You work hard and you play hard. I survived 23 years farming thanks to a lot of help from my terrific mentors.

How does a city boy survive 23 years farming when he is all alone on the farm with no family members nearby? Boys growing up on the farm learn how to farm from their grandparents, fathers, and older siblings from the time they are knee high. While I had gone to a college preparatory school, gotten my four-year college degree with a History Major, and later earned my MBA in finance.

I am extremely lucky to have had some great mentors on the farm. And born lucky due to my father and mother owning a lot of acres of prime Illinois farmland. The kind with the rich heavy black dirt that can grow a big crop during long periods of low rainfall.

The house I lived in goes back to 1865, the last year of the American Civil War. And it was awfully cold living in that house until my dad and I eventually had a lot of carpentry work done to it. Being out in the middle of the prairie where there were hardly any trees around to slow the wind down, the winters were severe and challenging to get through.

There were only four soft maple trees growing there when I first moved in. While the house lacked a modern foundation that could stop the harsh cold wind from getting under the house and travel upwards through the floor.

So, the first thing on my agenda was to plant trees. And lots of them.

With three rows of evergreen trees to provide me with a windbreak that would slow the wind down.

It took a lot of hard work to get it all done. Let alone the farming. But I ended up with what amounted to my private comfortable island out in the middle of the Illinois prairie.

I ended up electrifying my entire yard. Doing all the work myself even though I hardly knew anything about electricity. But Kermit Waldeck got me started doing electrical work. Passing on enough knowledge to wire a room or machine shed if I had to. Kermit who was farming most of my family’s ground was my first mentor. Who became a second father to me.

Lester Walch became one of my last true mentors. Lester had a reputation as the number one electrician in our part of the woods. He was expensive. But after my Dad and I had other electricians do projects on our family’s farms, we decided that Lester was to become our one and only.

Wiring a room or small machine shed is one thing, but wiring an entire yard with all the trees I had planted was another matter.

Luckily I got Lester Walch to be one of my mentors.

I ended up burying close to 150 meters of electrical wire under the ground, while planting over a dozen treated cedar posts into the ground on which I would mount most of my lights. And bought a lot of electrical components such as switches, lights, and electrical connectors from Lester. While he would draw diagrams for me of how I should connect all the electrical components together. I ended up creating three pole lights in the windbreak facing North. Three more pole lights in the evergreen trees West of the house and two more pole lights in the Southern portion of my windbreak.

I eventually wound-up farming 560 acres pretty much by my lonesome. Although I would hire part time help at harvest time or while planting my crops. And those acres were scattered all over the place with one 80-acre farm being 12 miles from the farmhouse.

But I had a lot of good reliable help when I needed it the most.

I never was mechanically minded. And being mechanically minded was and always would be a major cornerstone to a farmer’s success. So, I never bought a combine and always had custom combiners harvest my crops. While a temporary hired worker and I would pull the harvest wagons from the combine to the storage bins.

I never sprayed my own herbicides which are chemicals for killing weeds. And had this done by companies that specialized in custom spraying operations. The company doing the most spraying for me was Kaiser which ended up changing its name more often than I have fingers on my right hand. Gene Hitchings was the manager of Kaiser. And it would be Gene who would be one of my greatest mentors. As manager of a company selling chemicals to farmers, Gene couldn’t be faulted for trying to sell as much as he could to his customers. But I found Gene doing everything he possibly could to save me money. While he monitored the progress of my crops and any emerging weeds on a weekly basis. Gene often worked late at night taking great care of me and his other customers.

I don’t remember how far Gene got in college but he should have had a PHD. He was that smart and committed to knowing all that he could about soybeans and corn, fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides.

And then there’s all those grain bins that need to be maintained. And the drying and preservation of all the soybeans and corn in the bins. Not to mention the electrical fans and propane powered burners we had to keep going. With all their complicated electronics running them that were endlessly malfunctioning. Thankfully we all had Dwight Rovey who worked tirelessly day and night. While running two crews of troubleshooters.

I can mention many others such as the Leonards or Wayne Angle who could weld and fabricate just about anything.

But my greatest mentor of them all was Jack Waldeck. It was Jack’s father who taught me about wiring and helped me a lot in so many ways. But Jack would even outdo his father if such a thing even seemed possible.

Jack could drive a tractor for three days and nights without sleeping. Without taking any drugs whatsoever.

And I can never forget the time he broke his arm and leg at the same time while loading semitrailers full of corn. There was loose corn all over the concrete floor the trucks pulled onto as Jack loaded them from the overhead bins. Jack lost his footing on the floor made slippery by the corn and broke his arm and leg. But it didn’t stop him. Because the next day i found him crawling underneath his field cultivator bolting new shovels on to replace the old ones that had worn down. He had to use crutches to get around, but he was still able to hoist himself up into his tractor cab so that he could do all the field work that had to be done.

Whenever I had a problem that I couldn’t solve by myself Jack was there for me. And it didn’t matter how busy he was.

I got to be pretty good at driving just about anything. Which the following pictures can attest to. Learning how to pull two implements at once with a tractor is no small feat. But as I already said, I am not mechanically inclined. So, who do you think helped me make all those brackets and other contrivances, that attached all those implements together?

My mother once told me, “You will no doubt be able to learn how to farm but living out in the country alone? That will be your greatest challenge.”

It turned out that surviving 23 years of farming wasn’t so hard after all from a social point of view. Or being bored being alone out on the Illinois Prairie.

In the video slideshow you will see a pretty woman shooting bows and arrows with me. Her name is Jean. After living at the farm alone for the first year I joined both the St. Louis ski club and the Springfield Illinois ski club. Eventually I dropped my membership with the St Louis club while becoming even more involved with the Springfield club. The Springfield club would have one or two official meetings each month and an average of two informal parties. Jean would become one of my good friends with the Springfield club and we’d wind up rooming together with two other friends at several ski trips.

Towards the end of the video slideshow, you will encounter Brandy who often accompanied me when I visited Stimmelators strip club in Indiana or stayed with me at my farm.

Although Brandy had a boyfriend who often joined us during our outings together, she often accompanied me alone. I met Brandy at the Dollies Strip Club in Washington Park, Illinois. She ended up working at Dollies for only several months before she quit stripping. Anna became a stripper only because one of her roommates ran her long-distance phone bill to over a thousand dollars.

I met Brandy when she was only nineteen years old. Ironically Brandy never finished High School due to my former best friend from my grade school and Junior high school days kicking her out of school after he had grown up and become superintendent of the schools Brandy was attending.

My ex best friend had kicked Brandy out of school for unruly behavior.

Being a stripper didn’t suit Brandy very well. For one thing she hated having men touch her. And was much more likely to punch the guy’s eyes out than to tolerate his trying to manhandle her.

Brandy was smart. And as soon as I started teaching her how to run a laptop computer, she became virtually my digital disciple.

My best friend now is PlONe. PlOne has been my best friend aside from Jack Waldeck for the past 25 years. And has now moved to Pattaya where he is now living only three miles from me.

But in those days while I was living at the farm, PlONe lived in the San Francisco Bay area over 2000 miles from me. Like myself PlONe was very fond of strippers and strip clubs. So, when he met Heaven, a beautiful blonde stripper from Stimmelators, he bought Heaven a computer.

So, when I found out PlONe had bought Heaven a computer, I decided to buy Brandy one.

After all, Brandy was a sharp as a tack, and she was already spending hours upon hours learning all that she could about computers.

It was not long after I gave Brandy a computer, that he boyfriend’s grandmother died leaving him with $40000. And when that happened Brandy insisted on paying me back. And did, and there was no way of talking her out of it.

Brandy was slim and very beautiful. But also, potentially very violent and totally loyal. Long after she quit stripping Brandy and her boyfriend finished their relationship and Brandy started going out with a man named Chuck who she unfortunately met through me. So, one night the three of us celebrated Chucks and my birthdays together. My birthday was on April 2nd and Chuck’s fell on April 3rd, so the three of us went to several strip clubs to celebrate our birthdays.

Chuck got very drunk and while drunk he said several insulting things to me. I really didn’t mind because I knew that Chuck was drunk. But Brandy didn’t see things the same way I saw them. The last club we hit was Club 64. I was driving my Dodge Dakota four-wheel drive with its extended cab. We all got inside, and before I could start the engine Brandy had laid into Chuck punching his face until his nose started bleeding.

And then only one year ago, many years after I moved to Thailand, Brandy messaged me to ask me my address. She wanted to pay me back five dollars she had borrowed from me over twenty years ago.

A month later I received ten dollars in the Pattaya Post from Brandy. Who wrote me in a note that she was paying me five more dollars because of accrued interest. Funny thing was, I don’t remember ever lending Brandy $5.00. But I do remember lending Tamara $800.00 and Alex a couple hundred. Both strippers paid me back in full. And when I used to come into the club Tamara was working at, she would remind me that she still owned me money and she would pay me anywhere between $50 and $200 each time I visited her club.

So where does Brandy fit in this video slide show about my surviving 23 years farming?

A lot. Because Brandy has demonstrated what true friendship is all about. And it’s not just Brandy. I knew a whole flock of strippers who were totally honest and honorable. Proving that my friend PlONe and I have been right all along. And that all those self-righteous bastards who have closed my friends’ strip clubs down are totally ignorant Bible thumpers. Having no clue what good honest women are all about. Or how to have fun in this only life any of us will ever have.

I have chosen the music that accompanies this video slideshow carefully. It’s “There’s no getting over me”, a country Western song by Ronnie Milsap. It reminds me of my friends I made at the farm. Many of them no longer alive. But it’s their kind of music. It’s all pretty sad. The house is no longer there. Because my sisters and I agreed to burn it down. It was getting to be very high maintenance. We were paying taxes on it. While 18 years ago I have moved to Thailand (and so has PlOne). With neither of us planning on living in the U.S. again. While what remains of my family are living elsewhere, have never lived on a farm, and have no intentions of moving there.

Which speaking of burning, there'[s one picture in the video in which Jack and I log chained an old dilapidated and obsolete machine shed to a four-wheel drive pickup truck. It took just the two of us to tear the old shed apart. Then we used the four-wheel drive to totally collapse what was left of it. burned it, buried the ashes and took the unburned tin to a dump and that was that. That was the good ole days. You can’t do that anymore. Not even on a farm. Now days you have to hire a professional licensed contractor who will charge you thousands of dollars.

And if you try to do it yourself, there’s going to be a do-gooder report the flames to the police with his cell phone and there will be hell to pay. Welcome to the modern world of Pussydom.

Finding a good tenant who will look after the place with loving care is not in the cards anymore.

But the song, ‘”There’s no getting over me,” is just right, because 23 years farming is something one never forgets.

You might also be interested in watching “Good Ole Boys”.

In this video I’ve taken my ex-Thai girlfriend, Duen to the U.S. We are at the farm and having dinner with my nephew and my Farmersville friends at a Farmersville tavern.