country poetry & more

Harry built a three-point hitch for the 1948 model International so he could use the shredder and blade at the farm. There the young grandsons loved to try their hands at driving. His last big job after moving to the mountains and selling the farm was to bring the tractor and the framework of an old iron-wheeled wagon to our new home. The wagon sits in the front yard near a windmill replica he built, silent memories of the past. But the Farmall is still active, with son Jay sitting at the wheel looking much like his old farmer dad, mowing his two acres of grass and weeds, plus some for neighbors, plus taking care of their gravel road and keeping it clear of snow in the winter, plus showing off in a parade last Saturday. Maybe we’ll send Harry pictures. He would be so proud.

Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net

I'm always been a little slow on the uptake. Levi's jeans had been around for about a hundred years before I discovered their comfort when I tried on a pair belonging to my little brother, Jerry. I loved them so much that he never got them back until they were so tight I had to switch to big brother Walter's. I was too stingy with my hard-earned money to buy my own.

Jeans made for girls in those days were flimsy and baggy, with a zipper on the side. Girls generally didn't wear pants much then, and certainly not shorts except on the basketball court. When I started wearing cut-off Levi's to town, I added one more smear to the family name. I thought my long shapely legs were my only asset, and I put them to good use when the guys from the road construction site stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work each afternoon. In no time at all, I was married to the best one of the bunch.

Thanks, Levi Strauss!!

Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net

When we examine nature we have a tendency to be impulsive in our judgments. Seeing a carnivore kill its prey can be a disturbing experience. Writers and film makers tend to anthropomorphize everything animals do or that happens to them. What that means is that we make the animals into humans and interpret their experiences in human terms. Many of us talk to our dogs and cats in ways that would lead an unseeing observer to assume that it was our child we were addressing. We frequently miss the logic or purpose behind something when we do this, and sometimes we blame God for an incident we view as a catastrophe that may not in fact be a disaster at all.

Recently anthropological and archaeological studies show that insect swarms may fall into this category. I can recall seeing movies at school of insect swarms destroying a crop and ravaging the resources of a community. It was repulsive to see millions of grasshoppers covering the ground and filling the air, destroying every green thing in their path. Certainly this was a disaster for the families victimized by the swarms of insects. To a great extent, however, the problem was one of man’s refusal to use a food resource readily available to him from early times.

The Ute and Paiute Indians were studied by John Wesley Powell who reported in the 1870s that the Indians had numerous ways of turning the insects into very great delicacies. Digs in Utah have shown heavy usage of grasshoppers as a source of food, and experiments with present day populations indicate that one person can collect 200 pounds of dried hopper per hour from lake beaches where they are piled up by wave action.

The question of food value still remains. An ordinary grasshopper is 60% protein, 11% carbohydrate, and 2% fat. The caloric value of grasshoppers is 1365 calories per pound compared with 1240 for beef and 1590 for wheat flour. This translates into 273,000 calories per hour of work invested compared with 300 to 1,000 calories per hour for seed collecting and 25,000 calories per hour for big game such as deer or antelope. One person collecting the insects for one hour would have the calorie content of 87 chili dogs, 49 slices of pizza, or 43 Big Macs.

It is not the purpose of this article to try to run the quick food places out of business, because like most Americans I do not find grasshopper eating to be high on my list of gourmet treats. On the other hand one has to see the wisdom of the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Perhaps using the grasshoppers as a food source made their destructive capabilities so negligible to our ancestors that the swarms became a blessing instead of a plague. —Ref: Natural History, July 1989, pp. 22-25.

—John Clayton, Dandy Designs, Sept/Oct 1990

Cora Gail Trent

www.cgtrent.com

cgtrent@att.net

I feel a kinship with country music song writer Mac Davis who "thought happiness was Lubbock, Texas in my rear-view mirror." My hometown of Flomot was surrounded on every side by cotton patches and I couldn't wait to wave good-bye to her back-breaking work.

Within a few months of graduation, I was living on cloud nine, married to the man of my dreams who made a decent living working in road construction. Added blessings came with the birth of baby Joe, but before Molly arrived two years later, we were farmers once again.

This time around I was allowed to drive the tractor, another dream come true. Instead of dragging a sack of cotton down the dusty rows, I rode in the trailer forking and redistributing the cotton, an even dirtier job. But I loved it! I felt more in control of my destiny, and having experienced a few years of city living, I appreciated country life as never before.

Now I look forward to the Flomot homecoming every three years, as old friends become more precious with time, even though I'm the oldest-looking one of the bunch. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net