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 8 farm operations alone could meet it. In order to increase his income, Dan decided on a profitable side line and bought a threshing rig. They cost money those threshing rigs, but the machine company. took only a nominal down payment, with a long term chattel mortgage for the balance. Of course a hired man was needed to take care of the farm during threshing season. Dan came home every night to check over farm operations. Sometimes there would also be repair bills to check over, without money to meet them because the threshing run had been gotten on the strength of "No hurry about the pay". You just had to meet competition because there were so many threshing rigs. When the hired man wanted to quit just before plowing, Dan bought a tractor and three bottom plow to make him stay. The first threshing season was not a bonanza, but then neither was it a defeat. After spending a month, more or less, collecting threshing bills Dan had enough to make the first installment to the machine company. That was encouraging, and the separator was put up for the winter in a new shed built for the purpose. There was no way of raising the money to build the shed, but by that time Dan had acquired the necessary sales talk. He bragged, bluffed and blarnyed the lumber company into carrying him "for a short time". However, it is strange when you have been with a threshing crew for a season. Somehow, after being in a jolly', hustling crowd since early' fall, the solitude of farm work appears drab and dull. It is hard to get back in the routine, and the unaccustomed stillness gets on your nerves. The silence seems at times to fairly' scream at you. Dan got homesick for a crowd again, and made frequent trips to town. The first auction had to be attended even though the plowing was unfinished. It was so stimulating to move around in a crowd again. And being the biggest farmer in the community, it hurt appearances to go there in the old rattletrap of a car. A new one had been purchased. There had not been enough money for the down payment, so Dan had drawn in advance on his cream check for all it would stand. The banker put up a howl when the dealer wanted to discount the note, and a conference had been hurridly called, where the banker, the car dealer and Dan had it out. Between the pleadings of the dealer and the optomistic bluster of Dan Brock, the banker's icy resistance cracked, and Dan attended the auction, triumphant but resentful. He defiantly bid on various articles in order to show the world he knew what he was doing, and left at the |