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Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Voices remind us of our youth. Their indistinguishable voices were always with us, and they carried larger than life names…Jack Shelley, Herb Plambeck and one of my favorites, Paul Harvey.
There were days few and far between when anyone I knew missed Paul’s noontime broadcast, or the late afternoon “Rest of the Story.” That remarkable voice became the voice of everyone’s grandpa and we all listened closely to see just what he and his “Angel” would be doing back at Reveille. It was as though it was comfort food for the ears.
It was no surprise on Sunday when I saw the Dodge Ram Truck commercial for the first time. I heard that old voice again, saw the pictures, and fogged up a little when the screen rolled dark and that FFA emblem appeared. All of us young and old, who grew up in Iowa, knows or lives with or has been a farmer. The words speak to each of us in a way in which we consider our own, yet in a larger sense is shared by so many in the exact secret way that we instantly understand the message.
Before presenting this speech, Paul noted that it was sent in by an anonymous listener and it became one of his most requested monologues, although had been largely forgotten outside the FFA community until a few days ago. So as I sit here in my office surrounded with the photos of the many farm scenes of my youth, I share with you in full the text of that monologue as given by Paul Harvey. It is for every farmer we knew, for every one we wanted to become and for every one who follows after. I’ve always been proud to be a son of the soil, and this is a great reminder of just where I have come from.
See you next week…remember,..we’re all in this together.
“And on the 8th day God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker!".
So, God made a farmer!
God said I need somebody to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.
So, God made a farmer!
I need somebody with strong arms. Strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait for lunch until his wife is done feeding and visiting with the ladies and telling them to be sure to come back real soon...and mean it.
So, God made a farmer!
God said "I need somebody that can shape an ax handle, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And...who, at planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty hour week by Tuesday noon. Then, pain'n from "tractor back", put in another seventy two hours.
So, God made a farmer!
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop on mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place.
So, God made a farmer!