Country Views - Summer of 1970

By Tim King

In June of 1970, you could still catch an east-bound Great Northern passenger train in Sauk Centre, Alexandria, and other towns up the line to Fargo, and ride in comfort to the Twin Cities. At that time, Interstate Highway 94 had just been completed and Central Minnesotans simply weren’t used to the notion that they could jump in the car to see the grandkids in the Cities in a couple of hours.

Anybody can cultivate.

I was 21 and working for a young farmer named Joe while my soon-to-be wife and I made wedding plans. I was also working for an older couple in Sauk Centre who ran City Cab.

Joe could have found a better farmhand. It’s true, I had some experience working on a farm as a teen. But I wasn’t much for operating farm equipment. Take cultivating corn, for instance. By mid-June Joe had some nice-looking young corn plants, but cultivating the weeds was necessary to keep the corn growing to maturity. Joe asked me to do it.

“I’ve never cultivated corn,” I told him. “I don’t want to ruin your stand.”

“Oh, anybody can cultivate,” Joe countered as he walked away leaving me with a cultivator attached to a red tractor.

It was a four-row cultivator. That means it has eight shovels and with them you can weed two sides of four rows of corn plants at one time. As I recall, it’s best to drive the tractor at a modest clip so as to have the shovels kick some dirt up against the small corn plants so as to bury the weeds close to the corn.

To do this correctly you must line the tractor and cultivator up just so or you’re going to dig up four rows of corn at a modest clip. And, if you try to realign your equipment with the corn rows while moving at a modest clip, you’re going to dig up even more young corn plants. I did dig up a lot of Joe’s plants.

I’m not sure how things ended with Joe after that, but they did.

I don’t think I was much better at driving a cab than I was as a corn cultivator. I started working for City Cab in early June. The couple that owned it, along with an always present friend, were grey-haired and overweight in a friendly sort of way. They spent much of their time in front of a television in a dimly lit room. One of their favorite shows was professional wrestling. They would get quite physical in their enjoyment of the televised spectacle. One day one of the elders overdid his virtual wrestling and sent his naugahyde recliner over backwards.

The old gentleman’s friends struggled, but soon got him untangled from the recliner while the televised wrestling proceeded unabated. Nobody, and nothing, was worse for the wear and I had a sense that this simply happened occasionally and was one of the features of pro-wrestling fandom.

But my job wasn’t in the house. I was to take the cab out and prowl the village in the early evening in search of fares. Occasionally the CB radio would light up and one of my bosses would come over the speaker.

“City Crab to Cab One,” he’d say. “City Crab to Cab One. Come in.”

That’s right. The dispatcher called himself City Crab.

There was only one cab so I responded and found out where my fare was. Sauk Centre is a small town so a cross-town taxi ride was short and the fares were very small. I’d chat my fare up a bit, take her to her destination, receive the fare and a microscopic tip, and go back to trolling for fares.

I found waiting outside bars to be fairly productive. One evening, around 8:30, a middle-aged fellow exited a club. I didn’t need a breath analyzer to know his kite was flying pretty high.

He wanted a ride to the train station. As we drove I chatted him up. He was catching the eastbound train to Minneapolis. His daughter was very sick. He had to be there for her.

It was a tragic story so when he told me that he couldn’t pay his fare I said okay. Then he told me he didn’t have train fare. Could I loan him that?

“You’re just going to buy drinks,” I said.

He was a better salesman than most and I was a young sucker so I gave him my address and left the station with an empty fare purse. He was on the platform allegedly waiting for the 9 p.m. from Alexandria.

I’m not sure how things ended with City Crab but they did.

A few weeks later my bride and I eloped. That was by far the best thing that happened to me in the summer of 1970.