Remembering Joe Todd

My friend Joe Todd died March 4, 2007. He will be missed but not forgotten as a friend and mentor.

When I was 12  my family moved to a small acreage outside of Crawfordsville Indiana. Our neighborhood butted up against surrounding farms many of which were operated by the sons and daughters of those who first cleared and plowed the bottom ground along Sugar Creek.

The boys in the neighborhood were typically recruited by the neighboring farmers to help bale hay in the summer and occasional other labor intensive chores. My first job for one of the local farmers was shoveling manure on Marvin Swift’s farm for 50 cents an hour after school and on Saturdays. The old timers used to say it was good work if you could get it. I’m not sure I ever fully appreciated that bit of wisdom.

A few months later I was part of a group of boys who helped put up hay in an old red barn for Joe Todd. His farm was across the creek and could be seen from our deck about 2 miles away. I must have done ok because after a few days packing every square inch of that old barn tight with 70 pound bales Joe asked me if I wanted to help with some other work. Heck I was twelve and 50 cents an hour sounded pretty good although in full disclosure we did receive $1 an hour for putting up hay.

I would learn later Joe Todd had a bit of Tom Sawyer in him. He did a better job selling the virtues of stacking hay in hot dusty wasp invested barn than he paid. Nevertheless, I didn’t know any better and didn’t care.

This was all new and exciting since I was the professor’s kid. My father taught at the college in town and was raised in the big city with little exposure to life in the country. He nodded and smiled knowingly as parents do when they are clueless to what their children are telling them as I would explain the importance of getting those bales in tight and straight as you stacked row after row, otherwise that wall of hay might fall in next winter as it settles and then we would have a mess.

I worked for Joe for about seven years starting in seventh grade after school, weekends, and summers. I helped with various feeding chores, bailing hay, shoveling manure, clearing brush, building fence and other endless odd jobs. Eventually over the years I learned how to operate and take care of about every piece of machinery we used from tractors to planters, combines, trucks and more.

I did manage to learn a little about the technical aspects of farming while working for Joe but truthfully most of my experiences involved an investment of labor not intellect. Although one summer when I was sixteen I learned how much thinking was involved in every aspect of farming. That was the summer I heard the phrase “Boy, are you thinking” repeated for what seem like a thousand times after multiple mishaps. At first I thought it was Joe speak for “What are you thinking?” but later I learned in fact he was yelling “Are you thinking?” I heard this phrase so often that summer that I fell compelled to write it with a permanent marker on a scrap of wood and nail it up on the wall in the shop where I believe it still hangs today as a reminder.

Joe Todd was a farmer his entire life, husband for almost 60 years, A loving and devoted father, a school bus driver, mentor and friend. He grew up in a large farming family during the depression. Thrift and independence were hallmarks of his being. The extended families of Joe’s dad Carl and his Uncle Oscar owned, rented and farmed most of an area a couple miles west of Crawfordsville along and around what is known as Black Creek Valley Road. I’m not sure of the total acreage farmed by Joe, his brother Lloyd his Dad Carl, Uncle Oscar his cousin Paul and other members of the extended Todd family but it seemed like a lot and they all helped each other often when needed.

Some of the lessons I learned working with Joe proved to be valuable life long skills, like how to drive through a muddy feedlot without getting stuck. Or how to balance on the edge of a hay wagon with one foot and the other propped on the shoot of the bailer while you threw the last bail over your head to finish off the tie row.

Other lessons were more cerebral. Joe liked to say when mixing up buckets of corn, oats and supplement; They didn’t have to be perfect, just right. You learned to judge just the right amount of grain, supplement and sometimes water mixed together to make it just right. Working smart was always better than working hard  and you make hay when the sun shines were a few of  his mantra’s. You learned to pay attention to your work like the time I was plowing bottom ground and hit a sandy stretch and didn’t pull the plow up quick enough only to find myself buried and was allowed to walk two miles back to the barn to get help and another tractor to pull myself out.

Joe only knew two ways of doing things, his way, and the wrong way. Fortunately for me he was also a mostly patient teacher. He was a genuinely kind man who always had a joke, story, or opinion ready to share. 

When I heard the news Joe had died I was in my office at the small publishing company where I work. I couldn’t shut my door and kept shooing people out while my Mom on the other end of the phone told me about the funeral arrangements. On the way back from lunch I stopped at a Bakers Square Restaurant next door to our office building and bought a peach pie to take back. I gathered our small staff around to explain why I kept shooing them away and told them we’re going to have a piece of pie in honor of Joe.

You see, most days when I worked for him we would drive about 10 miles for lunch at the Wayne Café in Waynetown, Indiana. Joe always rationalized this bit of extravagance of going out to lunch every day by saying one of his farms was in Wayne Township and he was trying to support the local economy. But the real truth was the Wayne Café was known for its pies baked by the pie ladies who started early each morning making pies from scratch. They would use fresh or home canned fruits to make pies daily that, as my friend Dick Shapiro used to say, were-to-die for. So we had piece of warm peach pie from Bakers Square in Des Moines in remembrance of Joe – It wasn’t a Wayne Café pie – but it was pretty good and I told a few stories to my co-workers about Joe Todd who wasn’t perfect, just right, just like the pie.