Well I started the post below, but life happened ( more to come on that) a LOT and I had to save my draft. Here is the finished post.

I traveled to Burley, Idaho yesterday with my sister, Belinda and her husband, Brian. Our Aunt Laura Lee Pearson passed away and we wanted to make sure we went up to see the family and pay our respects. Laura Lee was 60 years old and my Mom’s youngest sister. She had downs syndrome. Ten years older than me, but taught me so much about love, life and laughter,.

I spent a lot of time in Burley growing up. Our vacations  always consisted of going to Burley and visiting family when my Mom was a single mother raising me and my sisters. I ended up working for my Uncle Ryan during the summers from my 9th grade year through my Senior year on the farm.

It has been over 10 years since I have been back. Weird. As we were getting close to Burley, I kept reminiscing from the back seat like an old grandpa taking his grand kids down memory road. I mean, some may call me old, but I am not that old. However, the drive brought back great memories of my time in Burley.

I have always told people that if you shovel rows (a job ensuring each row of the crop gets water) then you know the value of hard work. On the farm, as well as in life, no job is too dirty, no job is too hard. I think the farm is where I got my work ethic. Yes I worked on the farm back before farms were all under sprinkler irrigation so I hauled my share of pipe and changed my share of water. I learned out to pump a tube from the ditch with one hand and manage the flow so each row was receiving the right amount of water for the right length of time.

After visiting with Uncle Steven and Aunt Joanne for a bit, Mom took co-pilot position and proceeded to take us all on a tour around the ole stompin grounds. Brian had never been to the farm and wanted to see the sites. MAN the land had changed!

We drove past Grandma’s and Grandpa’s place where our Mom grew up. WOW the memories there. From doing 4th of July fire works with the family and starting the silage pit on fire. I have never seen grown men jump up so fast and start tractors to get the fire out. Them cows still needed to eat. Hopefully they liked a bit of charred food. To riding the 3-wheeler, all the way down the lane and back over and over and over. There may have been a few jumps on the 3-wheeler over the canal and it may have resulted in a couple of broken wrists, but whose counting.

It was also the same place that Grandpa was trying to teach me how to drive a stick shift. I was 13.  He put me in the driver seat of his little Toyota pick-up and we took off, shakily. I am not sure how we both didn’t get a kink in our neck. I just remember rounding the corner at the end of the farm a bit too fast, not remembering how to brake and let off the clutch at the same time and ran the pick-up right into the ditch. That pick-up was goin no where. Grandpa jumped out, grabbed his shovel from the back, dug us out while I stood there watching and then jumped back in the passenger seat. He looked at me and said, “You aint going to learn by standing there.”  I didn’t really master the art of the stick shift until the following year, when I started working on the farm.

During the grain harvest season, my Uncle Ryan and I finished lunch and we needed to head back to the field. Uncle Ryan’s truck driver was not there yet. So he looked at me, said get in, and follow him in the combine to the field. YEP. NO help NO nothin. So I did just that – followed my Uncle to the field again a bit shakily in the old black Chevrolet grain truck. When Mom came to get me from the farm at the end of summer to return home, I took here for a ride. I could tell she was proud of me.

We drove past the field where I learned how to run the combine and cut grain. My rows may have been a bit wavy and not straight. That could have had something to do with Saralee Cathcart sitting next to me. 😛

What ever the task, I was up for it. There was a time when Uncle Ryan had to leave town for a week or so and left me, the city slicker, in charge of the entire farm. OMG. What was he thinking!? I was sick to my stomach. He drove me around the entire farm, and had me write instructions down in my notebook…. he’d point and say, “Water needs to be ordered here and turned on on Tuesday, let is run 24 hours and then shift it to the next rows. Make sure you don’t let a lot of water spill over the last damn.” That was an art. And the instructions went on until we had been around the entire place and my head was swimming.

“How the hell was I going to manage all of this?” But manage I did. Oh and Aunt Jackie and I may of ordered pizza and a scary movie. That was letting our hair down as the old saying goes, “While the cat’s away, the mice will play” But, not too late, I had to get up and change the water in the morning.

I worked up there for 4 summers. I learned a ton about farm life and there were a lot of Sunday School lessons doled out on the ditch bank from my Uncle Ryan. But, I loved it up there and cherish the memories I made. My two best friends were from Burley. KC Thompson & Phillip Lasen. Two amazing friends and salt of the earth.

I remember I would be out cultivating a field of beans and I would see KC’s gold Monza drive across the top of the field. I would reach him, he would get out with two big gulps and we would ride and hang and shoo the shit about everything., On Sundays, we would come back to the farm and help me change water and then we would head out on adventures. They may have consisted of activities like solemn skiing the canals behind a pick-up truck. We just had to make sure we lifted to rope high enough so as to not get it wrapped around one of the many head gates lining the canals. We had fun.

I don’t think I will ever forget those days. I believe they were a big part of making me the man I am today. A hard working, determined, ready to roll up my sleeve and get the job down, full of grit, kind of guy.