A lesson from Johnny.
I used to deer hunt at my in-law's farm in Central Minnesota. The Matriarch of that family sold the farm last year. The group of men I hunted with since my teens are scattering to other hunting camps. I have lost something in my life with the sale of that farm. I am losing a small community. Here is a story of that small community.
Johnny is my Nephew's neighbor. He is about fifty years old and lives south of Brainerd, Minnesota. I see Johnny every year during deer hunting season. Johnny comes over to help cut up deer. He provides another set of hands, and we provide him with dinner and beer. When our deer are processed, we go to Johnny's, process his deer, and drink his beer. When Johnny isn't drinking beer, he drives a truck delivering turkeys to a local turkey processing plant. Turkey production is a big business in Central Minnesota, where Johnny lives. The turkey plants, their workforce, and output are all colossal. Unfortunately, a covid outbreak hit a turkey plant in Pelican Rapids, MN, and Johnny was laid off. I got word of this when Johnny called me in the middle of the week.
"Hey man, can you go to Walmart and pick up all of the one-gallon freezer bags they have?", He asked without as much as a hello. Johnny is a country boy, and his manners are spotty. Sometimes he has the best manners in the world; other times, they are nonexistent. His manners with me are usually nonexistent, so when you pick up a call from Johnny, you better be ready for action.
"Why do you want all of their freezer bags?" I asked.
"We're getting the crew together to cut up Turkeys.", he answered. In the rest of the conversation, I would learn that he had been laid off because the turkey plant had shut down, causing the truckers to have nothing to truck. In addition, the turkey farmers had turkeys in barns which would run out of room if some of the turkeys weren't taken out. So, Johnny offered to take a couple of hundred turkeys off of a farmer's hands and enlisted the help of his deer hunting crew to process the turkeys.
We dusted off our deer processing equipment the following Friday night and processed 150 turkeys. We did the work in Johnny's garage. We kept the garage doors open and blew air out of the garage with a collection of fans. It was a Minnesota winter, and it was extremely cold. The beer only partially helped.
I had to call Johnny and have him refresh my memory on a few points.
He did not receive a layoff notice. The trucking company was informed that the scheduled work was not going ahead. Johnny heard all kinds of rumors and grousing from all of his contacts in the supply chain, but nobody had any plan. It was all reactionary.
Johnny's reaction was to do something about the problems that were right in front of him. He got us together and provided turkeys for almost everyone he knew (he offered me more turkey on the follow-up phone call). In the following weeks, we would process some hogs and more turkeys to avoid the meat going to waste.
The impact on our families was that we felt more secure with full freezers and the sense of community we felt in our deer hunting crew.
Johnny went back to truck driving a couple of weeks after this incident. He drove for another friend of ours who was shorthanded at the time.
There is a moral to this story that we don't talk about much: There is an economic force that gets short shrift in modern times. The force I am referring to is community. Our deer hunting crew is a micro-community of a bunch of shirttail relations, neighbors, and acquaintances. Johnny was able to leverage that community to contribute to the welfare of people well outside of the said community. The community of country boys helping each other out and hunting deer is part of an older economy. In his day-to-day life, Johnny is a small cog in the colossal machine that is American food production. All Johnny had to do when times got tough was switch what economy in which he was participating. I recommend you make your little community, just as Johnny did.
See you out there,
-Chip
