The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

I’ve been trying to write about The Big Finn for some time, waiting for the sting of his passing to let up enough that I get it right. Or at least make a good attempt at doing so.

About two, maybe three, years after we landed on this 80-acre farm way back when, and after we had met our farmer neighbors and learned that their son was working in The Cities, he, the son, came back to take over the family dairy farm. 

One of my earliest encounters with the son concerned CB radios, which back then were really popular. I had one. Or more. As he and I entered into this our first conversation, we kind of chose sides. He was a fan of single-sideband CB radios; I am a fan of the good old standard frequency ones.

After taking over the farm, every tractor of his soon sprouted a CB antenna. I was in my service business, using CB to communicate in case of an emergency–or if I was bored. Or like everyone back then, I used it on long trips with the family on the road, where everyone was blabbing on one.

SSB–single sideband–is too expensive, I opined to him.

Too much atmospheric skip otherwise, he retorted.

In Vietnam, SSB was hard to find parts for. (When cornered technically–which happened often–I would play the Veteran card.)

Buy a new one, he said.

I got used to hearing him break squelch on my CB: “Breaker, breaker. This is The Big Finn.” (And he was big, over six feet tall, unusual for someone of Finnish extraction.)

“Prairie Spy here, Big Finn.” Good times.

And so our friendship blossomed from there to our almost comical natural inclination to go to opposites. 

We had purchased milk from his dad, and also now from him. “Come on over,” he told me, back then. I walked into his barn at evening milking, and there he was– wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, white shirt and tie. Loafers. All decorated with cow manure. Normal. “What else am I going to do with them,” he said. At the time, I was doing a lot of refrigeration bulk tank repair for farmers. Never saw cows milked in a suit before. Impressive.

As he and I got to know one another, he talked about his job with a semiconductor manufacturer down in the Cities. He was an all around troubleshooter for them.

“How does one get that job?” I asked him. I was interested because my educational background started with electronics.

Well, in the process of cleaning circuit boards and such, they are put into a large room, which is flooded with carbon dioxide. Everything gets vibrated to shake loose contamination, and then the room is pulled into a slight vacuum, which is held at that negative level. But not too much vacuum, or bad stuff happened. The engineers were panicked; having trouble regulating that pressure. The Big Finn solved it by adapting a simple De Lavel cow milker regulator. 

And they shortly found out that he could solve just about anything. 

But he quit and came home. He expanded the farm. Upgraded everything. He sawed lumber, built more barn, more cows, more silage, more manure holding pit, more more more. He did most of it himself. Still found time to help me when I needed it.

“The AK47 seems like a better rifle,” he told me one summer day. He knew I’d been to Vietnam, and was familiar with the M16. “I don’t think so,” I replied. And off we went. He would spout numerical figures at me, ballistic stuff. I would spout army stuff back at him. We had a great time.

Next, I took some flying lessons. Began extolling the virtues of Cessna aircraft, which have a high wing. No, he said, Cherokees and low wings were better. More comfortable.

High wing, more stable, I said.

Low wing better aerodynamics.

High.

Low.

Then we wouldn’t see each other for a while, and we’d forget which side we had chosen, and like as not, we’d change sides; each then used the other’s reasoning.

I like Piper Cherokees, I told him one day.

Nah, he said, more lift in a high wing Cessna.

Then it was Tractors–Red versus Green.

Cars, big versus little.

More cars, front wheel drive versus rear.

I backed small front wheel ones.

He backed big safe ones.

Within two years, I was driving a big station wagon.

And him? A small front wheel drive.

Over the years, we continued to appreciate one another and our opinions. I would call him and pick his brain about some problem. He’d call me.

I went over there to his farm one day. Wow! He was, I discovered, building a huge steel sailboat, with ribs supported between two old corn cribs. He had repurposed tractor hydraulics to bend the hull’s ribs; redesigned other farm machinery to position 4 by 10 sheets of ¼-inch steel. Welded all of it with his dad’s old post-World War Two Fourney Farm stick welder. Carried three tons of metal and concrete up a 14-foot ladder in five-gallon pails and dumped it into the keel for ballast. An unbelievable undertaking.

Over the next two years, a 48-foot steel sailboat took shape. It was about two-thirds done when, one day when I was over there to visit, he said: “That company I worked for split up, and Seymore Cray, one of the two owners, left, went to Colorado, started a true super computer factory. They called me” The Big Finn told me, “and wanted me to come to Colorado.”

Yes? I said. And then??

“I told him he didn’t have enough money.” He grinned at me.

Then he said: “Turns out they did.” Left the farm. Stored the 80-percent-done boat.

After a few years down there, he finished the sailboat and he and his wife spent the next couple of years sailing around the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean. Didn’t see him much for several years.

He and his wife retired here to his home town finally. I saw a lot of him over the last few years. Helped him build a house when they came back. We were sitting in that half-finished house one day, boxes of stuff all over, tools all over, wiring hanging down, half the sheet rock up. I heard a small warning chime go off. Thought there must be a smoke alarm in one of those boxes with the battery going dead, that sound. Started opening boxes to find it.

“Oh,” he said, “don’t worry about that. That’s the low battery alarm on my pacemaker going off.” 

“What!” I said. Suddenly freaked out. He didn’t seem worried.” The battery will last”, he said,” til we get this house finished”. And it did.

And his heart lasted through a couple more batteries. A few more years. Then it didn’t.

He’s up there now, ship ahoy, anchors aweigh, sails filled with God’s grace in the sweet by-and-by, forty-eight feet of ship making full way.

The Ocean he’s sailing? It’s always fair winds, following seas, an even keel, and nothing but sunshine.

So: Breaker breaker, Big Finn–Be seeing you on down the High Way.

This is the Prairie Spy, over and out.