Drive - A Memoir 95th Installment
Truth
is, they didn’t make us change our own diapers,” I kidded.
“Seriously, we got to be little kids some of the time because I
remember playing our butts off when we were five, six, seven,
eight--well, maybe eight not so much; we were doing some chores by
then. But, when we were old enough to do the milking and work the
fields, we were treated as equals.”
“Not
as equals but as hired help,” Russ complained.
“Life’s
hard; then you die!” I joked.
“Hunting
deer or Elk would be real cool,” Victor said, I think to change the
subject. “Is it as fun as I imagine it is?”
“We
had a hunter shoot in our direction while he thought he was shooting
at a deer,” Russ remembered. “We had to hide in the rocks until
he lost interest and wandered away. I was thinking we should have
popped one over his head to show him what it’s like to have a
bullet come close.”
“Wow,”
Victor breathed.
Chapter
24
Vernon
grabbed us just as we got home from work at Carl’s place, “After
milking I need you two to ride the ditcher.”
“The
ditcher – crap!” I swore. “I hate that ditcher more than death
itself. One day it’ll put one of us to death!”
The
ditcher was simply a ‘V’ shaped scraper. The one arm was eight
feet long, one foot wide, and a half inch thick flat iron that Russ
and I would try to keep in the bottom of the ditch. The other side of
the ‘V’ was an eight foot long, two foot wide, half inch thick
curved iron with a sharp edge that cut into the bank and pushed the
sod, weeds and dirt out of the ditch. The point end was connected to
the tractor with a chain. Seems simple enough. The Old Man would
drive the wide wheeled tractor straddling the ditch, chained to the
ditcher. We would stand on the straight iron to hold it down in the
bottom of the ditch and push down on the curved blade to keep it
digging in and cutting sod.
We’d
been bucked off that ‘devil’s device’ more often than cowboys
being thrown off a Brahma bull at a rodeo! Most of the time it worked
like it was supposed to, especially in the soft sandy soil, but in
hard pan clay the thing digs in, breaks out, jumping around so much
we can’t stay on. When one of us was bounced off the other poor
rider would be thrown up in the air as the ditcher turned over. Worse
was when the ditcher would hit a tree root, or worse a big rock, the
point would stop and the back we were balancing on would throw us
both high in the air. Vern would stop, and then we’d come down and
the blade would come down. We’d have
500 more words tomorrow
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Comments