Days. 26 - 31 My Time With Dayton and Polly

So Dayton plucked me off the cold, sleety street of East Glacier (there seemed to be only one) and hauled me to his home in Great Falls. I have news. Our countrymen on the prairie no longer live in sod houses. I'll come back to this.

When Dayton found me I had been honed into a medium tough bicyclist with steelish legs and an iron ass. He and Polly began immediately to chip away at this fine specimen through a series of gourmet meals, comfortable furniture, a barber and other forms of soft, dandified living. In theory I might have escaped back to the road on Saturday or Sunday, but in fact neither the spirit nor the flesh were willing. Now it will probably take an expulsion to get me back on my bike.

Dayton is a farmer. On our ride down from Glacier we talked of farming. From time to time over the past few decades, in certain parlors of Montlake and Capital Hill I have expounded on the life and ways of farmers. Dayton is my exclusive source and until now my principal, if not my only point has been that farming, while a spiritually rewarding occupation is also fraught with worry. The time here has broadened my perspective and no doubt added to my lecture, to wit: farming is complex, at least dry land wheat farming. Here I will leave out harvesting the crop, storing the crop, selling the crop, choosing the machinery, operating the machinery, controlling weeds, utilizing moisture and several other topics and elaborate only on fertilizing. Here they add nitrogen and phosphate in order to increase yields (output per acre) and increase the protein in the wheat. Phosphate stays still in the ground. Nitrogen sinks. Phosphate needs only one application which can be done at the time of seeding. Some nitrogen can be applied at seeding, but not all that is needed. Later applications are necessary. Nitrogen increases the protein content of the wheat which at certain levels earns a premium in the price. But the premium does not rise indefinitely. Therefore a farmer could waste money by paying for nitrogen which results in protein that earns no premium. That is, there is such a thing as wasteful application of nitrogen. The land is not of a consistent quality over the entire farm so the applications of both nitrogen and phosphate need to be adjusted according the particular soil. That's about all I got on fertilizer.

Dayton is also the fellow with the luminous toe nail.

Polly is a lady. By this I mean two things at least. One, she knows what's right and what's not, and two, she aspires to what's right. There is not much compromise with these principals. A meal for instance is not to be undertaken lightly or hurriedly, but rather with care and creativity. (A note to other good cooks of my acquaintance, you know who you are: just because you haven't heard me say such things about you doesn't mean I don't know they're true for you too.). Polly's house is of a comfortable size, but not immodest. The walls are hung with original art, some influenced by her work as a docent at the Charlie Russell Museum. She practices for her piano lesson on a 150 year old baby grand. Her free lance writing for the Great Falls Tribune focuses on fitness and travel. Her calligraphy desk is ever ready at the side of her office. The orchid on the coffee table gets personal attention.. You get the idea. There's also the symphony board, the tennis, the thrice weekly fitness class (she attends it, she doesn't teach it) and the summers at the farm and her grandmother role to round out her life.

Here's some of what we did while I was with them: told the old stories and some new ones, had a dinner party, went out for Father's Day dinner, had a steak dinner in and a steak dinner out, took a 20 mile bike ride, had a picnic, went to fitness class, visited the several falls of Great Falls, all with near record water coming over, went to the farm and worked on spraying the cheat grass on the land that is fallow this year, so it would not infest next year's crop (I watched).

I said I would come back to the house. Here it is. The house is not grand or ostentatious, but let me put it this way; if a world renown musician came to town to play with the local symphony, as does happen, and he or she were billeted at the Kolstad's house, the person would not stand agape, but there would be no element of a civil way of life that would be missed. In the guest shower, for instance, there are four vials filled with lotions for purposes unknown to me. Surely nothing more is needed.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T