Perry - Roughneck grace: farmer yoga, creeping codgerism, apple golf, and other brief essays from on and off the back forty

ROUGHNECK GRACE

ALSO BY MICHAEL PERRY

BOOKS

Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time

From the Top: Brief Transmissions from Tent Show Radio

The Scavengers

The Jesus Cow

Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting

Truck: A Love Story

Off Main Street: Barnstormers, Prophets & Gatemouths Gator

AUDIO

Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow

I Got It from the Cows

The Clodhopper Monologues

MUSIC

Headwinded

Tiny Pilot

Bootlegged at the Big Top

ROUGHNECK GRACE

FARMER YOGA, CREEPING CODGERISM, APPLE GOLF, and Other BRIEF ESSAYS from On and Off the Back Forty

MICHAEL PERRY

WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press

Publishers since 1855

The Wisconsin Historical Society helps people connect to the past by collecting, preserving, and sharing stories. Founded in 1846, the Society is one of the nations finest historical institutions.

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Text copyright Michael Perry 2016

E-book edition 2016

The essays in Roughneck Grace originally appeared as a column in the Sunday Wisconsin State Journal and are reprinted here by permission. Many were also featured as monologues on Tent Show Radio (tentshowradio.org).

For permission to reuse material from Roughneck Grace (ISBN 978-0-87020-812-6; e-book ISBN 978-0-87020-813-3), please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Perry, Michael, 1964 author.

Title: Roughneck grace : farmer yoga, creeping codgerism, apple golf, and other brief essays from on and off the back forty / Michael Perry.

Description: Madison : Wisconsin Historical Society Press, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2016025882 (print) | LCCN 2016036722 (e-book) | ISBN 9780870208126 (paperback) | ISBN 9780870208133 (e-book) | ISBN 9780870208133 (E-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Perry, Michael, 1964 Anecdotes.

Classification: LCC AC8.5 .P47 2016 (print) | LCC AC8.5 (e-book) | DDC 814/.6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025882

Thank you to the Wisconsin State Journal for generous support of this project.

To roughnecks who read and reflect.

And to Beth, with gratitude for getting me to the page, and apologies for white knuckles.

The title of this collection arose from the subtitle of Visiting Tom, a book I wrote about my neighbors Tom and Arlene (Tom, on his own now, makes a few appearances in this book). I hoped pairing those two words might convey the idea of gracegiven and receivedbeyond the purview of priests or perfection. That perfect things emanate from imperfect people. Based on my own character, I better hope so, from both directions.

It seemed natural, then, when I was invited to write a weekly column for the Wisconsin State Journal, to do so beneath the rubric of Roughneck Grace. With each dispatch (most of them sent from a small room above my garage, but also from airports, motels, coffee shops, and more than once from a cell phone somewhere along westbound I-80) I try to attend to that second word as best I can, as I have long been allowed more grace than Ive earned, including the freedom and opportunity to weekly write up a few hundred words about anything I wish.

As for the roughneck part, well, with these soft hands Im hardly a deckhand, but I do try to draw from ground level. From the backyard, the back forty, the neighbor down the road. I often joke that I get my column ideas from my brothers, and indeed, this book provides plenty of evidence to that effect (although as youll read, my brother John put a real crimp in my favorite dead cow story). I also frequently mine my own incompetence, a vein running rich, deep, and wide. The last time we compiled a collection of these short pieces (From the Top), a man approached me at a signing, pointed at the stack beside me, and said, Thats a great bathroom book!

Humbly, I nodded.

I miss the pigs.

For several years I raised pigs. I started with two. The following year I went to four. Doubling the size of the operation! I liked to boast down at the feed mill where the real farmers hung out. Economy of scale, thats where yer profit lies!

I specify real farmers because I am not one. Farm-raised, yep. And still live on a farm. But I make a living typing and running my mouth, and when you have hands as soft as mine you dont go around talking big about farming. Just as cutting up firewood with my mother-in-laws chainsaw doesnt make me a logger. Thus, when composing a brief biography for purposes of publishing and public appearances, I took to describing myself as an amateur pig farmer. I find it best practice to self-calibrate before others do it for me.

I sure enjoyed those pigs, though. Our farm had lain fallow for decades, and the day I turned loose my first pair of forty-pound feeders down beside the old barnyard, it felt as if the land livened up in recognition. I liked to keep the window of my writing room open so I could hear the clankety-bang of the hog feeder lids in the distance and detect the occasional happy barking grunt as the pigs chased each other around the wallow. For the next several years, to the signs of springrobins, snowmelt, leaf budsI added the sight of little pigs troweling their snoots through the dirt en route to becoming big pigs.

As pig farming goes, I did okay. Its tough to mess up a pig, really. Although one year I got carried away on saving money after discovering a secret source of expired bakery goods. Were talking a pickup load of hot dog buns (with a few donut boxes in the mix, which Id squirrel away beneath the frozen peas in a chest freezer in the garage) for under twenty bucks. But all those cheap carbs created pork chops that were more fat than meat. I should have known better, having suffered the same effects after sneaking frozen donuts.

Now springor at least the uncertain early version of itis here again, and Im wishing for open window screens and the sound of pigs. But its probably not gonna happen. I just walked out to the pasture and had a look around. Ragweed stalks are crowding the hutch where the hogs flopped in the shade. The fence is twined with dried wild cucumber and winter-stripped grapevine. The galvanized feeder is hidden in a copse of burdock. There havent been pigs out here for a couple of years now.

The thing is, if youre going to be a good farmereven a good amateur farmeryou have to get out among your animals every day. See how theyre doing. Get to know their personalities, so you can pick up on the one thats not quite right, or the one thats limping, or the one getting squeezed out of the feed trough. A few years into my pig production phase, it became clear my writing and yapping were taking me on the road more and morea welcome development, but not conducive to tarrying amongst the hogs.