It was the winter of 1964-65. Living in the “barn” of a house on the Beaver Farm, I never liked winter. It was cold and dark. The wind howled through the window cracks. Now 75, I still don’t like fall, for it portends winter.
We have a political party in this country that has become just nasty. And yes, the opposition gets in this gutter just a little bit once in a while, but nothing like the party of the donkey does.
The Left, in particular, has been gravely harrumphing about any attempts to silence people making nasty comments about the murder of Charlie Kirk. In the name of free speech and the First Amendment you can’t silence them, they say. I ask, please tell me the difference between silencing them and murdering Charlie Kirk. Wasn’t that an effort to permanently silence Charlie Kirk? Besides murder, wasn’t that a violation of the First Amendment?
Spring of 1964 meant the McNary Farm was done with the Federal Reserve program and was eligible to farm. Dad had bought another old unstyled John Deere A, so now we had two John Deere A’s and the Case DC. We had sold the old Farmall.
One day in November, John and I were both home sick with colds. We were listening to “Everybody’s Farm” on WLW radio. NBC broke into the program to tell us President Kennedy had been shot. It was Nov. 23, 1963. We spent the rest of the day listening to the radio.
Here we go again…Rasmussen is out with a survey whose results says 53% of likely U.S. voters ages 18 to 39 would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election. Really?
The Highland County Fair, 1963: The balance of the summer of 1963 went by in a bucolic manner. The weather was unremarkable for summertime. My 4-H pig, Julius Caesar, grew nicely, innocently unaware of this fate. I treated him like a pet and mentally ignored the coming end.
Free time and greed, in its basest form, results in murder. Cain used a rock to kill his brother, Abel. It was cheap, just pick it up off the ground. Today, our weapons may not be so cheap, but they are designed to be impulsive.
We farmed mostly with the Case that spring, but I would run the John Deere dragging after Dad had plowed. Dragging plowed ground is a rough ride. You know what I am talking about if you have ever done it.
So, there is a lesson here for all of us. The way we see the world is not necessarily the way the majority sees the world. I am not saying we should change, but we should at least be aware of our surroundings.
It slowly became spring in 1963. Dad spent the winter – when he was home – relocating and building new fences around the homestead. As normal, he had eyes bigger than our ability to do work.
I made my first Social Security payment in March 1970. Here we are in August 2025, 665 months later, and I am still paying into Social Security because I still work. I would estimate that the return I have received on average on my “investment” has been less than 3%.
One evening, John developed a terrible cold, and Mother became very worried about him and thought is was pleurisy. We had no car, no established doctor, or anything. These things developed into a pattern – they happened when Dad was in Troy working.
I don’t like everything about President Trump. And I didn’t dislike everything about the other 13 presidents who have served in my lifetime. They all have their good and bad points.
