Laws and proverbs

Hammersmith / Moorside Suite/ Suite No. 1 in E-Flat / Suite No. 2 in F; Gustav Holst, composer; Dallas Wind Symphony; Howard Dunn, conducting

Profundity runs rampant on the ol’ prai-RIE. Never squat with your spurs on. Always drink up-stream from the herd. Never slap the face of a man who chews tobacco. Always speak your mind, but make sure you have a fast horse. Never thrust your sickle in another man’s cornfield.

Preferring the legal podium to the proverb pulpit, Dad chose to render his wisdom in the form of law.

Apland’s Law #1: Whatever is legal isn’t necessarily right, and whatever is right isn’t necessarily legal.

I know. It’s not profound. But it was to him when he thought of it. Which leads us to…

Apland’s Law #2: Everything is profound to everybody … once.

I made my contribution to the Apland book of law with …

Apland’s Law #3: Before you complain about gravel in your coffee, make sure that you have gravel in your coffee.

Dad had other, far-less earth-shattering observations than these that have, nonetheless, stayed, as it were, up in my head. Such as, “Even if we don’t get very much rain in June, things stay pretty green out in the field – up until about the fourth of July. Then things get brown. Fast.”

This comes to mind as I drive across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Whoever is in charge of rain-dancing must have cut the rug and tripped the light fantastic. On this third week of July, the crops have yet to change their summer color scheme. The small grain, by now, has typically soaked in enough dry heat to tan their slender stalk and make it tilt to the side with a healthy head of grain. But, the fields are green.

So green, in fact, that it makes me think of the meadows, forests and fields that I saw while riding the train in England and Scotland. The comparison, however, stops at the color. You look at the organized, bread-basket-of-the-nation efficiency in the center of our country and you can’t help but think how we’ve only been farming most of this land for roughly one hundred and fifty years.

The rural areas of Great Britain have yielded sufficient produce to sustain its population for way more than a thousand years. Field and pasture borders today were probably set one hundred or more generations ago and field configurations have stayed true to the contours of their environs. It’s not difficult, even today, to envision a simple, rustic, Old Country scene.

Anyway, I listened to the Suites of Gustav Holst today as I made my way toward South Dakota. The Sioux Valley High School band performed Holst’s “Second Suite in F Major” when she played flute in the band. Mr. Holst managed to squeeze seven English folks songs into four relatively short movements in this composition for military band. It’s all good, but that last movement, when our British composer masterfully superimposes the great and wondrous “Greensleeves” over what must be the merriest Irish jig ever, I am altogether swept off my feet. Or out of my seat. Whichever one is appropriate.

Let me say that the English can write a folk song. And the Americans can write a cowboy proverb.

Shirts that cost more than a week’s worth of groceries are like horseshoes that cost more than a horse.

Credits: To Waddie Mitchell, one of the great cowboy poets. I like your take on reincarnation.