How I became a raconteur — or — growing up with bullshitters and liars — Part 1: Grampa Bowen

To be a good storyteller, especially if you’re going to be pullin’ on your listeners’ legs, you need to believe the bullshit you’re puttin’ down. I come by this naturally. I grew up around people like that all my life. Grampa Bowen was one of the best at this.

Grampa and Gramma were married sometime during the Depression, and for most of their marriage, Grampa did all sorts of different jobs — mostly, he was a heavy equipment operator building roads, bridges, and such, but he was also an entrepreneur. He did tree trimming, auto body work, opened a clothing store, road construction company, and helped found a few banks. In a few of these cases, though, he’d start the company, then leave it to Gramma to run as he went ramblin’. They had a raucous marriage, and he usually left the house with Gram in a fit.

By the time I came around, they were going through a messy divorce. I didn’t know what was happening (hell, I still don’t most of the time, but, I like it that way), I just knew that Gramma and Grampa were never at our farm at the same time…

Anyway…

Grampa was an elite level bullshitter. Often, you didn’t know if a story he was telling was the truth, a lie, or most likely, a combination of both. One story he told me when I was 12 or 13 occurred during the early years of World War II. Grampa worked on the Alaska-Canada Highway (The Al-Can), and told me about the muskegs they went through. Now, the farm I grew up on had a peat bog that at certain times of year, you could drive through, but you didn’t stop. Wet peat is like a non-Newtonian fluid and once you stop, you start to sink. I had just told him about getting the Oliver stuck a few days before and he chuckled and told me about the day he lost his bulldozer.

We were building a corduroy road through this muskeg. We stopped for lunch one day — and it was a day they’d take us into the field kitchen for a hot lunch. I parked my dozer on what I thought was a good parking pad, jumped in the gang wagon, and off to lunch. By the time we got back, all I could find of my dozer was the flapper cap on top of the exhaust pipe.

Guess I wasn’t on a pad after all!

The rest of the crew and I grabbed shovels and started digging while our foreman headed to a different crew to get their dozer. He came back with two — which was good — and by the time he got back, we had the cockpit and two hitch points exposed. One of the guys drove a pipe around the machine, too, to break any of the suction. My Cat? Well, even with the motor caked in mud, she started! And with all three dozers working together, we broke mine free. Took the mechanics two days to get it cleaned up and checked over, but, after that, I never trusted a parking pad.

Now…how do you believe a story like that? For the longest time, I though he was lying to me…but…I found out years later through independent sources that it wasn’t an uncommon to lose machines from time to time.

After the Al-Can, Grampa stayed in Alaska building airports and airstrips for the military until 1943 when he was sent to Great Britain to do the same thing. He was pretty much gone until 1946 when Gramma wrote to tell him it was time to come home. If Grampa could have, he would have stayed in Europe to help with the rebuilding.

I have a few more stories of Grampa that I’ll be sharing later, including the day he took me to my first Twins game. But, I think this is good for now. Thanks for reading!

Growing Up Meadow Green

I grew up on a small farm outside of Milaca, Minnesota. Actually, the farm was tucked into the northwest corner of Isanti county, with Mille Lacs to 1/4 mile to the west and Kanabec 1/4 mile to the north of the house. Mom and Dad bought the farm two years before I was born, and Dad sold it in 1994. It was 144 acres, and in the 30 years we owned the land there were a lot of changes made. A lot of those changes was made with an Oliver 770 wide-front tractor. Dad bought it new in 1963, along with a four-bottom plow, harrow disc, corn planter, and sickle mower — all of which were Oliver meadow green.

Olivers were one of the main tractors in my neighborhood — mostly row crop 77’s and 88’s. Our neighbor Bobby owned a Super 99 GM diesel, a squat broad-shouldered beast that to this day makes me think unrelenting power. The other popular brands in our neighborhood were Cases, Massey-Fergusons, and Internationals. You’d find the random Johnny Popper, old 8n and 9n Fords, and one neighbor had a newer Ford. But, yeah, Oliver Green…

We mostly used our Oliver to move stuff around with the loader. It had a trip bucket on it, and Dad used it to dig gravel in our pit, haul fallen down limbs, and the two tasks I logged the most hours on it were picking rock and hauling wood. Jobs that never seemed to end. And it’s the machine Dad used me to teach me how to drive.

When I was a wee cub, Dad would set me on his lap while he was doing fieldwork. Now, remember, the tractor didn’t have a cab, power steering, roll-over protection, seatbelts, and really not set up for a toddler to be riding along. Back in the 60’s though, that shit was normal. I rode on the front edge of the seat until I was old enough to set against the clam shell fenders and hold onto one of the lamp.

But riding there…Dad’s legs and arm holding me in place…and every so often, he’d tell me to steer. “Use the radiator cap up there to aim.” While I took control, Dad would light a Lucky Strike (later a Pall Mall), and he’d take a bit of a break as I got us where we were going. I was 3 years old at the time. Now that’s a lot of trust. Heh

I miss the sound of that in-line six Wakishah engine, the growl of the transmission, the bump ahead when going from low to high range, the rattle of the snow chains in the winter…learning how to use the clutch and steering with the brakes…dropping the bucket down on the ground to push the wheels up high and give them a spin…so many different tricks I learned from Dad…I miss that iron…

*****

A few years ago, I was looking for pictures of Oliver 770’s and found a 1/16th scale model of the tractor I grew up on — complete with the right brand of loader. I hinted to my sisters for a while that I found it, and it’d make a great present. This year, I finally found one of the models still in the box, so, I picked it up as my Christmas present to myself. It finally came the other day, and it’s awesome! I’m now looking for more pieces to go with it, and I’m going to set it all up in my studio along with some of my old Tonkas and other pieces from my childhood. I might be 55 years old, but, I refuse to grow up.