THE SPIRIT OF DAN BROCK By Arup N. Garson | Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | Clara Frodahl & Nils Garson Page | HOME | |
| Page 4 mortgage kept growing bigger, and store bills were multiplying. He finally decided his cows were to blame, so he sold his entire personal property at auction. The junk pile took all forenoon. Then he spent weeks shopping for the best purebred stock he could buy. Eager stock salesmen camped on his doorstep every day, and trips to distant points became a daily necessity. More auctions were also attended, and a new junk pile started to accumulate. Now there was nothing wrong with Dan's new herd; every cow was a producer, not a boarder among them. And they looked good. In fact they looked too good to be housed in the old barn. So Dan increased his mortgage and built a new one. The new barn was a farmer's dream, but it made the old milk house look like two cents. He therefore increased his loan again and put up a milk house made entirely of concrete, tanks and all. The old cream separator had matched up well with its surroundings in the old milk house, but in the new one it became an eyesore. Dan knew he could not afford a new separator, and the old one certainly was good for many more years. But for every day that went by Dan could see some new fault in the old machine. He finally convinced himself that it had been stealing his profits, and when that point was reached he traded it off for a new one, giving a note to the implement dealer for the difference in price. Dan was more content to stay home for awhile after getting all these new improvements. It made a man feel good working among so much up-to-date equipment. And the cows were certainly a sight for sore eyes. The only cloud on his horizon was that mortgage. The interest date seemed to fairly fly towards him. The cream checks were larger, to be sure, but those short term notes he had given for various purchases took most of them, so the net profits did not seem to be a:ny bigger after all, and the interest date arrived finding Dan with an overdraft at the bank. He again consolidated his scattered indebtedness into one unsecured loan at the bank, increasing the amount to include the interest on the farm mortgage. That was a load off Dan's mind. It made him actually feel as if the interest was paid, and before he left town he had traded off his old work harnesses for new ones. That first winter the water froze in the concrete tanks and cracked them. The old wooden ones were by that time warped from lack of use, so new steel tanks were bought. But from then on Dan became once more possessed of the urge to go |