I wrote this for a college English course September 26, 1999. We were supposed to write a descriptive report of a character and their life. What better “character” then Harold Plahn? Harold might have seemed gruff and maybe even crotchety he was what he was…just Harold…nothing more and nothing less. A person took him the way he was or you just missed out! He meant well even though the consequences of his opinionated manner sometimes meant there were long spans when he didn’t talk to you if he disagreed with you but I accepted that about him and I loved him despite his strong minded ways. He was like family to me, so without further ado here is his story.
The Plahn Experience
By
Ruth Smith
Into our driveway creeps an old rusty pickup with a loud muffler after coming to a stop the motor sputters then reluctantly dies and a creaking door opens and loudly shuts.
“Anybody live here?” bellows our 75-year-old neighbor, Harold Plahn, as he waddles into our house and into our lives without so much as a single rap on the door.
Harold has a mischievous face with glistening eyes. Not being an avid daily shaver his face is always slightly fuzzy and outlines lips bulging with tobacco, or snoose, as he would call it. An old blue cap, slightly cocked to one side, perches on his balding head, which seems to give even more expression to his face. He is always dressed in his usual attire of an old work shirt and bibbed overalls that have patches on the knees. Patches, of course, stitched with feed sack string instead of regular sewing thread and sewn by his own hands. “Best damn thread you could use!” he boasts, as he points to his handy work with the pride of a master tailor. And then he would settle into his usual barrage of endless stories. I am absolutely sure that if all of his stories could be compiled in a book it would, without a doubt, be a best seller.
Harold grew up in the Dayton area much of his life. Proud of his Swedish heritage, he would relay stories of his childhood. Harold informed us that his Father was born in Sweden and grew up with a farming background. He lived and worked on the farm until he migrated to the USA at the age of 20. Harold commented on the extreme pride the Swedish people had for their livestock. Milking barns in Sweden were located directly under the living quarters and the parlors were kept as clean as their own homes. He also talked of the very strong work ethics of the Swedish people. Harold beamed when he told about his Father opening the first Black Smith shop in Harcourt, Iowa shortly after his arrival from Sweden. The success of his Father’s Black Smith shop was accredited to all the hard work that was put into it. Harold was a very hard working man himself and after many years of hard labor he was able to purchase his acreage and settle into a sedate life on his two acres of heaven. I'm sorry...did I say sedate? Harold’s life at the age of 75 is quite far from sedate. I have never seen two acres so crammed full of life anywhere on earth! Every square inch is crawling with ducks, geese, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, pigs, cattle, goats, cats plus one small dog and a huge garden. Heck it makes me tired just to think of all the work involved.
Harold starts his morning early, very early, sometimes around 3:00 AM, if you ask him “why so early?” he retorts in his usual gruff voice “done sleepin’!” and then he would laugh. He laughs almost every time he has something to say. I haven’t figured out whether he gets tickled at himself or at the reaction of his audience. He then leaves the house with milk pail in hand to relieve his Guernsey cow of all of her precious milk. When he doesn’t have any milk customers to buy his white gold, he mixes it with the hog feed and feeds it to his eagerly awaiting swine. The old timers referred to this as “slopping” the hogs. “They love it and man do they grow!” Harold announces with a quick jerk of his head as he rubs his hands together and winks an eye.
A daily egg report is always readily available. He can tell you, to the last egg, how many he gets from his laying hens everyday and which hen is not participating in this egg production to.
“Only got 60 eggs today, damn hot weather, supposed to cool by the end of the week and I will be back up to 100 eggs again!” He reports with serious conviction.
When you ask him why he raises so much livestock, he will always reply, “Well what you get out of this old world is what you eat!” From there he will continue to gloat on the “four” freezers full to the brim with the meat from his livestock he raises. “They won’t starve me!” he adds and then laughs like a maniac. I have yet to figure out who “they” are that he refers to though! Harold absolutely loves to eat and I believe his passion for food is captured in the words of this famous man:
George Bernard Shaw writes: “There is no sincerer love then love of food.”
Harold is in his height of glory when he can share some of his treasured freezer surplus goodies with neighbors or friends, and he works for hours in his garden to unselfishly give it all away. He certainly has a heart of gold behind his gruff exterior.
Married once and divorced, Harold prefers to live life “his” way which meant not having to conform to some harping woman telling him when and how he was going to do anything! I still felt he needed a woman in his life anyway and I would convey my concern frequently. But like usual he would herd my concerns off into another direction by the same reaction. With an ornery smile and pulling his hat down over his eyes he would spout, “One lively corpse and they would be singing over me!” This was always followed by a very loud and deep belly laugh that seemed to come from his toes. I savor this comment from him and every chance I will instigate a conversation about women just to hear it all over again and enjoy his laughter.
So here we sit in our living room listening to Harold’s spicy stories. The story today takes us to the banks of the Des Moines River. Harold and one of his buddies had set several “throw” lines across the river. Throw lines are fishing lines adorned with several baited hooks and extend from one riverbank to the other and then staked down. The line was usually only a foot or so under the water for easy access to the hooked fish. This, of course, is illegal so keeping all of this in mind we listened as Harold unveiled the details of his reprehensible deed. With gleaming eyes and an occasional chuckle he continued with the gathering of their catch. He said they struggled up the riverbank with their gunnysacks full of catfish. When they reached the top of the bank, Harold realized he was in sight of anyone who might catch them with their illegal quarry. At this point of the wild tale Harold is laughing like crazy and tears are wriggling out of the corners of his eyes as he tries to tell the rest of the story. He laughingly continues with “I turned to my buddy and I told him, if we get caught with this…why... we will get thirty days in the electric chair!” We laughed so hard at the irony of this statement that our sides ached. What made it even funnier was how much Harold enjoyed telling it. Even though we have heard some of his stories many times we always love hearing them again and we eagerly look forward to any new stories he may share from day to day. The vivid descriptions of his, often-racy events, are so entertaining we listen intently. The air is always full of happy laughter whenever he is around. His laughter delights the senses the way good music soothes the soul.
As spoken in the words of Marcel Proust:
“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Some may consider Harold eccentric but I think of him as a breath of fresh air in this busy and troubled world we live in. Walking onto his two acres is like turning back the clock of time, milking cows by hand and slopping hogs were a way of life... a time when life was a little slower and a lot simpler.
Harold rises to leave and always exists by saying, “Well got to get back to the poor farm and get my beauty sleep!” and then out the door he goes laughing.
I must admit, I have never met anyone like him in my entire life and don’t imagine I ever will. A character like him comes along once in a lifetime and I feel lucky to have had my life touched by him. His stories and his silly antics will stay in mind forever. God willing, we will see him again tomorrow, same time, same place, same stories and same wonderful heart felt laughter!
