Norman

One of the farms where I shoot dove is owned by a friend who's not a farmer. He always has some kind of arrangement with a real farmer to plow and plant and cut hay and such. Among these guys was an old timer named Norman who must have been at least 70 and could have kicked my ass on his lunch break.

He had white hair and a nose that was long and looked like a ridgeline running down the center of his face. He was big, the kind of big that comes from farming for a long, long time. I think he could juggle hay bales.

I never could figure out if Norman was way smarter than me or had a death grip on his last few brain cells. Something about the way he'd look at you left the impression that he knew lots of things you didn't.  Then he'd start talking and you'd be forced to reconsider. Every time I saw him he'd stop mid-way through our conversation and say, "Now what was your name again?" Not that being bad with names is an early indicator of intelligence.

This is the disc harrow Norman used on our sunflower field. Norman's dead now.