Goode Ole Daize
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This section is about rural life before gasoline tractors and modern agricultural automation. About 1/2 of the
people in the U.S. were directly or indirectly involved with growing food for themselves and the other 1/2.
Power was human labor and draft animals. No air conditioned tractors with farmers rarely touching the "product".
Mitch provided the fascination pictures of rural Colorado below,
Added Oct 26, 2011 - Mitch has another story - Gambling on the Weather. Added Jan 12, 2012 - The Bull |
from Mitch Allies - mrallies @ sbcglobal . net
September 2010
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When there was no Social Security ---
These are all pictures of my mother's aunt and uncle.
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 click for 160 KB |
The following comments flowed back and forth
- Ed Thelen to Mitch Allies
- Mitch Allies back to Ed Thelen
I'm not sure "my audience" is ready
for this dose of "the good ole daize".
I mean
- no color TV - not even black&white
- no Internet, on-line movies, e-mail, ...
- no phone - let alone cell phone with camera -
- no government provided transportation to the dentist
- in a motor car no less -
- no air conditioning or gas furnace with thermostat
- no city water, sewer, gas, electric, daily newspaper, ...
- no Chinese made clothes, too inexpensive to be worth
re-soleing or mending
Just lots of work and inconvenience
like the subjects had to stand still
for the photo - or look smeary
And for real -
not a "rural" painting of some city folk
looking serious, in front of a barn -
Too difficult to bridge the gap -
One political party would want to take credit
for all the "progress" since ;-))
Or maybe both -
- one claiming "social services"
- one claiming inventiveness and production
I've reduced the file size (and resolution)
since my eldest son has chosen to be "deprived"
staying with "dial-up" of pre-year 2000
Like how primitive can you get ??
Maybe he doesn't have a flush toilet??
or take showers??
or have an electric car
- powered by coal/oil fired generators -
or a "hydrogen" car, powered by the same
I bet those old folks felt more secure than
many of our old folks,
ours being fearful of
- thugs and robberies
- dying alone and not being missed for weeks
- starving, since they have no garden nor chickens
Ed ( who remembers old rural folks in Wisconsin ) Thelen
Yeah, I enjoyed your commentary, so- should I add?
Economies of scale are great - can almost reduce prices to cost of raw stuff
You could probably comment that the existence of these pictures is
attributable to Kodak economies of scale.
-However, they reduce individuality significantly,
-You previously could get a pretty good idea of a man by examining his pocket contents.
-Now you find generic credit cards and cell phones.
-A few years back - a body in Paris with Greek coins in the pocket
-Was likely Greek
-Now he has Euros, and is European.
The next frontier will be spoken and written language-
No more need to puzzle Hieroglyphics .
and of course the Final Frontier already defined by Watson and Crick
My father used to tell a tale on himself -
He grew up on a farm, serious extended hard labor -
(Much too cruel and unusual for our prisoners.)
Being tired of the above he looked for a place to hide -
(I guess his usual haunts were too known.)
So he climbed up the ladder on the windmill,
curled up on the little working platform,
and dozed off -
A breeze came up, from a wrong direction,
the mill assembly and blades rotated,
knocking him off the platform.
He must have been young and very lucky
only breaking an arm !!
He was taken to the town doctor in a (horse drawn) farm wagon.
The town doctor did a poor job
having to break the arm and reset it properly later.
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- Ed Thelen to Mitch Allies to Ed Thelen - Jan 12, 2012
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Ed forwarded a whacky photo
REAL COWBOYS HAVE NO FEAR 
click to enlarge
Mitch came back with: Brahmas -- I think they came from India way back somewhere. Surprisingly they are not aggressive in a notorious way. -- never saw them much back home, except maybe at a rodeo Story from my Mom---------- She said she wasn't ever going to allow Jersey bulls on our farm. At some later date she told the rest of the story. When my sisters were little she began working for a guy name Ferguson on a ranch east of town. She did all the inside duties. My Dad was gone in the summers herding sheep out near Swinging Bridge, Utah. Ultimately they bought the Farm from Ferguson and it became our home. The reason Ferguson needed housework was because his wife had been trying to cross one of the lower pastures where some Jersey bulls resided. Apparently they have a nasty temperament, and one of them took after her and gored her so severely that it was fatal.
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