Reasonably Educated Bumpkins

Here are a few pictures of things that endure on the ranch.

This barn is still very much in use today, both as a hay storage barn and feeding facility, and as a good place to sort and separate cattle. The barn was built in the mid-70s. We used to have one of the best, if not the closest, views of Mt. Lassen in the north valley, and Dad had to go and build a barn in front of it. This became our view out the kitchen window. If you look through the barn, toward the northeast, those mountains are the northern Sierras. Mt. Lassen is behind one of those pole supports. Mom was irritated.

Another old barn suffering from lack of use. It was right in the heart of the action back in the days when the dairy was a 24-hour operation. Now it's home to wasps and spiders, probably pigeons and maybe a few cats, and not much else.

This large, empty and decaying room is the tank room. Imagine a huge stainless steel tank, about eight feet tall, filling every square inch of this room. That was the milk tank. Milk was pumped into it three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, without fail. The milk truck, a semi truck-and-trailer tanker, came and picked up the milk once every day, also without fail. Late in the afternoon it was fairly impressive to climb the ladder, open the hatch, and look down into a swirling vat of icy cold white milk, stretching back to the wall, farther back than even the light from the open hatch would reach. If I gave a casual tour of the dairy to a friend or visitor, I always ended with a trip to the tank room.

For a while it was my job to clean the tank. If I stop typing here I'll leave you picturing me in a haz-mat suit, scrubbing away inside the tank with a broom. Nope -- everything was automated. It was a clean, easy, boring, push-button job, but it was critical. Anything dealing with health and public safety is very regulated, and there's little room for sloppiness. Push that button. baby.

There used to be a phone here. Not a good place for a casual telephone call. It's right outside the milk parlor, and the phone (which was removed; you can see the holes and the outline where it was bolted to the wall) was mostly for calls to the electrician, to come fix the barn, or the milker, to get his late butt to work, or Surge, to come fix the milking equipment. With very loud motors running for seven-hour stretches, and people coming in and out of the barn at all hours, this was not a great place to have a phone chat.

When you're in a hurry you can write numbers with your finger, apparently. I don't even want to know what was used for "ink." See the vet's number? Gerry is still our vet -- but now it's just for our stupid cats.

Most places have a john for their facilities. We had a FRANK. It was named after one of the guys who worked there. I'm not sure he appreciated it. I'm quite sure no one cared.

I wouldn't have used that potty for any amount of money.