Re: Monorail. Monorail! Monoraaaail!

On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 07:59:57 -0500, in message
<-fCdnY6D8t3UnmLeRVn-gg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Kip Williams <kiptw@xxxxxxxxxxx> caused electrons to dance and
photons to travel coherently in saying:

Doug Wickstrom wrote:
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:52:13 +0000 (UTC), in message
<slrndvqqdd.lve.randolph@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Randolph Fritz <randolph@xxxxxxxxx> caused electrons to dance
and photons to travel coherently in saying:


Both of these things were perhaps not healthy. (Certainly not for the
amerinds.) The US system of land use is unique in the world, and led
to one of the most isolated rural cultures that has ever been. And we
go on and on and on about how wonderful it was, too, from the safe
distance of isolated urban forms which derive from those isolated
rural forms. It wasn't wonderful; it was a terribly hard, dangerous,
and above all lonely life. Individualism? Perhaps. But to make a
virtue of loneliness? That is madness.

Urban smugness, much?

Where?

Those prairie farmers fed this nation. Their descendents still
do, on much narrower profit margins than their great-
grandparents.

Yeah, but as pointed out in Bettmann's "The Good Old Days: They Were
Terrible!", it could be a hellish existence. I don't see where "fed
thisnation... on [narrow] profit margins" negates that.

My great-grandfather farmed in Isanti Co., Minnesota, on 200
acres. His farmstead was a bit unusual for the area, in that it
didn't have a house on it, but he already had a house in the
village when he finally got together enough money to buy the
land, and the house was within a few hundred yards of the farm,
so he just put the barn as close to the house as he could. Yes,
he put a lot of back-breaking labor into it. Hip-breaking, too,
when he fell off the top of the hay wagon at the age of 80. The
story is still told in the family; the summer of 1936 was a bad
time to be in a full-body cast, and the old man took a hammer to
it so he could scratch his heat rash.

That farm fed a family of ten, employed eight farm hands, sent
money back to Sweden, paid for a new house in town that I can't
afford to buy today, and paid for a larger and better farm a few
miles away, when his son-in-law, who had owned it, died, which
was just as close to (a different) town, but with a very fine
brick home within shouting distance of the outbuildings, and with
its own railroad siding.

Today, one man farms that original farm, alone, together with
another 160 acres inherited from his own grandfather, and can
barely make a living at it.

The truth is that farm commodity prices are so low and farming is
so intensely capitalized*, compared to the recent past (less than
forty years), that it is today impossible to do what my
great-grandfather did. Farmers in the past were always at the
mercy of the market and the weather. They still are. Only
today, the market is chronically low, and has been so for
decades.

*I'd had this crazy idea that I might buy the second farm and
keep it in the family when I retired from the Air Force, as the
cousin who had inherited was getting on in years and had no sons,
but I couldn't match what the town was willing to pay for it as a
place to put a sewage treatment plant**. I couldn't even come
close. Two million dollars for 550*** acres was beyond my
wildest dreams, and the city didn't even want all of it.****

**This same problem is affecting the Amish, as while their
equipment costs are relatively low, there's only so much land,
and they are watching it being snatched up by people with more
money than sense who want to build houses on two- and three-acre
parcels, and have no intention of farming it.

***There were originally 600 acres, but the city had bought the
South Fifty years before for a park and rodeo grounds.

****Remember that rail siding? Part of the farm is now an
industrial park, part of it, to the city's chagrin, is a
historical monument (the oldest building in the county) they
can't afford to maintain, and part of it is being developed for
new housing.

--
Doug Wickstrom <nimshubur@xxxxxxxxxxx>

"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have
a tremendous impact on history." --Dan Quayle

Now filtering out all cross-posted messages and everything posted
through Google News.


.

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