I Learned Everything I Needed to Learn at Lakeview Farms.

It's been written before, that one learns everything one needs way back in the third grade? Kindergarten? But I beg to differ. There are things no tiny little kid could learn inside the hallowed halls of their lower educational buildings and domiciles.


Naw, I'm talking about the shit that you really need to know to make it through the world as a Man of Action, or Woman of Action and Substance. And it's all easily learned when you're a teen, and you're working at a Horse Farm--in this case, Lakeview Farms, as it was known back then, nestled within the Greensboro city limits--a shortish bike ride (that's bicycle) from home.


I learned that being to work on time is a must. Being on time doesn't make you a slave to the clock, or your wages, but it makes an important statement about you: Look, I'm right here right when you wanted and I'm worth every dime you give me. Also, on a horse farm, there are hungry mouths to hay, feed, and water. And, these same mouths' owners have been pooping and peeing in their bedrooms all night and need to get out for some serious frolic time.


Later, that early training comes in handy for many things, too many things to list here...you're not stupid (assuming you worked on a horse farm as a teen).


I learned to cultivate a pride in my work no matter how gross or boring or so fucking hard it was. Cleaning stalls, one of the most important jobs on a horse farm, became a study in efficiency. I mean, the longer it takes, the longer you're doing it. So you learn how to get it done in fewer brushstrokes while at the same time doing a good job to maintain healthy horse feet and a clean barn.


And the same went for fence mending--how many rails can I carry so I only have to make ten trips instead of twenty ALL the way back up to the lumber pile. I'll cut this rail in half and use the drop elsewhere with no waste. We'll round the corners of paddocks (not my idea) so the bush hog can make the turn.


And weed eating became a study in logic and efficiency as well...carry the gas with me, drop it off half way then go all the way down to the last paddock so it'll be there when you're half done and empty working your way back.


I didn't recognize what was going on until I read Pirsig's book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and even as I had moved on from farm to foundations as a budding dumbass carpenter, it hadn't dawned on me that Lakeview Farm had trained me to keep Quality undefined. Now I know. I got laughed at the first time I got two skill saws out to cut jack rafters--now everyone I know does it.


I learned how to back a trailer! A skill worth its weight in pure gold! I remember being at work well after hours waiting for one of the young women boarders (with whom, of course, I was smitten) at Lakeview to get back from a horse show with her mom and nonchalantly asking them, after watching Kathy's mom try and try and try to back their horse trailer into its designated spot under the shelter, "Can I try?"


Of course, I slipped it in on the first try. It may have been (hell it was) my proudest moment up to then, and I thought I would've got the girl after that, but...


I learned that if you carry a pitchfork, or work with your hands, and are around, and working "for" the boarders, who have money, then you get what I call the Dumbass Shitkicker syndrome, or, later in life, when you trade your pitchfork in for a hammer you get what we get now, hence the title of this web log.


It was a hard lesson, but it stuck. And I work hard not to generalize people the same way I've been lumped in with manual laborers, but I fail too, many times.


I learned that hard work is great for the body.


I learned to keep my mouth shut when running a manure spreader--especially when looking up at the last few road apples that are flung high by the whipping blades when the bed is almost empty. It's also a good idea to wear a brimmed hat (thus began my love affair with the humble boonie hat) as well.


I learned how to drive a nail.


I learned how to drive a manual transmission with aplomb. Pops gave me the initial tutorial in the Sedgefield Presbyterian Church parking lot, but "Ol' Green" (the nasty green Scottsdale Cab Chevy) with the three on the tree taught me how to drive like a wild-eyed teenager on the surrounding dirt roads and empty fields when everyone was away at a horse show....when I was fifteen.


I only got caught once trying to see a young woman at her home (a certain meteorologist she is now) when the whole crew came home from an out of town horse show early. Did I mention I was fifteen? And being busted....


I learned how to own up to mistakes like a man, with my hat in my hand. I wrecked everything you could drive at Lakeview--except the horse hauling van, but only because I was never allowed to drive it I reckon. I even wrecked the barn one day missing first gear in the tractor and slipping her into fourth and tearing out of the barn and thus ripping out the door jamb with the manure spreader wheel. I cut cords on power tools, spilled buckets of paint, bent mower decks on tree roots, and scrubbed walls backing shavings trailers inside narrow barn aisles.


The upside to owning up to mistakes like these is having men around you who can teach you how to fix them, how to overcome a self-imposed disadvantage. At Lakeview, that was my boss, Johnny Barker. Now he was a Man of Action, a hero, but human too. Years later I could look back and see where he slipped, but then, hind sight's pretty much 20/20. But when I was 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18, he was a god.


In my earlier years I adopted his persona when dealing with employees, but it's a methodology  better left to a later discussion. It could be said, however, that to lead by example may be the best thing he had to teach--because if he couldn't do it, he wouldn't ask you to. And I'm the same way.


I learned that horses are people too.


I learned how to build things, things that'll last for decades and decades. There are things down on that farm now, though now called Torihope, that I had my hands upon 25 years ago. When they open the spigot down by the paddocks or flip on the paddock lights I was there to dig and run the pipe and Romex. Half the fences, some of the gates, and a retaining wall or two, all had my hand upon them...countless layers of paint, jump standards...


Of course, I caught the bug there. After hemming and hawing for a few years after Lakeview, I nestled into a commercial construction job, until fate would bring me back into contact with another former horse-farm hand turned builder and the rest is history.


Although, being a dumbass carpenter ain't as lucrative as it was two and a half  years ago (in fact, it's downright poverty stricken), it's still the only thing I want to do for nine hours a day, five days a week...even hunting would get boring. Making stuff never gets old.


I learned I have no stomach for chewing tobacco. I hay, fed, and watered the whole farm on my hands and knees one evening after indulging all afternoon and having charge of the place by myself. Hell, the boss chewed, so so was I! And when they drove up and found me laying in the grass that evening, he kinda laughed and forgave the untidy appearance after I told him I'd gotten into his Levi Garrett stash.


I learned what Michael Stipe would immortalize in song about swimming at night.


I learned that the hot female children of wealthy parents were too smart to fall for a farm hand. That only happens on the big screen, but I did notice one of them needed my help when we both got to the same college--poor girl could barely put two sentences together. I reckon she had never seen "Conjunction Junction" or if she had, ignored it thinking it was a cereal commercial.


And I learned something from a girl who came by to help out for a few days, though her name escapes me now. I was in love--dark hair, odd hair cut, ear rings stuck in awkward places, and an aloofness to me which, looking back, if I were a betting man, came from the fact she was gay. I can remember thinking, "Hey, you're a shitkicker! You can't be stuck up to me too!" Now I would just say, "Hey, I'm a lesbian too!" because I'm so much smarter.


Well, actually, it wasn't from her that I had learned something but the ass end of her car. She had a bumper sticker on her junky ol' yellow Datsun: 

Live simply so that others may simply live.

And from all of the characters I had met down on the farm, this flip-head chick's car brought it all home.

I reckon the circle I run with do the same thing. I know I try. Of course, Brian D. would say different, but I might be the most harmless persona you'll ever meet. In fact his dad is the former farm-hand that hired me up and taught me to swing a hammer and love it...though he too had gone to the Johnny Barker Employee Relations School.

But, thanks to those days, there's not much I cannot handle from the real world--or too, there's not much I'm afraid to try to tackle myself since becoming a Man of Action myself. Sure, I've taken a pile of parts to the gunsmith and asked, "Can you fix this?" but more often than not, I can do it myself.

I wish I could go back.