Northern Farmer

Just got in from afternoon chores so that wraps up the week around here except for firing up the wood boilers after supper tonight. Still having above normal temps here and we’ll take em. The grounds good and froze so we don’t have a mud problem. Today I went to a town seven miles away to buy gas and I will admit I was looking forward to filling up the tank. The gas station, note, I didn’t say convenience store, just opened a week or two ago. It’s an old fashion gas station where the owner comes out and fills your tank. Now I haven’t been to any station that would do this for at least five years, maybe more, and that sure beat pumping it myself, same price too.

This gas station and repair shop was closed for a few years. The building is cement block with a rounded roof. They always did car and truck repairs, worked on tractors, changed tires, repaired tires, both farm and auto. It’s at the edge of town, a bit out in the countryside. Basically, it could do any type of farm repair that a person would need. It was owned by an elderly couple and their house was right next to the station. I used to stop by to get gas or fix a tire and the lady would be working in her for real garden, she’d see me pull in so she’d just mosey on over take care of what I needed. Farmers and oldtimers would always be hanging around the shop just passing the time of day. They even had chairs and benches for the regulars. In the back of the shop was, or is, a big old wood stove to heat it during the cool months. And out back behind the shop was a huge wood pile. A few years ago the couple died, fairly close together as often happens, and the place has been closed since.

The last few years I’ve hated getting gas, nothing to do with the price, but I missed doing business personally with real people. I never could get going in a conversation at a convenience store. In fact I get a bad feeling when I’m in one. Even in small towns now the convenience store is taking over. Just in time to fit in with the modern lifestyle of a family where no one eats meals together and everyone goes their own way, all the time. I can honestly say that I’ve never boughten any kind of food in one of these places.

The new owner of the station is a young man in his thirties, with a growing family, and I mean growing. There’s a new baby every year so in a few years he’ll have plenty of help. We’ll give him all of our business because it’s so important that a small business like this succeeds. This is what the countryside needs again. It’s just as important as farms, the small businesses that support the family farms and communities. When this was the case years ago the small farming towns thrived. Maybe it’s a start here in the right direction. Besides, as I rapidly approach “geezerhood” it’d be nice to be able to stop by a place like this and chew the fat with all the other geezers.

As the industrial age is coming to a climax, the large corporations are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to destroy the Christian family way of life. That’s why the huge corporations are sponsoring all the anti moral activities that want to destroy Christianity. A broken home spends more than a Christian family that follows the Lord and lives within their means. A lost, mindless people always spend more, much more than someone living simply for Christ. It’s about money. So it does my heart good seeing a young family starting a business that the experts figure is a fossil. I’ll place my bet that these folks will make it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.