Lögberg-Heimskringla - 28.07.2000, Blaðsíða 21

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Sérútgáfa • Föstudagur 28. júlí 2000 • 21
Eccentric
Continued from page 19
alike anywhere on earth, Iceland,
Minnesota, China, Madagascar. Fix the
machinery, wait for the weather, vacci-
nate the sheep, shovel the shit, cut the
hay, fix the machinery, wait for the
weather, shovel more shit, castrate the
lambs, tum the hay, fix the machinety,
breed the ewes, milk the cow, wait for
the weather, rake the hay into bundles,
fix the machinery, find the wandering
sheep, gather in the hay, wait for the
weather. All this punctuated with cof-
fee, fried sheep heart, coffee and cake,
mull over the weather, boiled fish, con-
template the sheep, more coffee, TV
news, a Swedish documentary on cod
breeding grounds, a Czech soap opera,
one more cup of coffee, maybe a card
game, bed, check the weather, fix the
machinery.
All rhythms have a few hiccups. In
Iceland, farm days were divided not
into light and dark, but rather wet and
dry. Icelandic ground, untended, exists
in a state of perennial saturation. Most
grass grows not in flat meadow, but in
something resembling a heavy sea,
rolling lumpy clumps and hummocks
punctuated by squishy bog. It must be
drained and flattened before it can be
mowed and gathered. Every farm has a
home hay field where nature has been
altered and improved—the tún. During
hay season, the tún is the subject of
worry, fear, veneration. Out there grows
the hay that keeps the horses and sheep
alive for the long winter. On the size
and quality of the hay crop depend the
future of Icelandic civilization, as any
farmer might modestly tell you. On
Gilsárteigur, the summer’s chief job,
other than worrying the hay, was to con-
struct a new silo, a proper storehouse
for the hay—now transformed into
silage. Holm, whose idea of a building
project involved piling cheese and roast
beef and tomatoes on rye bread, often
found himself loading a wheelbarrow
full of cement, pushing it up a rarnp to
be dumped into a concrete mold. When
the hay finally dried enough to be gath-
ered, the whole farm shifted into high
gear. The idea of working ’til dark, then
rising at dawn doesn’t make sense on
the arctic circle. Keep pitching bundles
til the hay is finally safe from the demon
rain. After twenty years of using his
shoulder muscles mostly for strenuous
octave passages in Liszt etudes, Holm
found himself, after a few days in the
hay, sore enough to be in need of lini-
ment, chiropractors, and pity, though he
got none from the Icelanders—shoul-
ders were meant for pitchforks, pitch-
forks were meant for hay in dry weath-
er, and hay was meant to preserve the
civilization of Iceland and to provide
whatever dinner might appear on your
plate. Holm’s residence in Iceland enti-
tled him, like any third-world guest
from the United States, to the use of
Iceland’s national health service. Still
sore, he visited a doctor in Vopnaljörður
who heard his story and inquired,
“Aren’t you too old for that sort of
thing? Take an aspirin and rest it,”
adding, of course, this being Iceland,
“What farm did you grandparents come
from? Perhaps we are cousins...” Was
Howard Mohr a shape shifter—or was
Holm, indeed, too old for this?
One morning over coffee when it
was too wet for hay or cement, Jón the
farrner asked Holm a question in a
genial voice. Holm missed the drift of
the question, but not wanting to be
impolite so early in the morning nodded
affably and answered yow-yow (yes).
After coffee he followed Jón to the old
shit pit in the nether barn where he was
handed a fork and shown a honey
wagon. “Gerið svo vel.” Like most idiot
language learners, Holm answered yes
to all questions he didn’t understand—
most of them. If the consequence of
ignorance is an afternoon in a shit pit,
humans might grow smarter faster.
To be continued in the next
ssue.
Riley
Continued from page 8
his crew that he would “take a chance.”
Thereby was born the saying “Steve
Riley took a chance!” The weather was
not too good and the Chieftain was
overloaded with a heavy deck load. In
the heavy seas she scraped a sand bar,
lost her steerage and went out of con-
trol. In less than a minute she was lying
on her beam end, out of the proper
channel.
Efforts to get her back into the
channel by reversing her engines only
made matters worse. Now the condens-
er pump was pumping more sand than
water. Working the Chieftain free by
her own power was now out of the
question. Her lee rail by this time was
under water and the water was flooding
into the hold. The chief engineer report-
ed to the captain that the flooding water
was putting out the fire in the boiler.
There was nothing left now to do but
launch the lifeboat and to keep it clear
of the Chieftain so it would not smash
into the side of the freighter and to get
everyone off the dangerously inclined
deck without injury. The dredge tender
C.G.S. Sir Hector was standing by; the
crew was taken aboard and brought
safely to port.
Controversy raged among the lake
men for a long time afterwards over
Captain Steffanson’s decision to “take a
chance.” The problem or real error was
made before leaving Selkirk when
Captain Steffanson allowed the man-
agement of the company to overload the
Chieftain.
So passed a boat that had been
many a seaman’s. pride and with it the
pride of bygone days. But the captain of
the Chieftain left us with a legacy—the
saying “Steve Riley took a chance,”
was left to warn other captains con-
fronted with a dangerous problem to
govern their decision with caution.
Captain Steffanson got the nickname
from schoolmates because of his enthu-
siasm for the exploits of Sir Walter
Raleigh (pronounced the same as
Riley).
Minnist
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í ERFÐASKRÁM YÐAR
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Tefephone: 376-2433
Announcement
Party time! “Bobbi” Davidson (nee
Thorbjorg Solmundson) is turning 90!
Saturday, Aug. 26, 2000, 1-4 pm (open
house), Multi-purpose room, Betel
Home, Gimli, MB.
If you can’t attend and want to send
a card, her address is Room 101, Betel
Home, Box 10, Gimli, MB, R0C 1B0.
Every kind of flag ímaginable...
VISIT OUR SHOWROOM FOR YOUR
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Gimli welcomes
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to
íslendingadagurinn
2000
Celebrating the 125th
anniversary of the arrival of
the lcelandic settlers at
Willow Point—October 21,
1875
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