A Short History Part 9

After moving so much, I was kind of excited to move to Colfax as I knew one kid there, Since 1979 when my dad was working in this area, I would try to go with to see my friend Brent, and after we moved to Colfax, we were only 3 miles away from the Bergeson farm where he lived. After we got settled into a house about a mile north of town, we started school on halloween day, I was in the third grade, with my teacher being Mrs. Satter, After all the advanced classes I had been into in New Auburn, Colfax didn't really care about academics, they are a sports school, so I was in the third grade for all my classes, and they were teaching at about the 2nd grade level of New Auburn, So needless to say, I was bored. I spent most of my time reading in class, and had no problem being an excellent student. after getting to know the Paulus farm heifer farm we lived on, I started walking over to the Bates farm next door, John bated milked 55 Holsteins, and kept a very neat barn, he gave me a job, I was to scrape floors and feed his calves, fill the bunk with corn silage, and sweep his feed alleys every day, so I did, but it didn't take very long, so I would walk the extra half mile to the Paulus home farm, and help feed there. by the next spring, I was more often at the Paulus' then at home, I had to come home for church, and school, but I was pretty much a part of the family. Glen was very good at teaching work habit's, we each were given chores, and we had get them done, before any other thing could be done, so I fed alot of cows, I was in charge of raking hay that first summer, and most of the baling, I learned hand signals and team work, we all worked very hard, but at the end of the day, it felt good to relax, and walk in the hills. The Paulus' farmed land all over the place, as much as 6 miles away, so we drove trucks, tractors, semi's, tanker's all over the place, Glen did custom manure pit pumping, so I often got to drive the big tanker trucks, for a boy of 8, It was awesome, Glen taught me how to drive the 13 speed with out the clutch, I couldn't really reach it anyway, if I touched it with my foot, he would slug me in the arm, after a sore arm, he said I was ready for the road, and off I went. Through the summer of 86, and most of 87, I was on the farm all the time, I started chopping more, but since I was bigger than his son Grant, Glen had me had Haul wagons most of the time, and run the blower, he said he didn't want someone irresponsible running it as it was very dangerous. School was pretty boring for me, I made a few friends, but since I didn't go to any of the church's in town, I really had 1 friend in my class, Brent, we would sit and talk all through the school day. We would draw farm pictures, and talk about working with each other when we got older. Brent started running tractors very young also, as he was the oldest, and his dad milked 150 cows, and ran over 500 acres of crops, so he was handy to have around, we were very much alike, he was smarter than me, and his dad valued his opinion on things, they worked together quite a bit. I really like Duron and Marilyn Bergeson, they were really good parents. When we got into 5th grade, and I started into something called odyssey of the mind, it was extemperanious speaking, we would perform skits and do written tests at Stout University, I really enjoyed that, but in february of 1988, we moved off the Paulus place, to an old abondoned Schoolhouse about 18 miles out of town, moving this far away, it was difficult to get rides home from Odyssey of the mind, so I had to quit, I was only allowed to go to Paulus' on the weekends, so I walked over to the Orland and Carol Lee farm up the valley from our new house. Orland was in his 60's, and milked 24 guernsey's in his little barn. He let me feed his beef cows, and haul silage to his milk cow's, but never let me drive his tractor's. My fifth grade teacher was Mrs. Stearns, she was a friend of the Paulus family, so we got along swimmingly, When I broke my arm and couldn't write, she had Brent do my writing for me, so we could sit and talk all day long, we helped each other out with classes, and were both A students, He had a girlfriend, her name was Jenteny Gunderson, She was a beautiful girl, her mother was from Thailand, and is still a very beautiful woman. One friday in april, I saw Brent yell at Jenteny during recess, and I called him on it, I told him not to yell at women, it wasn't right, he told me shut up, he had had a fight with his mom, she kept him from milking that morning, and he was mad about it, so he was taking it out on his girlfriend. I told him that if he was gonna yell at women, and swear around them, then I wasn't gonna be his friend anymore. A simple fight you know. That saturday, I was at the Dave and Arliss Larson farm, trying to train a heifer to lead on halter, after many hours of dragging, Kari, the holstein heifer, was leading quite well, so I gave her a break, and was helping Dave get his corn planter ready. The Larson farm was next to the Bergeson farm, and we could see a manure spreader making it's way across the fields. We heard a siren later, but didn't think too much of until Arliss came in and told us that one of the Bergeson Brat's had been run over. Brent died on a beautiful April day, he was showing a new hired hand how to run the manure spreader, as it had some problems, when he fell off the tractor, The hired hand, Doug Hanson, a 15 year old, wasn't able to stop in time, and Brent got stuck between the dual on the spreader. Duron told me he died in his arm's, he said I'm sorry dad, and just died. After the funeral, The neighboring farmer's all got together to get the crop's in at Bergeson's, since I was just 11, they would not allow me to help. It was for grown-ups only, Glen Paulus rented a farm next door the Duron's place, and let me use his biggest tractor for the first time that day, he helped me hook up the disk and told me do the whole farm, it took me almost 2 days, when I got tired, Glen's rule was to shut down, and sleep under the tractor, Glen brought me food twice a day, and let me just work, I planted the corn on that farm too, I could see the Bergeosn fields, and all the people working allover, people asked Glen why he didn't bring his biggest ractor, some people thought he was just not enough of a neighbor for not stoppig his field work to help out, they didn't know he did it for me. Duron sent me a letter, which I still have, he thanked me for singing at the funeral, and told me how much I was like his son, he told me how much he was gonna miss having the little big guy around, Duron and Marilyn still to this day don't speak to each other. Marilyn never apogized for not letting Brent milk, and I never told him I would be his friend again, last time I saw her, which was last year, I gave her a big hug, and she just cried and cried, she asid she so much of Brent in the way I am. Still 19 years later, April is a very hard month for me, I was at his gravestone last week, it was snowing, and I brought some flower's there, I hadn't been able to go there for ten years, when we buried him, his little brother cole, who was 5 kept saying he wanted to go with Brenty, I made sure he will one night a few years ago, It is odd that after all those years, I just told my mom about that fight I had with him, just last week in fact, I wish I would have realized years ago, that I need to share the things that hurt me, let it go, it really makes life easier... ther is so much more I could say about that time, but I am having a hard time, so I will stop. I got a terrible sunburnm today, I hope nobody minds thatI write this, abye for now