I’m sitting on the sofa, looking out the window, at a field that is rented to an Amish neighbor. It is fall. The field is full of stacked “teepee” bundles of field corn, where it will sit and dry until he is ready for it.

I remember, growing up and coming home from country school and Ma saying: “Take the .410— “four-ten”—shotgun and go out north of the house and shoot a pheasant for supper. I suppose I must have been around 11 or 12. I would grab the single-shot shotgun, walk out into the field, and in the light snow on the ground, look around at the stacked  teepees of corn, for pheasant tracks. They would hide inside that teepee. Seeing tracks, I would walk up, kick the corn, and shoot the first rooster pheasant that came busting out.

I remember dad telling me: “When you’ve got that shotgun, keep the  barrel pointed at the ground.” And I did.

Next, I’m 24, in basic army training down in Texas, and we’re on the first day of rifle range, shooting M14s at targets. Somewhere along in the day, I through habit pointed my rifle at the ground, and the drill sergeant promptly sent me to the kitchen for KP duty. (Because, obviously, the best way to correct a bad gun habit is working in a kitchen.)

The army points rifles up, it turns out. KP duty is a grinding day of clearing near hundreds of tables, endless peeling potatoes,washing pots and pans, on your feet–all this until 9:30 at night,,

It was exhausting!

A couple weeks later, I drew KP duty through the schedule, so I reported at 3:30 in the morning, went through breakfast, at which I realized that the army cooks run shifts. There’s a breakfast shift, lunch shift, and supper shift.

Hey! The 18 and 19-year-olds were kicking my old weary ass. I needed a break. So I thought: Come on, you. All that college– I should be able to figure out how to make this easier. So: The breakfast shift left. And I realized a new crew of cooks was coming on. I grabbed a  large, three-level, stainless steel rolling serving platform that was sitting unused in a corner, a stool, some cleaning supplies, and began working on that rolling triple-level tray.

Sitting down, of course. Ah, yes. The lunch crew of course saw me working on it, figured out I must have been assigned to do so by the breakfast crew, and left me to it.

Yup. You guessed it. The lunch crew left; the supper crew showed up; saw me working away, and left me to it. I earnestly–although tediously–scrubbed that damned steel structure from midmorning until 9:30 that evening, sitting on my stool, watching all the grueling activity going on around me out of the corner of my eye.

Growing up on the farm, I already knew the value of keeping busy, and if not busy at what you should be doing, busy at this or that. If you weren’t busy, dad found something for you to do.

But although I kind of held it against dad for the pointing-the-gun stuff, I did have him to thank for learning–and often applying it in life–that, if you stand around looking like you need something to do, someone is going to give it to you. Of course, there’s keeping busy, and there’s looking busy, but that’s another story.

Busy-ness has been a life-long lesson. Keeping busy if you can; looking busy if you cannot.

Thanks, dad.