As My Dad Used to Say

He called me "Bud," and he's the only person
who ever called me by that name.
Working in the shop on the farm,
if he needed a sledge hammer he'd say,
"Hand me that persuader over there."
If a nut was too rusty to turn off of a bolt
he'd light the cutting torch and say,
"I'll use the fire-wrench."
He'd call baling wire a "Mormon tool kit."
His name for the Handyman jack was
a "widow maker"
because the handle could flip up
and hit you in the face,
but we used that jack all the time.
When a repair job was finished he'd often say,
"Good enough for who it's for,"
which meant for ourselves.
If my rows started getting crooked
when I planted corn, he'd say,
"You're getting a dog leg."
If I got off-center when I was cultivating sugar
beets and the cultivator knives
cut the tops off of a few beet plants,
we wouldn't know it until the tops of those plants would wilt in the afternoon,
and he would call that "cultivator blight."
Looking at the corn, he liked to repeat the phrase,
"High as an elephant's eye
by the Fourth of July."
He claimed that if you listened carefully
on a hot summer day
you could hear the corn growing.
After listening close year after year
I'm still not sure if he was kidding.
He said if you picked up a calf
on the day it was born
and you picked it up again every day,
you could eventually pick up
a full grown bull.
When we'd go to the Farm Service Agency
to sign up for a government farm program,
he'd call it, "Bellying up to the trough."
One time when I was a kid I had the pickup truck
in reverse, driving beside the corral, and
the door snagged a hay bale. The door
was dented and the hinges were sprung, and
I was sure scared when I showed him the damage. He looked at it and all he said was, "Did you learn anything?"
If I ever said "I wish" he'd say, "Wish in one hand
and spit in the other
and see what you get the most."
If I didn't work fast enough he'd say,
"Grandma was slow but she was old.
What's your excuse?"
and "Take your time but hurry up."
He repeated lyrics or media phrases, like
Tonto's line from the Lone Ranger,
"Get 'em up, Scout."
He seemed to only know one line from any song,
like when he'd sing, "When you see me comin' you better step aside. A lot of men didn't and a lot of men died."
In the morning, to the tune of the Army reveille,
"I can't get 'em up. Oh I can't get 'em up. Oh I can't get 'em up in the morning."
I don't even know what song the line was from, but
he'd sing in the morning,
"Listen to the bacon frying
as it's sizzling in the pan."
Another song he'd sing in the morning went,
"Lazy bones, sleepin' in the noon-day sun.
How you gonna get your day's work done?"
He'd remember a poem on summer days,
"Mosquito you fly high,
mosquito you fly low,
mosquito you fly on me,
and you ain't gonna fly no mo'."
My son, Will, at three years old fell out of the
pickup truck. He wasn't hurt.
Dad repeated an old phrase, "He went down
like a sack of potatoes."
William remembers that phrase to this day.
Dad liked to recite a quote that he said
went around during World War II.
Attempting an impression of FDR, he'd say,
"I don't want war
and the people don't want war,
but Eleanor wants war
so I guess we're going to have war."
He liked to rattle off the phrase,
"I kicked old Nellie in the belly in the barn."
If you stood between him and the television,
he'd say, "You make a better door
than you do a window."
He'd call a quarter "two bits," a five-dollar bill
"a five spot," and a ten-dollar bill
"a saw-buck."
I only once heard him say, after a quiet pause
in a conversation about missed opportunities and money he'd lost in bad years,
"I love the land."
I only heard him say it once
but I knew he meant it.
He was the only person who ever called me Bud,
and nobody will ever call me
by that name again.
If they do I won't answer.