For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 10, 2024

That’s BS.

Time to start singing “Kumbaya”.

It’s always good to read about John using his other senses to register the prairie sky, the fields, the houses, and the long, dusty country lanes. If he is not seeing or smelling, then I am going to guess touch or sound or taste.

Ah yes, the “other” sense….smell or stink.

Yes, it is a smell that you can become used to and even nostalgic for. Too bad that building housing tracts near dairy farms brings in people who have no sense of that value.

Nothing beats the fresh country air.

Yep, that clean fresh (?) country air does wonders to relax a person. Just like the smell of fresh pine when you’re in a mountain forest.

I always found it a somewhat pleasant smell, provided it was from a good distance and combined with the smell of cut hay and fresh air. Up close not so much.

The smell of money, or so my rancher son-in-law says.

Even living in L.A. County, I get an occasional whiff of dairy or turkey farm. But it didn’t prepare me for visiting my parents in rural Illinois and the olfactory assault of the neighboring hog farm. Whew!

We used to live in a small rural town. Beautiful night sky. Now we’re in the (outer) suburbs. Beautiful view of the porch lights.

Cow chips anyone?

In college (UC Davis) my dorm was right next to the dairy barns. When the wind was from the west…whoooeee. But pig farms are far worse.

Time for milking?

For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities-His eternal power and divine nature- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

How to destroy poetry and make it become a fantastic joke. That smell… That Smell!!!

“There was something in the air that night Fernando” Swedish Countryside.

Manure.

Years ago, I had a cabin up in the mountains in Colorado. One time a good friend of mine from New York City came out to visit for a couple of weeks but only lasted a few days because he couldn’t sleep. He claimed the night noises kept him awake!

My first year of college I lived in a dorm that was situated between the horse barn, the dairy barn, the pig stye and the cafeteria.

My fresh country air comes from my ‘neigh’ bours.

I grew up for a number of years in northern Missouri and after we moved visited it annually. Where my grandparents’ lived it is just like that, not flat, but beautiful, serene, some of the best sunsets you could ever experience. Don’t know about a cow mooing at night necessarily but I get why it was included. Hog smell is worse.

The delicate smell of cow chips….

Sometimes horses and chickens also.

Still surprising that John’s father seems totally unaware that John and Elly had another kid. There is no strip so far where John’s father has interacted with April, let alone introduce himself as her paternal grandfather.

I remember my Grandfather and Grandmother’s farm, especially the barn. That earthy aroma, the smells of the drying tobacco in the rafters, the hayloft, the cattle in their stalls, and the work horses. Yes, he kept a team of ‘retired’ work horses that pulled the old horse-drawn equipment. Much of that ancient farm equipment was still parked in an open area just outside the barn. Wonderful memories of playing around the barn and that old equipment as a young boy.

Well, life on the farm is kinda laid back

Ain’t much an old country boy like me can’t hack

It’s early to rise, early in the sack

Thank God I’m a country boy

Well, a simple kind of life never did me no harm

A-raisin’ me a family and workin’ on the farm

My days are all filled with an easy country charm

Thank God I’m a country boy

Well, I got me a fine wife, I got me old fiddle

When the sun’s comin’ up, I got cakes on the griddle

Life ain’t nothin’ but a funny, funny riddle

Thank God I’m a country boy

When the work’s all done and the sun’s settin’ low

I pull out my fiddle and I rosin up the bow

Kids are asleep so I keep it kinda low

And thank God I’m a country boy

I’d play “Sally Goodin” all day if I could

But the Lord and my wife wouldn’t take it very good

So I fiddle when I can, work when I should

Thank God I’m a country boy

Well, I got me a fine wife, I got me old fiddle

When the sun’s comin’ up, I got cakes on the griddle

Life ain’t nothin’ but a funny, funny riddle

Thank God I’m a country boy, woohoo!

Well, I wouldn’t trade my life for diamonds or jewels

I never was one of them money-hungry fools

I’d rather have my fiddle and my farmin’ tools

Thank God I’m a country boy

Yeah, city folk drivin’ in a black limousine

A lotta sad people thinkin’ that’s mighty keen

Son, let me tell you now exactly what I mean

Thank God I’m a country boy

Well, I got me a fine wife, I got me old fiddle

When the sun’s comin’ up, I got cakes on the griddle

Life ain’t nothin’ but a funny, funny riddle

Thank God I’m a country boy, yes sir!

Well, my fiddle was my daddy’s ’til the day he died

And he took me by the hand, held me close to his side

Said, "Live a good life, play the fiddle with pride

And thank God you’re a country boy"

My daddy taught me young how to hunt and how to whittle

Taught me how to work

Fresh dairy air!

Ha! Ha! Like the old fields behind my house in the 1950s in Maine (plus chickens, goats, and the odd wild animal).

Smelling the smell of cow poo. Sorry Simon and Garfunkel.

Do cows moo after dark?

When we lived in Wisconsin, we knew when we were getting close to the line coming back from vacations down south. The smell was unmistakable.

I hear it mooing in the air tonight! Oh, Lord!

This story is a little bit of a retcon from prior stories about John, where he was raised in a mining town on the Canadian Shield, just like his real-life avatar Rod Johnston.

We moved out to the country for the “fresh country air” and all we got was smoke from people burning their trash.

God, I love the smell of raw milk in t he morning!