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The Stumpville Nugget: A Dairy Farmer’s Obituary
- copyright 2018, Stephen Redgwell



Arnold Easterbrook died last week at the age of 69. He led an ordinary life, except that he was very clean. Arnold was a dairy farmer who kept his barn spotless, or at least as spotless as a man could, considering he owned almost 100 dairy cows.

Naturally, Arnold's life consisted of a lot of cleanin', and a lot of killin'...flies that is. From the time he learned to walk, until the day he died, you would never see him without a fly swatter hangin' from his belt. His dad taught him to do that. Should a fly appear, Arnold would kill it, his hands as fast as greased lightnin'.

What people didn't know was that cleanliness consumed him. That's a good thing, if you're a dairy farmer. Each time a fly plummeted lifeless to the ground, Arnold would slip on his rubber, fly pickin' gloves and snatch the carcass off the floor. The remains went into a plastic bag he kept in his back pocket.

Everyone was used to Arnold’s strange, fly pickin' ways, and never gave it a second thought. I suppose that some shrinks might have called him obsessive compulsive, but he was harmless enough...and very clean.

I don't know of anyone who ever asked him what he did with his bags of flies. I guess we figured he threw them in the garbage, but thinkin' back, I don't ever remember watchin' him do that. It wasn't until three days after his funeral that we found out.

Reverend Stillman went to Arnold's place to help with collectin' and dispersin' his stuff. Arnold never married, but he was one of six kids, and some of his siblings was still alive. The reverend figured to collect his personal effects and take them to his survivin' relatives.

When Reverend Stillman got to the farm, there was about thirty people there, wantin’ to help. Arnold was well liked by the community and havin’ that many folks show up was a testament to the love he generated in his lifetime. For the last week of his life, the neighbours looked after Arnold's cows, makin' sure they was fed and milked. But they had one last job to do. Several of them was there to transport the herd to his brother's farm, a few miles away. Some others worked outside, gatherin' his equipment, tools, and other stuff.

Ben Grissom and his sons went over to an old drivin' shed to clean it out. It was about 30' by 40', and Ben was hopin' that it wasn't stuffed full of things. He opened it and was surprised to see that it was almost empty, except for the back wall. It was stacked with old, wooden Kraft American Cheese Slice boxes. Ben figured they contained tractor parts and other stuff. He called one of his boys over and they started movin' them into the yard.

"These boxes are awful light, dad. They must be empty." Ben's son opened the top for a look, and started laughin'.

"What's so funny?" his dad asked.

"Open your box." his son replied.

Then they both started laughin'. The chucklin' attracted a crowd, and Ben told everyone to grab a box, but to be real gentle with it.

Bring 'em into the yard." he told the group.

About half the boxes was outside when one of the neighbours asked why they was laughin' earlier.

"Oh, I suppose you should open the box you're holdin' and have a look." And the man peeked inside. He started laughin' too.

"Well I'll be damned! Now I know what Arnold did with all them flies he killed! And look, every box has a number written on it."

Ben looked at his son and said, "You don't think..."

"Think what, dad?"

"I just had a silly thought. What if the number written on the box is actually the number of dead flies IN the box?"

I won't bother tellin' you the rest of what happened. But you gotta know that the neighbours sat in a circle with one of the boxes in the middle, countin' dead flies. And Ben was right. The number of flies they counted matched the number written on the box.

They counted the number of wooden boxes, 36. They only counted the contents of one box, but they added all the other numbers written on all the boxes and came up with a total of 604,440. That meant Arnold had dispatched over 600,000 flies in his lifetime!

But wait, there’s a bit more. Arnold lived for 25,300 days. That meant Arnold killed about 24 flies a day, every day, over his entire life.

I think it’s fair to say that Arnold will be missed...but not by any flies.

There was an American General officer who was captured during the Korean war. He wrote about his time as a POW. He said he made a fly swatter out of a stick and piece of shoe sole and killed thousands of flies during that time. Don't remember the total but said if anyone thought they could best his total they'd have to show him the flies. I think Arnold beat him.

I feel for that American officer. No one should have to go through that.