Page 10 - Demo

8When one of Jakob and Susanna%u2019s sons, John (my grandfather, whom I was named after), grew into adulthood, he followed the traditional route and farmed%u2014but in nearby Benton County, where land was a bit cheaper. Eventually, he owned over 1,800 acres, but he didn%u2019t just raise crops. He and my Grandmother Emma produced 5 girls and 9 boys. They lived in a grand 3-story farmhouse that was once featured prominently in Prairie Farmer magazine.Grandfather John died, at the age of 68, in 1928. He was said to have been a poor businessman, and he left behind great deal of debt. After he passed, my grandmother struggled to pay off the loans but, in the midst of the Great Depression, on January 20, 1930, she had no choice but to put the farm, and all the family%u2019s possessions, on the auction block. Most of John and Emma%u2019s 14 children went into other, more secure, lines of work. The youngest, my father Gregory, opened a small typewriter shop in the Benton County Seat of Fowler. So, I grew up living in town, never rising early for farm chores, never hearing discussions about the price of soybeans or corn.Fowler wasn%u2019t very big. From our house, farm fields were only a few blocks away in any direction. Of course, there was a grain elevator%u2014located on the west side, along the railroad tracks. It was (and still is) a massive structure (see page 6). But, as a child, with other things to grab my interest, I didn%u2019t pay much attention to it, and it was soon relegated to the cobwebs of memory. When I was in the middle of first grade, Dad moved us, and his growing business, 30 miles away from Fowler, to the larger city of Lafayette. Although we lived further from any fields, I went to school with a number of kids who lived on farms, and I spent time in their homes and barn lots%u2014occasionally even riding astride a tractor fender. But these experiences were only a shallow, temporary immersion into farming life. Lafayette also had a grain elevator, but I paid it little notice%u2014until I watched it burn down late one night.Over the next few decades, as I traveled many of Indiana%u2019s highways and county roads, I would casually observe the rural countryside. By middle-age, I started paying closer attention to an agricultural infrastructure that was beginning to deteriorate. At some point, which I can%u2019t date precisely, I found myself admiring weather-beaten barns, abandoned farmhouses, and the rusting mechanical equipment that other families, in other generations, had left behind.By the time I was in my fifties, the tall, stately grain elevators began whispering to me. Slowly, over several years, they seemed to be saying, %u201cpay attention%u201d%u2014and I did. Before long, they had transformed themselves, from simple, nondescript storehouses, into captivating, rather mysterious structures. I was drawn by their, dignified appearance, as they sat proudly along railroad tracks%u2014or where the tracks used to be. The abandoned ones particularly grabbed my attention, with their crumbling, yet solemn, majesty.Now, as I would drive down a county road or highway, I would routinely scan the horizon, looking specifically for the familiar shapes and silhouettes of grain elevators. Getting closer, I%u2019d scrutinize their specific combination of boxy towers, circular bins, tubes, conveyors, fans, and corrugated siding. I came to understand that, while there were similarities, each facility was unique. In time, through simple observation, I began to understand the rudimentary basics of how a grain elevator worked. But there was so much more I wanted to know.As my initial interest turned into a mild obsession, I began seeking out images of grain