to do some of those during freshman year of college, I’m embarrassed to say. Ours was “Is Tracy there?” 

      Oh dear – we used to do some of those during freshman year of college, I’m embarrassed to say. Ours was “Is Tracy there?” 😳

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        5. What more proof do you want that we’re all stuck in our own private little WP hellscape? Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

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  5. I still remember the two phone numbers we had when I was growing up – still use the last four digits as PINs or technology codes. We had a wall mounted phone in the kitchen and later got a Princess phone for mom & dad’s bedroom. I loved that Princess phone. Once out on my own, I don’t remember any of the phone numbers I had. I’ve had my current landline (yes, I still have one of those) number for nearly 40 years and my cell number for about 9. I used to know a lot of numbers by heart when we all had landlines but now I hardly remember any – too easy to just use the address book on my landline or contacts on my cell. And, of course, texting has cut down tremendously on the number of calls I make these days.

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  6. The phone number I was required to memorize before being released into the world of kindergarten began with the word “Pleasant”. We moved. The next one began with “Diamond”. That’s how ancient I am.

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  7. We had a party line out on Cannon Lake. We were near the old dance hall called Jewett’s Point. There was a line of seasonal cabins between Jewett’s Point and our house. We built the first year-round home in the area. Most of the cabins were summer homes without furnaces. Up at the end of the line of cabins, closer to the dance hall, was a family with the last name “Beer”. They were on the same party line. They had a permanent home in Faribault but they spent a lot of their time at the cabin. Every time one of us would pick up the phone Mrs. Beer would be on it, yammering away about “Ed” or her kids. You could hear dogs barking and her crabby-sounding voice. We didn’t get our own phone line until the mid-‘70s.

    I don’t forget phone numbers, which seems to be such a strange thing. I don’t need them or use them but they’re printed on my memory. I need the brain space but there they are, collecting dust. I still remember many Owatonna phone numbers from when I was quite young. My best friend across the street, my grandparents, and my dad’s office are among them. So of course I remember our first dedicated phone number at Cannon Lake. In those days you didn’t have to use the area code or the next three digits. In Owatonna, all you needed was the last four. In Faribault, you needed the last five. Faribault phone numbers were either 332 or 334. So all you needed was a 2 or a 4 followed by your last 4. I remember feeling shocked when phone companies changed to all ten digits sometime in the ‘80s. Really? We have to dial all that?

    I have a friend who dislikes change. She really resists it. She’s four years older than me. I think those of us born in the 20th century have possibly been through more change than any other generation in history. I told her the old quote about change being the only constant. If she would just look back on her life and recognize all of the changes she’s been through. I wonder if there is a point at which we just can’t take any more? I find the more change comes at me, the more I’ve learned to just embrace it, roll with it, and learn from it.

    My grandpa would have said that you were in one mell of a hess, Ben.

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  8. When I was a child, living in a cabin in the woods on the Iron Range, our phone was on a party line. We had to count the rings to know whether a call was for us, and if you picked it up at the wrong time, you would hear a neighbor talking. We sometimes got to talk to relatives in the Cities, which was a rare treat in the days of long-distance charges.

    Later, when we moved to the Cities ourselves, we had a neighbor who was on the phone all day. Her phone had an incredibly long cord that let her walk around the house while she chatted, keeping track of her kids.

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    2. My cousins had a party line, but we didn’t and I never understood why that was. Something about being the only people on that service or something.

      Our wall mounted kitchen phone also had a long cord. I remember mouthing off to my mom one day, but she was on the phone. She couldn’t yell at me, and she tried to ‘swat’ me with a spatula or something, but the phone cord limited her travel distance. I was able to make my escape!

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  9. The second office I worked in in Copenhagen was a company called Emil V. Abrahamson. They sold chemicals, wholesale, mostly to farmers and cooperatives. Our offices were in an ancient building, and judging from the sagging and well worn wooden floor boards, the office furniture and equipment, were all original to the building. I was the invoicing clerk and switchboard operator. The switchboard was an old fashioned cord board akin to the one used by Ernestine.

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  10. You picked up the earpiece off its hook which opened the line. If no one on the party line was talking, you turned the crank and waited for the operator. When she said “operator,” you said the number you were calling, which would be something like R47-3. She would connect you or tell you the line was busy.

    Clyde

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    2. Our first phone on the farm was a square oak box. On the top were two bells rung by a metal striker in between. On the right side was a crank you used to call the operator or to call people on your party line. On the left hanging in on a hook was the ear and mouth piece which looked like the hand piece of an old desk top dial phone. When you lifted it off the hook, it opened the line.

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  11. In Luverne, people thought it awful that we had to start dialing all 7 numbers of our land lines for local calls instead of just the last 5. I remember our number was 3-4500. Really easy to remember.

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  13. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    When we moved to LeMars, Iowa ours was Floyd6-4771, then soon after that it changed to all numbers so it was 546-4771. Then years later when area codes were added there was a 712 in front of that. I think our family had that phone number from 1960 – 1997 when my mother moved to central Iowa.

    Ben, I can relate to living on the struggle bus. That is the first time I have heard that phrase, or at least that I remember hearing the phrase. But it says it perfectly. While Lou got through this problem with the pinched nerve, the severe pain he was in really jangled his mind. Overnight I was living with someone with no memory and a lot of disorientation. That is better today, but not entirely. It is a relief that he knows what day it is. The Struggle Bus is accurate though.

    WP is also on the Struggle Bus today. The visible post and replies seem inconsistent without some posts being visible.

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  14. As a teen I had a phone in my room, just because our upstairs phone jack landed there. Photos of me on the phone could have been used for Princess phone ads (though I never had one)… I’d lie on my bed in all kinds of positions while talking to my best friend after supper, while “studying”.

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  15. Work at Proctor & Gamble labs in Mason, Ohio is very strict on safety stuff. There is a requirement that cautioned off areas have particular signage at no higher than 42 inches. The signage requires three emergency contacts with names and telephone numbers. I was written up several times for having the caution tape at 38 inches. Yes. The security officers have measuring tapes while I just guessed. So I started filling out the emergency numbers at the top with my name and number. Second was a current mechanic’s name and number. Third was Jenny 867-5309. They never called me on that.

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  21. I think the NWS is having a bad day. They predicted .5 inches today but we already have 5 inches. The wind is going to gust up to 43 mph. It is a good day to be home, although we did make it to early church since the choir sang.

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  22. Phone loss.

    I was working on a flooring remodel project in a Lane Bryant store Cherry Hills, New Jersey. It was rough going. Night work. I had a jar with water to slack my thirst. My cell phone fell out of my shirt pocket into the jar! Dead! Getting new service took the few waking hours I had. Miserable time. Damn phone!

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  24. My father has always liked an early bedtime. When I was in high school, this started to become a problem with me communicating with my friends by phone. Anytime after 730 or 8:00, and I didn’t get to it in time my dad would answer it. His favorite answer was “Joe’s Morgue, you stab ‘em, we slab ‘em.” Mod a teenage girl. I eventually talked my mom into letting us get a second telephone line for a phone upstairs for my sister and me. My sister and I had to cough up the cost of getting the phone installed but then my mom paid for whatever additional charge there was every month. It must not have been much. it was a wall phone out in the hallway between our two rooms but we had a long long cord so that we could stretch it into either one of our bedrooms and shut the door. Heaven!

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    1. Our house, built in 1968, had phone jacks in every room. First it was the kitchen phone. Later, because mom worked downstairs in her sewing room, she got a second phone down there. It had a long cord so I could take it over to my room too, but later on, I got my own phone in my room.

      Many years later, I installed the phone and intercom wiring into a friends house as it was being built. I learned a lot from that.

      And learning to make a phone ring onstage taught me a lot. There is a gizmo, a box called a ‘Tele-Q’ that you can plug a phone into, and make it ring. But if we didn’t have that, I had a 48V power supply that I wired up. Course British phones don’t ring like American phones. Modern phones or business type phones are more complicated. 🙂

      I’m not sure mom and dad ever had a phone in their bedroom. We had several wireless phones when they came out, but still kept one old plug in phone in case the power went out.

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  25. I must have been sixteen before my parents got a phone. In 1959 a fair amount of Danish homes still didn’t have phones. And those that did paid dearly for every single call they made, even locally. You paid for the duration of the call, from the moment you were connected to the recipient, so you didn’t waste money on crank calls, and spending hours on the phone chatting with friends was unthinkable.

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  26. My daughter is in a community play which is on right now. But power is out in the whole are. They have been doing it with farmers’ lights and having a ball. Just as they finished the lights came on

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