Maggie's Farm

I knew a man who learned irrigation on the farm and created his own company in West Texas to sell and install irrigation systems. Way back then it was a big deal a big multi-million dollar company. He worked 8-12 hours a day depending on the season and did most of the real work himself. But he had a partner a money guy who had no clue what he did and the money guy realized that if his partner died or retired that he could lose everything. So the money guy hired a newly graduated engineer who had specialized in irrigation (is there such a thing? I dunno) to follow the doer around and interpret what he was doing and putting it down in written form. Something that another employee could do if need be. It was a strange relationship, kinda symbiotic. The engineer knew his stuff but he didn't know the magic that the old farmer knew. The old farmer was not good at explaining but he tried. It took three years before the engineer felt satisfied with the effort and considered it a success. Coincidently the old farmer wanted to retire about then and sold his share of the partnership to the engineer. In the end it was more about West Texas and it's challenges then it was about hydraulics or irrigation. It was about weather and wind, hills and valleys and seasonal and yearly changes. This was a long time ago and that old farmer had been a kid in the 30's when West Texas was a dust bowl. His family stuck it out and the boy became a man learning to understand irrigation and wells and weather. He could have been an engineer but he was something better; he was a doer.