WorldWide Drilling Resource

12 NOVEMBER 2016 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® Through the Front Door! by Jim Kuebelbeck Pigeons Part 1 I grew up in a large family on a dairy farm in Minnesota, in the 1930s. It was only much later in life, I realized the wisdom of my father trying to teach us things which would serve us well later in life. When something on our farm was broken, or wasn’t working as it should, he would tell us to take it apart and try to determine what the problem was. His words were usually, “It’s not working now, so if you can’t figure out what the problem is, and can’t fix it, it doesn’t matter; but you’ll learn something by seeing how it’s made.” Sometimes, he let us learn things on our own, especially when we thought we knew more than he did. This particular incident will long be remembered. Most of our rural neighbors at the time raised some sort of livestock, which included dairy or beef cattle, hogs, chickens, or whatever. Many of our neighbors also raised pigeons, which could be seen regularly flying all over the countryside. (We had heard some of our neighbors actually butchered and ate them. They called the meat “squab”, but my dad had a much more colorful, negative descriptive name I don’t want to repeat in print.) Watching the neighbor’s pigeons soar around their yards and returning to their nests high up in their barns amazed me. I asked my dad if it might be possible for me to raise some pigeons. Our barn already had some small cut-out openings high up near the roof, but had always been boarded shut. “Pigeons are dirty and nothing but trouble” were my father’s words. “Not only that,” he said, “if you tried to raise any of those dang things, they wouldn’t stick around here anyway, because they would have to have been born here to call this place their home.” I was one step ahead of my “all-knowing” father! What he didn’t know, was I had come across a book in our small school library about raising chickens and pigeons “for fun and profit”. I learned homing or passenger pigeons were once widespread throughout much of the United States. To my disbelief, I learned people had once used them to deliver messages long distances by taking them from their friend’s or relative’s homes and keeping them until they wanted to send a written message back, then attaching a written message to one of their legs and releasing them. These pigeons would unfailingly return to their former homes and “deliver” the message. I thought to myself “why couldn’t I also raise pigeons and train them to always return to our barn like the homing pigeons of old?” I reasoned (naively) if I could get some pigeons and feed them for a week or two, keeping them completely confined in our barn during the time, they would surely consider our farm their new home. I would prove my dad wrong! I knew just the place near our school where someone had an outdoor shed and raised a lot of pigeons. I had often seen them flying around town, then return- ing to their nesting place. One of those particular pigeons had a most unusual speckled coloring, and was easily recognizable from the others. I had seen it many times. One day during recess at my school, I ran over to the pigeon place and asked the owner if I might be able to buy a few pigeons. I told him who my dad was, and he told me he had known my dad for years and would be glad to sell me a few pigeons. I was thrilled. I didn’t know why he was smiling so much when I told him about my grand plan, but I thought he must have just been happy there was pos- sibly going to be another “pigeon raiser” out in the country! He told me if I would bring a big sack, he would catch a bunch of pigeons and sell them to me for two dollars. I asked him about the unusual speckled pigeon I had often seen flying around his shed. “If you want that particular pigeon,” he said, “I’ll catch it, and include it with the other pigeons I’ll sell you.” I couldn’t believe my good luck! Telling my dad later that evening about my successful recess excursion, he seemed somewhat less than pleased, but surpris- ingly agreed my efforts had a bit of merit after all. He again told me I was likely to be disappointed. “Oh no,” I told him, “I’ve got it all figured out. I‘ve been doing a lot of research in the school library and I know what I’m doing!” “Well, if you know so much,” he said, “I guess I’ll let you find out for yourself that sometimes older people do know what they’re talking about. Just remember what I told you.” [To be continued next month.] The statements and comments in this article are based on information and ref- erences believed to be true and factual. If you have any questions or comments, please forward them to me in care of WWDR . Jim Jim Kuebelbeck may be contacted via e-mail to michele@worldwidedrillingresource.com