Father Hoenig - A Pastoral Tale

Have you ever met a person that, upon looking back, defies all logic? I'm not saying that the person makes illogical decisions, I am referring to the idea that their very being does not compute in your brain? This is the case with Father Hoenig.

I don't know Father Hoenig's first name. Though he was a priest, I've never attended a service he's officiated. I've come to learn of this priest through a professional relationship.

It was a sweltering hot afternoons in early August. It was late in the day, when the sun starts balking at the earth, sending shadows long but refusing to give up it's tenure of torturous heat. At the shop of Leroy Walljasper, we were all befuddled by some persnickety machine that had been commissioned for repair. As we stood back viewing the machine with a contemplative simmer, a little truck rattled into the drive.

Peculiar Pastor

The truck, if it had to be identified by one make or model, would be a Nissan, although the one remaining bumper, hood, and passenger side door would beg to differ. Most of the body used to reflect a navy blue hue, but it had oxidized to the point that a burnt orange crust overwhelmed any color on the trucks once gleaming hull.

The vehicle paused for a moment, unsure as to whether it would lurch forward from it's clutch or give up life indefinitely. Instead, it coughed to a dilapidated halt under an old hickory tree across the lot. Then, slowly and unsteadily, Father Hoenig tottered into view from behind the rusted out machine.

An immaculate version of Father Hoenig's jalopy

He was wearing black dress shoes that had long shirked the title “dress”. They were missing their laces, allowing the tongues to flap wildly as his legs jerked unnaturally out in front of his body. Inside the shoes were fathers naked feet, untethered by socks in the summer heat. He wore navy blue slacks, one leg caught around his knee in the style that LL Cool J made famous in the 80's and 90's. Hoenig's black shirt was unbuttoned but half tucked into his slacks, one shirt tail flapping in the breeze, the other bunched and stretching the cloth across his thin hunched frame. The white priestly collar was sticking out of the neck of his shirt, bouncing with fervor as his shoulders lurched ever closer to the shop.

Father Hoenig's hair was ghostly white, almost as if a wispy milkweed plant had landed on the back of his head and had clung there, ever so meekly, being tousled by the winds of that summer afternoon. One of the man's eyes drooped uselessly to the side, as if it'd jump free of its housing, if the skin surrounding the orb would only relinquish its grasp. I'd later learn that this useless eye was struck blind from complications of diabetes. At the time, however, it was simply one more element of absurdity in a whole collection of flesh and bizarre.

“I've got a mower. It...it...stopped working.” the monsignor said meekly as he approached the group of us who'd been observing his pilgrimage across the gravel. His voice was small and shaky, as if he was still working on shaping them as the passed his lips. They reached us with an upturn, making every word a milquetoast inquisition. As my grandfather questioned the elderly man, the story began to appear, but only in small sections. With a long drag from his cigarette, grandpa said through a puff of smoke,

“Yeah father, we can probably get that running 'gain for ya. Bring it by tomorrow and we'll get to workin' on it.”

“God bless you. Thank you. Thank you...so much. God bless you son, for helping me with my...mower.” Father tottered back across the rocky lot, clambered into his pickup, and sputtered into the distance, leaving naught but a plume of white gravel dust in his wake.

“I hope he realizes that I'm still gonna charge him for the thing. Blessings don't keep the lights on, ya know?”

Mowing the Unmowable

The next day, one of the fellas that helps Father Hoenig around the farm brought by the mower. He dropped it off and, tipping his hat, wished us luck.

As we dug into the machine, we found an incredible mess inside. From the looks of it, the mower had been run against something so hard that it not only stopped the blades from spinning, it actually took the alloy shaft that runs the length of the machine, and turned it into a corkscrew. This made our job immensely more difficult. After a few hours of driving the blades off the shaft with a sledge hammer, we retreated to the office to regroup against the twisted adversary. Grandpa lit a cigarette, grabbed a coke from the pop machine, and grabbed the phone.

“Yeah, this' Leroy. What the hell'd he do to this thing? Well, it's twisted up tighter'n a tax collector.”

Grandpa listened for a few minutes, then let out a chuckle. Shaking his head, he imparted the account.

Father Hoenig had a lot of land that, in recent years, he'd either forgotten about, or chosen not to plant for some reason or another. Whatever the reason, he'd remembered these fields on that particular summer and, upon inspection, decided that they needed to be cleared. The easiest way to do that was to hook on to the hay mower and cut through the ragweed and canadian thistles. It should only take a couple hours with this new mower. He was cleaning up the land pretty well, until he ran up against something, stopping the machine dead in its tracks. Rather than investigate this issue, he backed up the tractor, lifted the mower, and came back to the house. When his farmhands went out to inspect, they found what had stopped the machine so abruptly. It was an old moldboard plow.

A possible equivalent of Father Hoenig's adversary

It's not small. It's not unnoticeable. Even with shoulder high weeds and brush, most people would see a plow from the tractor. Most people with two good eyes. Unfortunately, I don't think father had one good eye.

The plow had done substantial damage to the mower, and the project was not fun. A week later, we'd finally gotten everything back in working order for father. He came back to pick up the cutter, and graciously paid grandpa, with a check as well as a blessing.

Curious, I asked grandpa why he called him 'Father'. Was he really a priest? I'd never heard of a priest who was also a farmer, but then again, I'd never met a character like Father Hoenig.

“Yeah he's a retired priest, lives out by Montrose. Used to be the pastor at St. Joe's out there, till they forced'm to retire. Still says a mass or two every now'n again. I guess it's a site.” Grandpa went on to recount the foibles he'd heard. Stories of Father Hoenig asking the altar servers what part of the mass came next, or speaking so quietly and unintelligibly that no one was sure whether they should sit, stand, sing, or kneel. It wasn't uncommon for Father to be late for mass, or forget to show up at all. For that reason, he hasn't been saying many masses any more, which is fine by him, as it gives him more time to farm.

I haven't heard much about Father Hoenig in recent years. I don't know if he's still farming, still driving, or still alive. While I may have depicted him as weak or unstable, I assure you that he was one of the most venerable individuals I met working at Walljasper Construction. He refused to give up, even when it meant pitting himself against 19^th century farm machinery.

To this day, I'm not sure I understand Father Hoenig. He was truly an anomalous entity. But maybe that was what is so intriguing.

Keep on Trucking

There is just something I love about driving a truck.

Please put the above statement in context. I drive a 2008 Toyota Matrix. A gunmetal gray hatchback that gets an average of 34 mpg. I love my car. I love everything about my car. It is the perfect vehicle for my life – living, working, and playing in a midsized metro area.

But when I recently drove my father's 2005 Ford F-150 Lariat quad-cab pickup truck, every logical reason for owning a sub-compact, fuel-efficient Toyota went out the window. The car fulfills every logical need I have for vehicular transportation, but the truck meets a more inherent, philosophical need. If you were to compare the two vehicles:

Toyota Matrix

Compact

Great handling

Easy to get in and out

Fold down seats create additional cargo room

Fuel-efficient

Sits low to the ground – little wind resistance

Ford F-150

It's friggin' huge

Takes corners like a boat

You need a rope to pull yourself into it

Its a truck. It has a bed. What other cargo room do you need?

Fuel? What is fuel? This thing goes through it like water

You'd be closer to the ground riding a giraffe

Every Girl's Crazy 'bout a Pickup Man

It may be a deep-seated masculine impulse, or it may be something I learned growing up in a farming community in Southeast Iowa. Trucks are the gold standard in Lee County and trying to find a Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, or Hyundai dealership within one hundred miles of my old country home is near impossible.

In high school, I would drive my little auction bought 1993 Mazda truck to school, and squeeze into a spot between any variety of giant 1980's Chevy or Ford truck. Mud tire clad, lift kit jacked, PA system blaring, aftermarket Cherry Bomb straight pipe exhaust ripping through the sonic atmosphere, these behemoths of the Central Lee High School parking lot would roll through the rows like prowling lions, daring a smaller car to cross their path. The 454 big-block engines would roar out a warning to the lesser vehicles, lest they be crushed under wheel like the tin cans they were.

My truck? It was a wounded meerkat. Stay out of the way, and I'd be fine. Otherwise my little red rice burner* would be a little red rice cake.

A Truck of a Different Color

The truck got me through high school. In college, my Mazda went kaput and I inherited a 1985 GMC Grand Sierra from my grandfather – a loaner that served me well for the rest of my higher education. At Monmouth College, where the student body is largely comprised of suburban Chicago minds, I encountered a very different vehicular phenomenon.

As the country mouse among city mice, my truck signified a tough agrarian existence. My newly-acquired “farm boy” image was further heightened when I cut the shoulder-length hair I'd sported throughout high school. My summer job working for my grandfather's farm implement sealed the deal, as I proudly wore my WALLJASPER CONSTRUCTION hat throughout the school year. I'd somehow gone from the hippie/punk kid driving a little foreign clunker in high school to the down-home country boy sporting the hulking pickup in college. I cannot really qualify this change in perception as good or bad, but it was certainly an interesting realignment of reality. Over the next few years I wore my agrarian heritage on my sleeve as something that made me stand out at Monmouth.

That old GMC would go on to be featured as a part of the ZBT homecoming float, haul pianos, drums, and more than its fair share of students, and cart all of my personal possessions to my new home in Davenport, Iowa.

But as all things are cyclical, my life would lead me back to a foreign vehicle. The GMC didn't do well for my wallet as I zipped around the Quad Cities on sales calls. So I sent it back to the farm, where it could be free to roam as God intended.

And I bought a Toyota. The more responsible choice.

*I apologize for the potential political incorrectness of the term rice burner as a pejorative synonym for an Asian made vehicle. This term is common vernacular in Southeast Iowa, where an American owned car company was held in much higher regard than any foreign made vehicle.

A Side-Splitting tale of Medical Marvel

I worked several jobs to get through college, both during the summers and while in school. The most consistent employment was the three year tenure I held at Walljasper construction, my grandfathers Vermeer baler implement. I never had an official title, but in practicality, it ranged from office manager to baler technician to farm hand.

Sporting a Walljasper Construction hat

I inventoried parts as they came in. I built hay mowers, rakes, and tedders like they were giant Lego sets. I serviced balers that stood fifteen feet high and spit out six foot round bails from their pneumatic maws. They were like giant jungle gyms for adults – the only differences being that this playground was equipped with giant roller bars that, if not properly restrained, could crush me like a corn flake, and generally I was required to scramble across its surface wielding a blowtorch and a hammer, the only tools capable of breaking free the ball bearings we commonly replaced. Every day was different, every task brought on a new challenge that generally led to a string of curse words that were common vernacular around the shop. There was a particular eight word expletive stream that flowed so easily from the mouth, it seemed to be the standard expression of complete frustration among men of my family. Any timidity I had when I first entered this job was soon lost as I smashed fingers, ran over toes, caught my hair, or banged my knee. Couple these mild injuries with the healthy dose of uber-machismo heckling I received from everyone save my grandfather, and I quickly learned that it was better to shut my mouth or let forth an exasperated fray of flower wilting utterances than to whine about the ailments that befell me.

The characters I met during my summers at the shop were among the most peculiar bunch I will ever encounter. Many of them lacked the book knowledge I was so proud of attaining as a sophomore in college, and I looked down on them for it. I thought that they were inferior for their ignorance. But what many of the farmers I met lacked in philosophical know-how, they made up for in honest labor and experiential wisdom. They knew more about the land they worked and the crops they harvested than I'll ever know about any one subject. They knew more about the weather than any meteorologist, and any one of the men I met in those ungodly hot Iowa summers could jury rig a broken down piece of machinery in a field a hundred miles from nowhere with some baler twine, a pair of pliers, and a can of chain lube.

The summer after my Sophomore year of college, I resumed my post in the shop, just in time for prime baling season to hit in mid May. Not three months earlier, I began dating a Junior at Monmouth College, the girl who would later become Mrs. Chris Walljasper. Before leaving school, we agreed that Annie would come down from suburban Chicago to visit and meet my family. She had experienced limited agrarian life, and was excited to meet my grandparents, learn about where I grew up, and see where I worked. So one sultry summer afternoon, she embarked upon the journey.

Annie was supposed to arrive a few hours after I got off work, giving me ample time to clean up before seeing her. In her excitement to be reunited with her new love, she showed up about three hours premature, discovering me at the shop, elbow deep in baler chains and grease. It was an amazing surprise, and I was ecstatic at the sight of my future wife, dressed like a million bucks and there just to see dirty ol' me.

She cutely attempted to help me on the baler for a few moments, but we soon realized that this was not the best idea, considering her polished attire. I sent her into the air conditioned office, where I would soon be finishing the day out before going home. I assumed that this would be the best place for Annie. Evidently, I was mistaken.

When I completed the repair on the machine, I joined my girl in the office, only to find that she was being entertained by an unintentional yet eccentric guest. And appearances were not as they seemed.

A farmer, who's name I'll leave out of this anecdote, had come by the shop office while I was busy, wanting a part for his hay mower. The man was honestly one of the nicest guys who worked with my grandfather, but did not come across as an incredibly learned man. The cleft pallet that divided his upper lip was the main culprit in giving our agrarian friend the appearance of a less than philosophical personality. He was never incredibly concerned about his attire, which on that particular day, was composed of a blue vented cap, a flannel button down shirt, a pair of shabby gray sweat pants, and Velcro strapped shoes. This was particularly slovenly for the farmer, but none of these characteristics, by themselves, were enough to be a cause for concern.

The thing that had Annie's jaw on the ground was the fact that one of the mans arms appeared to be firmly planted inside his jersey trousers, dangerously close to what she logically concluded were his genitalia. Upon entering the office, I strolled to the pop machine, grabbed a soda, and meandered to the counter before realizing that Annie was shooting me desperate looks as she feigned interest in whatever the farmer was chatting about. Mr. hand-in-pants, not phased by Annie's look of utter horror at the evident impropriety, kept talking, chatting away as if nothing was amiss.

I cordially assisted the man, providing the parts he'd come in for, and after he left, burst into laughter. I knew exactly what Annie had been thinking, and couldn't wait to hear what she had to say.

“What was that man doing?!? His hand was...it was...Was he, TOUCHING HIMSELF?!?!?!”

Picking myself off the floor, I wiped the tears from my eyes and began to explain the bizarre story of our one armed friend.

The man owned a Model K baler. It was a newer vintage, equipped with an additional piece of equipment on the tail of the machine that, upon completion of a six foot round bale of hay, would administer a cellophane like wrapping around the circumference of the bale. This feature was the pride and joy of Vermeer, but after a few months of constant use, the rollers that conveyed the net wrap would collect remnants of the polyvinyl product and eventually stop the wrapping process. When this happens, it is recommended that the farmer bring the machine to the implement, where a technician could service it. Our farmer did not heed this advice.

I do not know the specifics of the incident, but evidently, the baler jammed up, so he hopped off the tractor to see what was the matter, and, finding the net wrap rollers incapacitated, took out his trusty pocket knife and began whittling away at the clog. This would have been a perfectly acceptable remedy, had the PTO been disconnected and the roller halted. But that was not the case. In seconds, both of his hands were caught by the spinning cylinder and forcibly run through the machine. At this point, I personally would have passed out. The grizzliness of this event is enough to make my stomach churn even now. But for his lack of foresight, this guy was tough. He retrieved the dismembered pieces of his opposable digits and made it across the field to his truck, where he proceeded to drive over ten miles back to his home, where his wife then escorted him to the hospital. Through all the pain and blood loss, he remained cognizant and focused enough to attain the medical attention necessary. But this isn't where the story ends.

The practice of reattaching a persons severed digits, then sewing them into the abdomen is evidently not common, as everyone who I've told this story to has been either appalled or dumbstruck. The technical term is Autografting, transferring flesh from one part of the body to another. By inserting the reattached thumb into his stomach, the healing properties of the abdominal cavity promoted blood circulation and nerve regeneration. To its credit, the unorthodox procedure resulted in a fairly successful use of his hand, when everything was said and done.

I explained all of this to Annie, who was dubious, to say the least. Upon verification from several other members of my family, she was finally convinced. I wouldn't believe it either, if I hadn't seen it myself. 

The miracle of modern scientific ingenuity prevailed to save this mans ability to hold up the underside of a sandwich for another day.