Dexter Iowa Community Site

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."

     I love my job. It is especially satisfying when I have the opportunity to watch trains go by and this week has been a real treat watching the track crew as they work their way across western Iowa replacing ties.

     In an assembly line type group of equipment the workers remove the old spikes and ties and replace them with new ones. The entire scene is somewhat fascinating to see, especially when one thinks how it was probably done fifty to one hundred years ago. As interested as we were at work with the tie gang, the workers of that equipment who had never seen grain come in from the farm were equally as interested in what we were doing and came over after their shift to watch a few semi loads of corn go into the pit and up into the bins.

     What really sparked my memory bank this week, was watching them reload the machines with spikes. The spikes come in metal buckets, which are a little taller than your normal plastic five gallon bucket. They reminded me of the buckets that axle grease used to come in. Those buckets were an important part of my childhood on the farm.

     One of my jobs on the farm was to take two of those metal buckets and head to the corn crib. Once there, by opening the door I could access the ears of corn that were held in by slats of wood. I would grab ears and then bang them on the rim of that metal bucket until they broke into two pieces. Many times the ears would break cleanly with one solid hit on the edge of the bucket, but many times, I would have to take more than one swing. The sound of an ear of corn hitting the lip on one of those buckets is a musical sound that can’t be made any other way.

     When both buckets were full I would carry them to the barn to feed the cows. It was one of the chores that I did quite often and after a while the edges of the buckets would get so beat down that you couldn’t carry it by the handle any more.

     Things sure have changed in both the way we harvest our grain and the way that a railroad repairs track. I find it funny how those two things could tie themselves together on a warm fall day because of a metal bucket.

See you next week….remember, we’re all in this together.