Overalls, spiders, and cornhusking

Last winter I did a blog entry entitled, "The Journey from overalls to jeans".  We couldn't find Cliff's brand of overalls anywhere.  He tried other brands, but none of them suited him.  He had about three pairs that were faded, grease-spotted, and old, but we knew they couldn't last forever.  We bought him a pair of cowboy cut Wranglers, but they still mostly stayed in the drawer unless he was going somewhere.  He just can't be happy in jeans because there's no place for his pliers, and he can't go anywhere without pliers.  The old overalls got rattier and rattier as he wore them to the shop.  He did not make the journey to jeans.

I looked online to no avail.  There was a brief glimmer of hope a few months ago when Feldman's suddenly had some Big Smith Overalls in stock, but they were not sized properly.  The checkout lady there told us a different company was making them.  I searched online again.  I kept landing on searches like "Walls Big Smith" and thought perhaps Walls (they make coveralls and such) had taken over.  Turns out they were the ones who had the brand in the 2000's for a few years, but I believe they went bankrupt... or maybe it was only the Big Smith portion of the company that went belly up.  

Now the Dickies company makes them.  I didn't know this, though, until Cliff actually managed to do a web search on his own; you see, I had given up looking.  But Cliff, unbeknownst to me, did a search and said, "Hey, you can buy Big Smith overalls right here online."

Sure enough.  He wanted me to order them from the site he was looking at.  I think they were $29.  However, by the time you added shipping, it would be more.  Also, I remembered last fall when Feldman's had the ones that were all sized wrong.  If we got some of those, we'd have to send them back, which means paying yet more postage. 

"Why don't we go to Feldman's again," I asked "since they had them last year when nobody else did."  

He wasn't especially thrilled with the idea, but I told him at least he'd be able to try them on there.  So we came home with a couple of pairs; the cost was a little higher than the online price, but if we needed to return them, it would be easy.  He will live each day a little happier in overalls, hopefully for the rest of his life.  I'm tempted to invest in about 10 pairs, in case the company folds again, but Cliff has been known to change sizes in the past, and that can go either way, up or down.  I don't want to be stuck with a bunch of overalls he can't wear.

We are having a glorious day today, highs in the 80's, sun shining.  I knew it was going to be that sort of weather, so rather than walk in the dark at six AM, I waited until Cliff and I had breakfast.  Then Gabe and I walked in broad daylight.  I think I"m done walking before sunrise.  Last Wednesday I wanted to take a walk before we went to Illinois the next day, so at six o'clock my dog and I headed out.  Turns out the spiders are getting ready for winter, and half of my walking path was blocked by cobwebs... which I couldn't see because it was DARK!  Is there anything creepier than running smack-dab into a full cobweb, right in the face?  I think not!  After the walk I tried to comb my hair and there was so much sticky webbing in one spot I couldn't get a comb through it without pulling out some hair.  I'd never have thought a cobweb could do that.  So today as I walked I swung a stick in front of me to clean out the cobwebs ahead.  Yuck.

Cliff has made the paths plenty wide, but the wind can blow those webs all the way across, allowing the spider to build a beautiful trap for unsuspecting insects that fly through, not to mention unsuspecting people.  

Up ahead of us in the above picture, webs were everywhere.

The second day we were at the show in Illinois, they announced that the world-champion corn-husker was going to husk some corn.  Nobody was quite sure where that event would take place, though, so we ran around on the golf cart for at least half-an-hour before we finally stumbled onto it.  I was interested in this event because my parents both husked corn, back during the depression.  Daddy bragged that Mother could husk as fast as any man he'd ever seen.  Mother saved Daddy's cornhusking knife from those days, and I still have it.  Here's a picture I took of it years ago for a blog entry:

So we found the spot for the event and waited with several others.  Finally the man showed up and some spectators gathered around to husk with him, but there weren't any horses with the wagon they'd need.  They gave up and used a four-wheeler for awhile.

Our champion cornhusker!  By the way, he wasn't in any hurry Saturday.  He knew it wasn't a race.

Finally the kid with the horses showed up.  Cliff and I figured he may have stayed up a little late the night before.  Kids these days!  There was a horse and a mule doing the pulling.

Cornhuskers, one and all.  At least for a day.  The ears of corn were pretty small, because after being delayed by rain last spring, they had to plant a variety that would grow fast enough to be ready in time for the show.

                                                      That wagon is old!

And ANOTHER fun weekend!

We began planning this particular road trip on January 14th; that's when I reserved a motel room and a golf cart for a huge tractor show in August, The Half-Century of Progress, at Rantoul, Illinois.  The $100 per day for a golf cart is some of the best money we've every spent.  The show is held on the grounds of an airport, "Rantoul National Aviation Center", formerly known as Chanute Air Force Base; we saw very few people actually walking through the exhibits; even young folks all had some sort of motorized thing to get them around the place.  Lots of folks brought their own golf carts, garden tractors, or anything else that would propel them around the huge grounds.  They do have to keep their speed below five miles per hour, whatever they use.  It's an orderly crowd, and a friendly one.  You can strike up a conversation with almost anyone you see and it's like they are old friends.  

This shows people riding various vehicles they brought from home to ride, heading to the entry of the show.  

I did get accused of having a southern accent at one point.  This happens frequently, although I've always lived in the midwest.  Here's what caused with my "accent":  When I graduated high school, I spoke the King's English.  Never would an "ain't" be heard coming from my educated lips; why, back then I was embarrassed by my dad's use of the word "ain't" and the overalls he wore.  That all changed when rock and roll evolved from Elvis into the Beatles, a group I didn't like or understand at the time (I like some of their stuff now).  Anyway, at the time, I worked with a woman who talked a lot about her country music, especially George Jones.  I asked her where I could find the station she listened to on my radio dial and became a country music fan overnight, even buying myself a cheap guitar so I could sing Honky-tonk Angel.  Those country singers all had accents that came through, even in their songs, and I guess I admired that, because I began talking like Loretta Lynn without even realizing it.  I've been stuck with the fake southern accent so long, it's natural to me now.  

The motel we booked was pretty crummy, but it was cheap; and while the hallways smelled of musty cigarette smoke, our room was very clean.  It was a Motel 6, so no breakfast was served; I solved that by taking the electric skillet:  We had bread and gravy the first morning and then pancakes for supper.  The second morning we each had an egg sandwich.  I'd also taken along some cantaloupe and grapes, so we had fruit whenever we wanted it.  

It was a long, six-hour drive from Kansas City to middle Illinois, but we weren't delayed by road work anywhere and made good time.  I picked an audio-book at random from the public library, Sue Grafton's "'P' is for Peril", written in 1986.  The first half of it was pretty slow, with very little action.  Still, it made the miles go by faster.  Coming home, the story got more interesting; unfortunately, we didn't finish it before we got home.  Maybe we'll listen to the rest during our after-dinner siesta time.  We need to know how our heroine stymies the bad guys!

One of the best things about the weekend was the weather!  It could have been raining, or it could have been 100 degrees; however, we had highs in the 80's, with downright chilly mornings.  You don't often see that in August.  It was perfect weather.  

Like much of the country, Illinois farmers have had far more rain than they'd like.  At one point we chatted with a man who goes to the farms checking the crop damage so they can receive the money that's theirs from crop insurance.  He's seen some claims that yielded checks over half a million dollars, he said.

I'll be back with more tomorrow.  This is just a start.  I will leave you with a couple of pictures, one before and one after restoration.  Yes, it really is the same tractor in both shots.

Lousy picture, I know.  But you get the idea.

This tractor was professionally restored.  The finish on it is like you'd expect to see on a car; these old tractors weren't that shiny when they were brand new.  The cost of having these people restore a tractor is far, far beyond anything we could afford, though.  It's a good thing Cliff can paint his own.

Time to get Cliff out of bed.  I'll be back tomorrow with more stories of our wild weekend (ha!).