Drive - A Memoir 82nd Installment
fork.
Then that tractor would join the circular race from the stack to the
field, and then back to the stack. It was a non–stop haying
operation with the tractors speeding around and around and around all
day, and Russ and I were the only grunts doing any real work. I loved
it.
“What
do ya’ mean you like to haul hay?” Russ asked a couple of weeks
into the first crop. We had about half of the sixteen hundred acres
finished. On days with good weather and little wind, we would move
two thousand bales a day or about ninety tons.
“I
like impossibly hard work,” I boasted. “I work up to the point of
collapse, then work through it and magic happens – I’m good for
the rest of the day.” Actually, this was my way of mental
preparation to get me through my body’s aching muscles and suppress
any desire to quit and sit down.
“What
about the first twenty minutes after lunch, when all your blood and
energy is devoted to the gallon and a half of food you shoved down
your gut?” Russ was still trying to trip me up.
“Well,
you’re right, dang it,” I admitted, “but I’ll never cut back
on farmhouse cooking – Thanksgiving size meals with all the
trimmings, cooked to perfection every day. You know my only true love
is eating and eating a lot.”
“Snap
out of your daydream; the next slip is here,” Russ said, giving me
a push hard enough, that I fell and had to scramble up to get out of
the way of the oncoming tractor. This particular tractor was driven
by my younger sister Vicki. The tractor seemed to be without a
driver, she was so small compared to its hulking power. Vicki, at age
nine, would steer the tractor standing up because she could only stop
it by bracing her back against the seat. Then she could push the
clutch down and pull it out of gear before her strength gave out.
Both Linda, my older sister, and Vicki worked for Carl when the need
for more drivers arose. We were working the north eighty, the
furthest from the hay yard giving us a little time to banter between
loads.
“You
know it takes time for Vicki to stop the big rig. I could have been
killed just now!” I complained, even though there was little danger
of me not having time to get out of the way.
“Oh
yeah, I remember Vicki and the great tractor wreck.” Russ said with
a slow smile.
“Well,
I guess it was funnier than damaging or dangerous,” I said.
“Yeah,
the day she ditched the tractor,” Russ grinned. “Get it? Ditched
the tractor – ditched…”
The
day of the wreck, we had moved to another field, and the route the
tractors took had changed. Vicki was the first out and was driving
cross country
500 more words tomorrow
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