Book Excerpt from *Cream of the Crop* -- "The Experiment"

The Experiment from *Cream of the Crop* (trade paperback; 188 pages; Sept. 2005; ISBN 1591138205; http://ruralroute2.com) I stood back and looked at the door of the round, white, wooden granary. The granary was almost full of soybeans, but I knew Dad had put plywood in front of the door so that when the door was open, the soybeans wouldn't spill out. The question was--to get the soybeans, could I climb up on the staves and reach over the plywood--or would I have to climb over the plywood and go into the granary? But if I went into the granary, an even bigger question was--could I get out again? Whether I ended up reaching into the granary or going over the plywood really didn't matter. My mother had told me to get some soybeans, so I knew I had to try. The sky was the dull gray color of the cement floor in the milkhouse, and a raw, damp wind blew out of the south. I knew the wind was out of the south because it was coming from the direction of the church, and I knew the church was south of our farm. The little white granary stood next to the garage. The driveway circled past the house, the machine shed, the big granary, the barn, the little granary and the garage. In back of the round wooden granary was the large silver maple that shaded the gas barrel. The silver maple had long since dropped its leaves, and the bare branches rattled in the wind, sounding like teeth clicking together. I pulled the collar of my coat closer around my neck. We didn't have any snow yet, but Dad said it might not be long until the ground was white. I stepped forward and reached for the short piece of two-by-four that Dad had nailed to the granary so it formed a latch to hold the door shut. I turned the piece of wood until it was straight up and down, and then I grabbed the spike Dad had hammered into the door to act as handle. My father had built the granary during the summer a few years ago, and when he had finished putting up the boards and shingling the roof, I had helped him paint it white. All of our farm buildings were white: the house, the barn, the garage, the big granary, the corncribs. Painting, as I had discovered, was not only easy, it was also fun. Dip the brush into the coffee can of paint Dad had gotten ready for me and then move the brush up and down and back and forth. Dip the brush into the paint again and move it up and down and back and forth. When we were finished, Dad said I had saved him a lot of work and that he wouldn't have completed the job nearly so fast without my help. A sudden gust of wind blew around the garage and rattled the branches of the silver maple again. I hadn't come out here to think about how much fun it had been to paint the granary. With the saucepan Mom had given me in one hand, I pulled open the granary door with the other, grasped the doorframe and hauled myself up onto the first section. The bottom part of the round granary was like the front part of a silo where it had square openings, and from here, I could almost see over the plywood. And then, just as I was about to pull myself up farther, I remembered what Dad said. When my father had finished unloading soybeans a few weeks ago, he had told me I must never go into the round granary. "Now that the granary is full of soybeans, I don't want you climbing around in there. The soybeans might not hold you," he'd said. "What do you mean?" I had asked. "They're like quicksand. You could sink and be covered up and suffocate," Dad explained. "What does that mean? Suffocate?" "It means you can't breathe. And if you can't breathe, and you can't get out, you might die," he'd said. Oh, great. I would have to remember what Dad said about the granary. Mom told me to get soybeans, but if I couldn't go right into the granary and if I couldn't reach them from the door, how was I going to get them? I knew Dad wouldn't say something like that about suffocating for the fun of it. He was always careful around the farm and made sure he shut off the tractor when he had to work on the hay baler or the corn picker or the combine, so the machinery wouldn't accidentally start up when he had his arms and hands inside. I thought about my promise to Dad for a few moments, then I unzipped my coat and tucked the saucepan down the front. I grabbed hold of the doorframe with both hands and pulled myself up on the next stave. Now I could see over the top of the plywood. The little granary was almost full of soybeans. I leaned over the plywood and stretched out my hand. I...could...almost...touch...the...soybeans...and...maybe...if... I stretched...a bit farther... But it was no good. I couldn't quite reach-- No, wait! Maybe I could reach the soybeans. The saucepan had a handle on it, and the length of the handle might be enough. I pulled the saucepan out of my coat, grasped the end of the handle, and reached into the granary. The edge of the pan rested against the soybeans, and I discovered that if I wiggled the pan back and forth, soybeans would roll over the edge. If I kept doing this for long enough, maybe I would end up with enough soybeans. As I lifted the nearly-full pan of soybeans out of the granary, I heard footsteps on the blacktop behind me . . . **************************** You are invited to read sample chapters, order books and sign up for the free newsletter, Rural Route 2 News -- http://ruralroute2.com *************** Book Review: Twenty short but immensely entertaining stories, December 3, 2005 Reviewer: Midwest Book Review; James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviewsCream Of The Crop: More True Stories Form A Wisconsin Farm is the third anthology of biographical and anecdotal stories by LeAnn Ralph about growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. In the 1960s there were more than 60,000 dairy farms in Wisconsin, in May of 2004 the Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service recorded the number of surviving dairy farms in the state at 15,591. The number has dropped even lower since then. That dairy farming reality is what helps to give LeAnn's deftly told stories their nostalgia for a rural lifestyle that is not-so-slowly disappearing in the Badger state. There are twenty short but immensely entertaining stories in this simply superb anthology. They range from "What's in a Name", to "She'll Be Comin' Round the Cornfield", to "Gertrude and Heathcliff", to the title story "cream Of The Crop". LeAnn continues to write with a remarkable knack for making people and events come alive in the reader's imagination. Also very highly recommended are LeAnn's two earlier anthologies about life on the family farm in Wisconsin: Give Me A Home Where The Dairy Cows Roam (1591135923, $13.95) and Christmas In Dairyland: True Stories From A Wisconsin Farm (1591133661, $13.95). ************