When Ed Gulley died Monday evening, the news was posted on Carol Gulley’s blog and on Facebook, America’s new backyard fence, and I wrote about his death Tuesday morning here on my blog. Among the first messages I saw were several offering comforting words about the same thing:
Ed, people told Carol, had gone to fly with the angels. These posts caught my attention, they seemed a little bit incongruous. Did Ed wish to fly with the angels, and kept it a secret? Do we know where the angels were taking him?
Not all angels are nice and trustworthy, according to the Kabbalah and the Old Testament, some of them are wily and scheming. (Some, it was whispered, were women and Jews.)
I had read of people flying with angels and cherubs in the Kabbalah and in some early Christian mystical writings, but not recently.
I googled the term, of course, and saw stories about the Navy’s Blue Angels, a singer named Na Leo Pilmehana has a song called “Flying With Angels” and there were two entries for Flying With Angels New and Used Autos, Parts and Accessories.
I don’t mean to be sacrilegious in any way or cynical, but when I thought of Ed flying off with the angels, I couldn’t help laughing at the image. And i needed a laugh on Monday. Was this really Ed up there?
On the one hand, I thought, never. On the other hand, I thought, well, maybe.
Ed had an ego the size of North Dakota, and it would probably seem right that when he passed over, angels would appear to guide him to the next place, which he would assume was heaven. Ed did much good in his life, no serious harm that I know of.
Before he left, he dressed in his burial suit (this part is true), which consisted of camo shirt and pants, white socks and farm boots. He was an imposing sight up there, sailing through the clouds like a big jetliner heading for China.
Clearly, given a choice, he would try to forego flying and ride instead in one of his ancient and smoldering John Deere Tractors. I called them Frankenstein tractors, Ed killed them and brought them back to life so often they were patched together, just like the monster. He hadn’t bought a new one in 40 years.
I wondered if the angels knew what they were in for with Ed. He was never a passenger, always the driver, no matter where he sat. Perhaps they were expecting someone meek and compliant, humbled by dying.
If the tractor idea didn’t work, or more likely, if the thing blew up or fell apart, Ed would have a fallback plan. It was usually the same plan, an unwavering article of faith: buy or trade used parts.
Buying new was a sacrilege.
I could see Ed leading the angels to his cluttered Frankenstein Lab, his workshop, to put on his giant soldered wings made from parts of a tractor engine, flapping loudly in the sky, welded together at the joints, painted different colors, orange and yellow wooden flowers painted on, two loud wind chimes tingling in the rear, bits and plates falling off as they gathered speed, oil dripping down to the earth.
By now, the angels might be wide-eyed and a bit panicky. This was different.
Their journey had most likely begun at night – I assume angels don’t care to be seen or photographed – and perhaps now the sun was rising.
Ed would be recounting life on his grandfather’s farm and his fathers farm in great detail. How many chores he had, how hard they were, what a tough sonna-ma-a-bitch the old man was, how Ed got up early every morning to do his farm work while the other lazy bastards his age were still sleeping. How he learned a lot, but was never praised.
By now, the angels might be a little woozy, blinking a bit, with sore wings, glancing at their Iphone GPS’s to see how much farther it was to St. Peter, who loved to hear the stories of newcomers to heaven.
St. Peter could listen forever, and would soon. Ed would teach him his signature boast: I’m a tough son of a bitch, I be, I got a double row of tits on each s-i-i-i-d-e.
I have no idea what it means, he would say, all the farmers say it.
The angels were trying to stay focused and on course, flapping their delicate white wings, but they kept getting blown off course by Ed’s screeching and tinny wings, diving back and forth to get out-of-the-way of Ed’s ungraceful zooming around and clanging loudly in the blue sky.
Birds were taking cover everywhere in the clouds, or diving down to earth to hide in the trees.
And Ed was just getting to his milk price lecture, which follows the hard life on the farm lecture, which follows the never-go-into-debt lecture, which follows his diversify lecture, which everyone in his village of White Creek, and in the Northeastern United States had heard more than once.
Many more times than once. (I know it by heart, and use it as a secret password to get onto any dairy farm in North America.)
The angels were about to learn that Ed Gulley, on top of his many other skills, was the Charles Dickens of Milk Price lectures and farm tales.
His lecture on milk prices begins back in the dawn of the earth when cows evolved from single celled organisms spewed out of volcanoes and moved right through the Dark Ages, Medieval Times, the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, and then right up to the World Wars, and our own times, when cabals of foolish farmers, evil regulators, ruthless lenders, crooked politicians, arrogant feed suppliers, clueless milk producers and apathetic and greedy un-American grocery chains and ungrateful consumers of food conspired to ruin the family farm.
I told him once that every word he says is true, but that the lecture itself could stun a Brontosaurus. He laughed.
I wonder if the angels realized just how far they had to go to escort Ed from earth to heaven.
However far it was, it was not far enough to see the end of a milk price lecture, which ended with fulsome descriptions of the healing virtue of chocolate milk, which Ed believed was a miracle drug.
If heaven didn’t come before the end of the milk lecture, there were the animal stories, there seemed no end to the animals stories, because there was no end – Ethel the sleep walking chicken, Harold, the arrogant Peacock, Sadie the goat who ate the pockets of visitors, att-a-tude, the playful calf, Willie the imperious Peacock, Oz the snarky Cockatiel, and countless rescued hawks, doves, mice, goats, chickens, cats, dogs, possums, moles, raccoons and even skunks.
And some hapless people and drunks wandering in the road.
Ed missed his calling in some ways. If he was the Charles Dickens of farm stories, he was the Walt Disney of farm animals and wildlife, he and Carol had encountered and saved hundreds of them, they lived 110 cute Disney animal episodes, they were heartwarming and endearing.
Most of the animals ended up in the house, where they were healed, named, spoken to in this high-pitched animal voices, fed generously, petted and stroked, and eventually returned to the wild, happy, fat and peaceful. Ed could barely set foot in a tractor without coming across a desperate animal in need of rescue. The rumor was they came from everywhere to lie down in front of his tractor, maybe one reason the angels came for him.
Ed was an animal whisperer and shouter.
“How far are we from heaven?” whispered one weary angel as Ed explained how milk promoted growth, health and sexual prowess. I have to say the angels would love Ed, he was a standout character, much unlike the stunned and docile people who prayed hopefully when they were being taken to heaven.
They would have better stories to tell than any other angels.
Ed perhaps wondered how much the angel’s wings cost, if they bartered or traded. He suggested some colors other than white. Don’t ever buy anything new, he said, there are always ways to get good things like wings second-hand, you don’t ever go to the new angel wing dealers who would rob you blind and leave a farmer broke.
He invited them to go back to his farm on their next trip to earth to look at his art, his wind chimes, wooden flowers, metal sculptures, his giant bull, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow. All made of genuine farm parts, he was the great parts hoarder of the farm world.
But Ed really warmed up when he talked about his cows, the famous, award-winning Bejosh Farm Brown Swiss dairy cows, he remembered every county fair, who in his family went, how many ribbons they won, how much milk they gave, who gave birth, who went to slaughter, who behaved badly, who was the smartest, which display they put up in the dairy farm stall.
I loved those cows, he said, I told my kids when I come back to visit in 30 years I hope to see those brown cows right there in the dairy barn. They might not dare not to be there.
So if you believe in angels, look up at the sky, watch for the silhouette of a big man with iron wings and listen for the sound of angels laughing and hoping for more.
