Bachelor Farmer

 He was Wesley Thompson's uncle. Wesley (who stood 6' 10") was a good friend in high school so I heard the story when it happened. The uncle's name was Caleb and he was one of those Norwegian bachelor farmers Garrison Keller talks about all the time except that Caleb was a redneck bachelor farmer. He lived alone about a half mile from his next-door neighbor and had a reputation even among the other farmers in the area for having a set of social skills significantly less well developed than what one would except to find in, for example, a barn owl. He was a creature of habit, so much so that you would probably call it OCD. He always wore a pair of one galosh over-all. Some say he only had one pair and ,therefore, never needed  to waste time going laundry. I cannot confirm this. It has been pointed out that he raised hogs and was none too careful about hygienic conditions in their one large pen. He was very good about pumping plenty of water out in and keeping the hogs well feed and was apparently considered a good and considerate master by hogs who thrived under his care and had no complaint. But Caleb never saw the need to pump anything back out. Some say that the result was living proof that hogs will happily wallow in anything that is kept wet and cool, which is what Caleb always assumed, perhaps because their standard of hygiene so closely matched his own that Caleb saw no reason to believe that his hogs were any more fastidious than he was.

               There was an odor that was hard enough to ignore that his next-door neighbors, a family who had worked the same land since the civil war, talked seriously about the possibility of relocation. But, honestly, even they, being closest to the source, could not say for certain what exactly made a shift in the wind that put them dead center down-wind from the Thompson place so memorable. A gas station a little further down the road did close down but they were corporate-owned and had only been there a year or two. Folks assumed that the decision to buy land and build there was made on a day when the Thompson place was upwind of a strong breeze. A farmer about a mile down the road, who traveled around the country working construction when he was younger, always claimed that this was obvious and cited it as proof that the "big bosses" never listen to a damn thing the people doing the actual work involved in building anything try to tell them.

               Anyway''''. Caleb always began his day by smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar while he sat in his out-house waiting for his morning call of nature to be answered. Caleb never saw the need to waste money on in-door plumbing or to pump shit, human or hog, out of a place where it was not bothering anyone. An odd thing about Methane gas is that it is heaver than air. If you really did want to make the closest thing to a lead balloon that you could manage, you would fill it with Methane. If you put shit in a pit and leave it there long enough, it eventually turns to Methane and stays put right where the original shit was dumped.

               Caleb, being a creature of habit, had begun his day with exactly the same ritual every morning for the last thirty years, without ever having the slightest problem that would have alerted him to any danger involved in continuing to do as he had done all his adult life. He would light his Swisher Sweet, step in the privy (French for "private place", explaining the term "privy council"), drop his one galosh overalls and smoke contentedly while he waited patiently for the welcome relief that had always quickly come before, just as it did once more on this occasion. Caleb would then toss the un-smoked portion of his Swisher Sweet into the hole he uncovered in rising, pull up his one galosh overalls and give the hogs their breakfast. How could Caleb have known that today was the day, thirty years in the making, when an ever larger and thicker earth-bound cloud of Methane gas had finally achieved critical mass, making the introduction of his still-lighted Swisher Sweet most unfortunate.              

               Caleb went out in a blaze of glory that broke a window or two next door and was buried in a closed casket for painfully obvious reasons. The hogs survived their master by only a day before being declared unfit for human consumption and sent to join Caleb in whatever version of heaven would seem heaven to them all given their unique habits and deeply treasured pleasures. I heard of all this and had to say something to Wesley. This was the only time in my life when I have had to offer condolences while carefully avoiding even the hint of a smirk. Wesley responded by inviting me to go ahead and laugh since no one, not even Caleb's immediate family, could help but notice how appropriate to the character of the man and his manner of life his passing had been. He died as he had lived and, besides, had not suffered at the end for any longer than it takes several sticks of dynamite to remove a troublesome stump from a field.