Sodbuster

I don’t think I could ever be a sodbuster…sodbuster is another term for a farmer…a term that was used mostly in the 1800’s I believe…and one that wasn’t complimentary usually…for one thing, you gotta get up too darn early in the morning…I don’t know too many night owls who are successful farmers…and I am for sure I am a night owl…it’s about 3 a.m. as I write this…I have a lot of respect for farmers…it’s long hours and hard work…I remember driving through Indiana and seeing the farms…the fields full of corn, and other things…it looks like a good, quiet life but I don’t know that for sure…just think of the people who went west in the late 1800’s and tried to make a life of it working the soil…some were squatters and were constantly involved in fracases with large scale ranchers who didn’t want any part of the newcomers…it was a hard life trying to make a go of it then…a lot of them gave up but some persisted…I never knew any farmers personally except for Oliver Wendell Douglass on the old Green Acres TV show…and he wasn’t much of one…come to think of it, I do know someone who raised a crop…until the police found out about what he was growing and put an end to it…I imagine farming has changed a lot since I was a boy…as I grew up, I know farmers faced a lot of hard times and still do…a lot of private farmers have given up and sold out to co-ops…these big corporations that run things now…although I guess we oughta be grateful to them for keepin’ the farms goin’ and keepin’ us fed…but the concern there is what kind of chemicals are they using in the process…thinking of getting up at 4 or 5 a.m. makes me shudder…getting up much before 11 a.m. is difficult for me.

Most Words Are Worthless

Well as they say, if you keep your mouth shut, you don’t have to worry what comes out of it…it seems there’s a lot of folks who talk too fast and think too slow…I suppose that’s a product of today’s culture…it’s also been said we got two ears and one mouth…meaning we’re supposed to listen more than we talk…but most people talk like they get paid by the word…but most of those words are worthless…as Lao Tzu said, beautiful words are not true and true words are not beautiful…a lot of words don’t have a leg of truth to stand on.

Faro

Faro was a card game that was popular in the Old West…its rules were easy and it gave better odds than other games of chance…that is, when it was played honestly…and that didn’t always happen…it originated in France sometime in the late 17^th century… People who didn’t like Faro regarded it as a scam that stole money from its players because of rampant rigging of what was called the dealing box...cheating became so bad that editions of Hoyle’s Rules of Games began their Faro section warning readers that not a single honest faro bank could be found in the United States…some men made money as Faro dealers…and some men died when they were caught with rigged equipment…Faro has all but disappeared these days.