Back in those years ranching involved a lot of hard physical manual labor. The hay was mowed then after some time it was stacked in piles by pitchfork in rows to cure then loaded on trucks or trailers pulled behind farm tractors for the barn. Later it was windrowed by a rake pulled behind a farm tractor and left to dry before being baled by machine for transport and storage. It was important that the hay not get wet and if it did to let it dry before stacking, shocking, or baling. The hay would mold and could catch fire when stored wet in the barn. Simply put, shocking hay in the rain ruined the hay.
Dad from ten years on was raised on a large dairy farm involved in all of its day to day operations one way or another as he grew older. He knew intimately how to deal with hay and the adverse consequence of putting up wet hay. Yet, that was the demand put on him that day not long after he returned home from the war.
Dad was forced to deal with a situation he definitely had not planned on. It was his intentions upon returning from the war to take his family where he could make a living the way he wanted without any involvement with either his family or Mom's family. Family support during the war was very important, specially when you had two little boys to take care of. Mom knew exactly what Dad was planning and what he wanted. What he didn't know was that while he and his fellow surviving veterans were away things had changed in America. The women had cast off their chains and were now free to decide for themselves what is and what would be. Despite Dad's instructions to the contrary, Mom had made decisions affecting the family for a period of years and felt she had a say in how the family would operate from that time forward. These guys came home victorious; on top of the world, thinking they were in control only to find out they had been betrayed. They thought their wives and girl-friends were protecting their interests only to find "their interests" were mostly irrelevant now. They had won one war only to lose another. It didn't take the women long to let them know they weren't as free as they thought they were. Neither were they the "REAL" men they believed they were either.
Every dollar Mom got from Dad she invested right back into her father's ranch in Covelo, CA. He had made her an offer she couldn't refuse. He needed the money and they needed a place to stay and work to support it. It would be a family run business. Unfortunately, Mom's Dad never intended to accept Dad as an equal partner. As far as my Grandfather was concerned, Dad and Mom owed him that money. He had done Dad wrong and never set the matter right. In fact, he multiplied the wrong many times over and planned on using this arrangement as an opportunity to justify the loss and injury he caused everyone. There were absolutely no circumstances he would ever be obligated to his daughter and her worthless husband. There was an added incentive in Mom's younger sister and her husband's influencing by Grandfather to disavow his agreement with Mom too. They wanted the ranch and weren't about to let Dad and Mom get away with it. In the end it did go to them.
In the ensuing years I spent a lot of time with both my grandfather and grandmother and a lot of time with just my Grandfather. Time I never begrudged, because I learned a lot of things I needed to know. I also learned his take on what it meant to be a man. As the years passed, it didn't take me long to figure out exactly what my Grandfather thought of and how he felt about Dad. Dad had justified everything he, my grandfather, ever did to Dad and the family. It was when he tried to pull the same things on me that he'd used on Dad to discredit him that he learned it didn't work with me. By then his loss was never recoverable.
Veterans like Dad, coming home from the war were at the peak of their manhood; self-confident, mostly in the moment and quite powerful. They believed that they had proven themselves by fire and were worthy of taking control of their lives and families – taking control of America. They also believed that they had overcome the stigma put upon them and their generation by their parents and grandparents for getting them into self-serving war and expecting them, as a commitment to their patriotic subservience to make the necessary sacrifices, like so much worthless cannon fodder, to get them out. They believed the fathers, their mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, teachers, priests and preachers that the would "have the good life." All they had to do was stop the Nazi, Fascist, Imperial hordes trying to take it away from them. They believed!
It didn't take the women, the wives, the girl friends, the parents, the grandparents, employers, politicians, friends, neighbors, you name it, to put it right to these guys to see if they were the “men” they thought they were. Were they really entitled to that "good life"? How much more would they give up to prove to everyone how much they really loved their wives and families; their country? It was only then that they realized how valuable their war sacrifices were really worth. They had willingly gone along with what everyone demanded of them. They had compromised their manhood, self-worth, integrity, given up their individuality and their legitimacy to their country's war machine. They lost everything they thought or believed they had earned or won back.
The coup de grace for Dad was shocking hay in the rain. Over the period of time from his return home it had been one constant imposition after another to get him to go along with some adverse proposition my grandfather was demanding. As I remember Dad was incensed and offended when Mom's Dad told everyone they were going to work in the rain. To Dad that was utterly ridiculous and he would look like an idiot. Dad refused and a big argument ensued between Dad and Mom. I can remember Dad telling her it was a total waste of time, that it would ruin the hay, hay they desperately needed and that it was just plain stupid. So Mom played her trump card. Mom ask Dad if he, for the sake of peace in the family, would he do it for her. So, he did.
It may not seem like much, but my Grandfather ridiculed my father for being a gutless and worthless all his life. I did not matter what my father did, according to my grandfather, it was doomed to failure. In time, some of that attitude bled over on me and my brother. The sins of our fathers can sometimes be a heavy load to bear.
Sadly what he did that day never brought any peace in the family – in any family. It certainly never brought him any peace, that's for sure. Dad compromised his soul when he partook of the forbidden fruit and paid the consequences for his sins.
In the true sense of Adam and Eve of the Holy Bible, my parents lived out their lives as prophesied. "To the woman he (God) said: 'I shall greatly increase the pain of your pregnancy; in birth pangs you will bring forth children, and your craving will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.' And to Adam he said: 'Because you listened to your wife's voice and took to eating from the tree concerning which I gave you this command. 'You must not eat from it,'; cursed is the ground on your account. In pain you will eat its produce all the days of your life. And thorns and thistles it will grow for you, and you must eat the vegetation of the field. In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return – Genesis 3:16-19.
Life has its way with humanity and Dad's value as a man was tested again giving him another opportunity to redeem himself before God and man.
God's gift of redemption.
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Gary.
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