>Path: igor.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!not-for-mail
>From: kjc@aramis [OLD RUTGERS ADDRESS] (Kelly J. Cooper)
>Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
>Subject: Spreading the word...
>Date: 8 Aug 1994 02:59:00 -0400
>Organization: Psychology @ Rutgers University
>Lines: 65
>Sender: netnews@aramis.rutgers.edu
>Message-ID: <324l3k$4ha@aramis.rutgers.edu>
>NNTP-Posting-Host: aramis.rutgers.edu


I moved.  Just about two months ago I left New Jersey for greener
pastures, retiring my neurotic research assistant ass to a farm in New
Hampshire.  Not that you actually care, but this is context, my dears.
Context.  Significance.  Relation.

None of us were farmers before we rented this esteemed acreage
(apparently an abandoned government breeding and testing site for high
velocity low-maintenance bar-certified mosquitoes) but we are
learning.  Farming actually has a learning curve as steep as steep
gets with added incentives one does not tend to find in many other
occupations... namely death and dismemberment.  Most of the equipment
that came with the place is sturdy, simply but brilliantly designed
and at least 30 years old.  The key feature of any given piece of
machinery you can find on a farm is that it can kill you.  The yellow
and black and rectangular warning signs have little figures twisted
around hydraulics twice (in obvious spine-disentegrating postures),
missing limbs and gestures of obvious deep distress.  Everyone has a
"smooshed farmer missing a foot after having his arm torn off" story.
Local color.  Charming.

But I did not come to speak of rural intelligence.  I came to speak
upon a subject near and dear to my heart.  A piece of equipment that
has captured my very soul and speaks so eloquently to these troubled
times that I am near-speechless in its presence.  

I came to talk about the shit-spreader.

This farm was unfortunately run as Uncle Sam ordered all good little
farms to be handled -- using chemical fertilizers which have over the
years leeched anything useful out of the dirt.  We have a couple of
fields that can grow nothing but moss.  The poison ivy and sumac can't
even draw sustenance from the soil.  Thus, our landlord (the ultimate
earthy-crunchy-granola ex-hippie multi-millionaire) owns said
shit-spreader and has a local horse farm fill it.  He uses some of it
on his fields.  The rest is left to us, to spread it where we can with
the hope that after a year or two of such treatment we might actually
be able to grow crops again.

The machine under discussion is a miracle of splintered wood, cracked
rubber, and rusty gears.  Hooked to the hydraulics of our tractor, it
sports a groaning conveyer belt, studded with 2x2's, to move the
manure back toward a rotating mouth of angled blades on the end of the
trough.  Said blades do the actual "spreading" but these simple words
do not convey the full experience.

When the spreader is fully loaded and dropped into gear it sends GREAT
GOUTS OF SHIT SPEWING UPWARDS ten or more feet, smoothly layering the
field with a thick layer of home-grown fertilizer.  STEAMING STREAMS
OF FECAL MATTER cascade through the air, almost casually, almost
gently landing with faint thudding noises, barely able to be heard
over the shuddering, grinding cacophony of good farm machinery at
work.  GRACEFUL ARCS OF CRAP capture the imagination, carrying one on
to near orgasmic thoughts of waterfalls, rainbows, and trebuchets full
of dead cows.

"YES YES!" you cry, in tearful awe of this astonishing display of both
strength and elegance.  "THIS is the metaphor!  THIS is the medium!
The POST-PRE-MODERN MASTERPIECE OF THE THINKING WORLD!"

And I find that I can only agree with you.

--
Kelly J. Cooper
  "God is good, God is great, God's a big invertebrate"