Tri-State Neighbor: South Dakota Farm Newspaper

As I write this column, I am in my 10th day of recuperation from prostate cancer surgery and doing well, thank you.

I bring this up, not to belabor the fact that I got whacked with a disease. We have already done that.

I will, however, for the final time, remind all of you fellows who are over 50 to include the prostate tests in your regular physical. It can save your life.

Back to recuperation.

I was sent home from a Wednesday morning surgery, Friday afternoon and the rest of that day is pretty much forgotten. High test drugs and lack of sleep will do that.

It was about noon on Saturday that I began to investigate the direction, which I would take for the following couple or three weeks as far as “something to do.” Dr. Hofer had fairly well defined the “what to dos” and quite frankly, I don't think he worried a lot about what should we do about Jim's boredom.

That's fine. He was not hired as an activity director.

We are on some kind of cable television system and based upon my first run through the channels, I suspect we have access to 1,196 various stations.

Sadly, there are only a couple of those even worth the time or energy to watch and even those are not consistently good.

I do enjoy the channel, which offers old movies, but how many times can a person sit through “From Here to Eternity” or “The Apple Dumpling Gang?” For me personally, I am at six and climbing.

I did run across “The View,” a program, which I have often heard talked about on radio shows, but have never had the urge to watch. After five or 10 minutes of doing just that, I understand how much I have not been missing.

With all due respect, the idea of spending time with a group of ultra-wealthy ladies who apparently don't much like anyone but themselves leaves me cold. Life is way to short to spend your days focused on all that is wrong with this country so the answer is simple. Change the channel and I did.

In 1957, my first year out of high school, my dad let me stay home and help him and Uncle Frank. There was never any doubt that college was in the plans, but he must have known it was going to be an unusually wet fall and needed someone to help as we harvested until Christmas.

We ate our lunch in the house and for reasons still not clear to me, immediately following the Keloland news, weather and markets, a soap opera entitled “Days of Our Lives” would come on. It is with tremendous embarrassment that I admit that we sort of got hooked.

I suspect that a part of the addiction centered around the fact that we had not had television for very long and with KELO being our only station, we watched everything.

You can but imagine my delightful surprise when, as I whacked away at the channel changer on the remote, I ran across that same soap.

I can't recall the story line 50 years ago, but I would bet you a steak supper that other than the actors, it has not changed all that much.

Regardless, I only spent a few minutes viewing reminisced a bit and then I returned to old movies and fell asleep in the chair.

You want to know what has been one of the most interesting aspects of this mini-recuperation? How much a person misses being outdoors.

After a few days, I began taking short walks in the cold winter air and it was simply great. That distance has increased a lot and I go several times a day, but that first block or so will always be something special.

One of the reasons is the fact that every time I walk and enjoy being outdoors, I think of folks who are confined to a hospital or bedroom for several weeks or even months. I think that the agony of that confinement would be tenfold for people such as farmers, who have spent a lifetime being outdoors.

As a little aside, when my wife's dad, Shorty, was in the last few weeks of his life, I stopped by the Watertown hospital to see how he was doing.

When I walked into the room, he was sitting up in bed, struggling a bit to breathe and his comment pretty much tells it all as far as what is important in life.

In response to my “How you doing, Shorty?” he simply replied, “You know, Jim, I would give anything to just once more before I die, spend all day disking, doing some chores and sitting down to one of Marie's hamburger steaks.”

Life gets pretty simple toward the end and perhaps all of us can take a lesson.

The past year was a pretty darn good year for most all of us, especially my family. We had the opportunity to gather as a clan a couple of times, for the most part everyone is in pretty good health and every time we sit down to eat, we can't get it all gone. Let us hope that 2008 brings us the same results.

Let's also hope that all the food producers who were hit with way too little or way too much rain, wind up some place in the middle. It's certainly their turn.

As always, let us hope that the apparent successes in the Middle East continues so that a whole bunch of our kids can come home and stay home.

I did this a couple of columns ago, but I want to repeat my heartfelt thank you to all of you who cared enough to say “Hi” and especially the the Sisters of Avera who seem to grab His attention and the congregation of Delaware Reform Church South of Lennox.

From all of us at the Neighbor, Happy New Year and go get em in 2008.