A Lesson from a Farmer

It pleases me to say the smartest boss I ever had was a farmer. I may have worked under better managers or supervisors, but never anyone smarter (and I've had several very smart ones).

I was fresh out of high school and landed a job in one of my dream lands, Montana. I had spent my elementary-school days in Iowa, where my friend Gary and I planned on becoming bachelor farmers. By high school, I had given up the bachelor idea, but still felt a pull toward farming. Now I had a job on a 400-acre crop and dairy farm where I more or less became one of the family, with wages that included all I could eat. Life was good.

My boss had tried college for a couple years, but was bored with the "bone-head" math and other courses his adviser had recommended. One day, while tending the college grounds as a part-time job, he came to the realization that he liked mowing lawns more than his classes and decided to go back to the farm, where one form of entertainment in his precious-little spare time was to work out math problems from his brother's courses toward a Master of Science degree. There were few topics that he couldn't discuss intelligently. My boss was someone I wanted to emulate.

Emulate him I did. When it came to politics, I accepted his point of view and made it my own. I became passionate in defense of the president, insisting that people should quit investigating his administration and interfering with his job. Once, over Sunday dinner, I joined an argument with my boss's more-liberal sister and earned a compliment from him.

Throughout the Watergate investigation, I never stopped supporting Nixon. When it was over, I continued to think he had been mistreated. By then I was no longer working in Montana but was milking at a dairy farm in Washington, saving up for college.

I was on my way to my first year in college in Michigan when I stopped to visit my Montana farm family. Eventually, I got around to asking my former boss what he thought about the president's recent resignation. I suspect I was hoping for some venom to reinforce my own. But his answer surprised me. He said, "He really disappointed us."

He wasn't referring to the resignation. He was referring to what Nixon had done.

I was quiet. For the first time I considered my camp might be in the wrong. Many of my ardent defenses fell. Nixon was no beleaguered hero; he had betrayed my hero, and all of us. It was a lesson I am thankful for.

I'm not proud that I came so late to a realization of what had long been evident. It came late for my boss too, but it took his blunt and disappointed realism to finally shake me out of my stupor.

Let's be patient with those who come late to their senses, and let's embrace them without spending too much time berating them for earlier misconceptions.