Farm News

Tulips struggle to life

     Life on the high plains isn’t ever easy.  These tulips were lucky to have been covered by hay.  They were spared ravishment by rabbits or deer or raccoons or whatever gnawed off or uprooted a half dozen other “hills”.  If the cold dry winter winds don’t do you in, some four-legged predator will.

        Homeless seek refuge everywhere

     The unwanted are everywhere.  Here kochia and Russian thistle, dislodged by winter winds, seek shelter from the weather.  Drifting along, they land on the leeward side of buildings and  windbreaks, where they stay until someone takes charge of them.  Local authorities discourage the drifters from huddling around fire barrels to keep warm.  Tumbleweeds are highly flammable.

 Gangs terrorize the neighborhood

There used to be cedar tree here.   

     What was once a rabbit brush has been reduced to kindling.  Left untouched, grass that would have satisfied if hunger were the problem.

     Marauding gangs of four-legged criminals continue to roam the area unchecked, their intent strictly malicious.  Local authorities seem powerless at best, unwilling at worst, to deal with the problem.  What power do the miscreants have over our officials?  Will 9 News ever investigate?

    Asparagus awaits the signal to ‘shoot’

     The asparagus patch has been cleared of tumbleweeds (temporarily) and last year’s fronds, awaiting Nature’s signal to put up flavorable shoots.

     Rabbits find shrubs unpalatable

     Judging from the lack of damage, the local cottontail population must find the juniper bushes undelicious. The junipers will be lucky indeed if they prove to be as repellant to a much more malicious enemy—deer.

      World Population—7,000,000,000,001

     On Wednesday March 26, 2014 at 7:57 a.m. little Bronson Ott entered into this world.  He is indeed a fortunate child.  He is healthy, well-formed,  a normal human being. 

    Augmenting his good fortune is the reception he received upon arrival, two loving parents anxious to make him a good home, doting grandparents, aunts and uncles, members of an extended family all rooting for him, and dedicated sleuth and now protector, Bella.

     All children of the world should be so lucky.

Fix News—we report, you decide.

Barbershop Show 2014

Old guys masquerading as Civil War Soldiers, standing together on risers, singing;

  

Directed by a Belle in a hoop skirt;

A local radio personality;

A Belle Choir;

A local quartet;

The honoring of a 93-year-old member as “The Barbershopper of the Year” (Kenny got a standing ovation);

A “professional” quartet, Senior champions of the barbershop world in 2012;

Who told a few great jokes, the best of which went:  Three retired couples in their retirement became friends and fellow world travelers.  One year, they decided to rent a motor home and see the USA.  Unfortunately, they met a snow plow head on and all perished.

     They ascended to the Pearly Gates and approached the Gatekeeper.

     “I’m Mister Smith and I’d like to enter,” said the first guy.

    St. Peter replied, “I’m sorry Mr. Smith, but our records show that you spent your entire life lusting after money.  So strong was your lust that you even married a woman named Penny.  You can’t come in.”

    The second guy approached His Greatness and said, “I’m Mr. Jones and I’d like to enter.”

     St. Peter said, “I’m sorry Mr. Jones, but you spent your life lusting after alcohol.  In fact, so strong was your lust that you married a woman named Sherry.”

     The third guy turned to his wife and said, “Come on, Fanny.  Let’s go.”

Then the Finale, combined choruses and quartets;

Followed by an “Afterglow”;

A year’s work of planning, arranging, rehearsing, selling tickets, and handling a thousand details goes into the books.  Folks button up and track through the snow to cold cars in the parking lot on the way back to their everyday lives.

     (Note:  if the photography is a little better than usual, it's because I was on the other side of the lens.  Thanks to the Goodwife for taking these photos.)

21 Massey Part 2

  

     The old 21 Massey was the first combine I ever drove, had complete control over.  In an early attempt at combine driving, I was supposed to cut through the middle of a field where the wheat on one side was still a little green yet, but ripe on the other side.   Dad rode along with me on my maiden voyage, standing beside me on the operator’s platform.  When I stopped at the edge of the field, shut down the separator and throttled down the engine, he looked out over the field at the cut I had made and said, “A snake would break his back trying to follow that.”  I took a look back and had to agree with him, not too straight.

      But then the Massey lacked power steering, and in the words of Ed Berridge, the local mechanic guru, it had “about a foot of play” in the steering linkage.  Steering straight was an act of anticipation, trying to figure out which way the old gal would choose to go next.  When day was done, the operator’s shoulders and neck would be on fire.

    Add to loose steering linkage loose drive chains.  Roller chains drove the big front wheels.  These roller chains were quite worn and had a lot of play in them, too.  If you went in reverse, then shifted into first gear, it could take a couple of seconds before the slack chains caught up and actually propelled the machine forward.

      One dry fall, Dad borrowed a neighbor’s Peacock drill.  A Peacock was a rugged chisel machine with shovels four inches wide which threw up big ridges and could be made to penetrate quite deep into the soil.  It was used as a soil conserver, the high wide ridges protecting against either wind or water erosion.  The Peacock drill had a grain box, ground-driven seeding mechanism, grain tubes etc.  If there was any moisture in the soil at all, you could get the seed down to it with a Peacock drill.

      But then there was hell to pay next year at harvest time.  Imagine driving your vehicle over a field of four or five inch pipes spaced 16 inches apart.  Imagine cutting wheat growing eight inches from either pipe.  It wasn’t too bad if you could go parallel to the pipes.  You did a lot of steering because the back wheels fought each other to see which one got to laze along in the bottom of the row and which one had to stay about half way up one of the Peacock ridges.  It was a slalom event.  

      But of course you couldn’t always go with the rows.  Sometimes you had to angle across them, sometimes perpendicularly, a rough ride indeed.  It might have been that year that the Ford pickup snapped a front spindle off in Pratt’s wheat field.  If it had been a horse, we would have had to shoot it.

       You didn’t go too fast across the ridges for sake of man and machine.  In first gear, the Massey would slowly crawl up the ridge, reach the top, and race down the other side of the ridge, landing in the bottom of the row with a whump!  There it would rest until the loose drive chains took up the slack and the process started all over again, climbing the next ridge.

    For whatever reason I don’t remember, but Dad decided the old Number 3 John Deere pull-type machine was worthy of fixing up.  So for two or three years we had two combines in the harvest field.  It was then I came into the picture.  And the GMC truck also came on the scene.  We were both ’47 models.

    I learned to drive the old Massey.  One time we were moving from the east field to the west.  The whole family was involved in the move.  Mom was driving the old pickup, now converted to fuel-tool wagon, along side of us, on her way back to the house with the “kids” with her.  I was driving the old Massey and was ahead of Uncle Ricky who was driving the “G” John Deere and pulling the Number 3, following me.  Brother Harry was driving the GMC truck somewhere in the parade.  Dad was standing on the operator platform beside me and we were hauling along, in 4^th gear (road gear) no less. 

      Suddenly, the Massey stopped dead in her tracks.  Before Dad or I had a chance to say anything, the Massey gave a mighty lurch simultaneously with a metal-crunching sound.  Dad grabbed the grain tank to keep it from crushing his ribs, and I gripped the steering wheel for dear life.  Then we stopped again, just as suddenly as we had a split second before.  The engine of the Massey was roaring at full idle, accomplishing nothing. 

       I throttled down and was fumbling with the shifting lever when I began to her Uncle Ricky calling me some uncomplimentary names and asking why I had stopped suddenly in mid road.   He had rear ended me with the “G”.  It seems he had been gesticulating at the folks in the pickup along side of us and had only barely grabbed the “G’s” hand clutch before the collision.   

     I don’t remember the order of events, but we examined the “G” (crushed radiator grill on the left side, no radiator damage, as I recall); checked out the straw spreader and straw-walker

bonnet on the Massey’s rear end (bonnet dented and kinked to the left, no straw-walker damage, straw spreader unharmed but the mounting rail mashed in); and Dad discovered the mystery of the sudden stop:  one of the old drive chains couldn’t take the speed and jumped off the sprocket, so we stopped.          

      One year brother Dave and I had the chance to buy a genuine slate pool table for $100.  How would we raise $100?  It was another lean year when we would have to live on the hail insurance, the “cattle check” and Mom’s piano lessons. The wheat had been adjusted and determined to be a total loss.  But there was still some grain in the fractured heads left standing.

    So Dave and I put a battery in the old Massey, got it started, fueled, greased, tires aired up, and set off to the wheat field with the GMC truck.  The truck was nearly superfluous, not quite.  We put in a lot of hours.  Every time we stopped for whatever reason, something on the combine would break.  So we tried to keep it running and succeeded pretty well until the rare occasion when we needed to unload the grain bin. 

     We tried unloading on the go.  I drove the truck and Dave was driving the combine.  I got too close to the cut.  Dave was yelling but I couldn’t hear.  He didn’t think to just pull over a little.  Afraid to miss some of the hailed wheat, I guess.  Anyway, the Massey unloading auger bumped into the truck side board and the auger tube came apart, spilling the precious grain onto the ground, a lot of our hard work spraying into the stubble!  So much for not stopping the combine.

     I don’t know how many bushels we ended up with, but Dad took charge of the truck and we got our $100 pool table.

       I don’t know what the coup de grace was for the Massey, but eventually it went to the bone yard.    It now sits on the section line between 8-8-55 and 8-9-55, where it has been subject to various and sundry degradations and buzzard pickings since sometime in the 1960’s.  The engine was probably first to go, as it was a Chrysler and there were many ‘40’s Plymouth, Dodges and Chryslers looking for a straight six cylinder engine.  I think it went to a ’48 Plymouth, but I’m no longer sure.

     The other major part loss occurred when a 55 John Deere from Elsie, Nebraska, the”Elsie Machine,” needed an unloading auger tube.  The Massey tube was the same size.  A few pulleys and bearings went to other projects, but the majority of the machine remains.

     I tried in the ‘80’s to disassemble it to find usable angle iron, but other priorities got in the way.  My success in peddling the Ford seats gave me the idea maybe I could dispose of the Massey remnants by advertising on an antique website.  So far I have had two responses.  One came from Chicago.  The email said not to worry about shipping “the part”, and please don’t sell “it” to anyone else.  His agent would take care of the shipping.  Just send the following information and we would complete the deal.  Yeah, right.

     Sometime later, Shawn responded.  His 21 Massey is the pretty one pictured in Part I.  He has a collection of Masseys and has volunteered to help me dispose of our old gal.  He is looking for parts for a canvas header.  Unfortunately, ours is an auger header.  Shawn says, by looking at the pictures I sent him, that our combine has been converted from canvas to auger.

       I think that if cussing earns you a one way ticket to hell, the old Masseys have done their fair share of recruiting for the Devil.  They were probably the dirtiest machine, dirty for the operator, that you could ever run in a harvest field.  You sat close to the header, the grain bin right behind you, and the separator a foot or two to the right of you.  The only time you weren’t being assaulted with dirt or chaff was when the wind was blowing from your left.

     But, the old Masseys were the first practical self-propelled combine.  They were a common sight in Western Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Eastern Colorado during June and July.  Custom cutters used them almost exclusively for years during the 50’s. 

     You would see them mounted on trucks with big front wheels hanging over the edges of the truck, the header still attached, perched above the truck cab, and in many instances, the hind wheels dangling off the rear end of the truck.  You could see the huge long springs that helped raise the header hanging limply under the combine’s belly, as they did when the header was in the full-up position.  In my mind’s ear, I can still hear the noise of the springs expanding and contracting when you raised or lowered the header without the engine running.  (You could raise or lower the header without the engine running because the job was done with an electric motor controlled by a toggle switch on the “console”.)

      As a kid, I never grew tired of watching the custom cutters load and unload the Masseys.  Rarely did they use a loading dock.  Usually it was a road ditch that abutted a field with a bank somewhat higher than the road.  A scoop shovel would dig the hole that would level the truck’s rear wheels.  Backing into the bank, the combine rear wheels dangling off the back of the truck would hit the bank and the combine would start to rise up.  I don’t remember ever seeing a header come down and mash the cab as the back end of the combine rose, but I’m sure it happened.  When loading out, the front end of the combine was chained down, the truck pulled slowly forward, the combine frame came down onto either blocks or the truck bed, and the back wheels dangled.  Chain the back end down and they were ready for the road.

     I envied the crew who moved on to another territory, to another job.  Not so much anymore.  I can’t say I envy anyone who has to spend a day herding an old 21 Massey.

21 Massey

       (Note to readers:  The following description contains explicit language and may not be appropriate for all audiences.  Reader discretion is advised.)

Pictures courtesy of Shawn.

Pictures courtesy of the same old gum thumb.

     “Oh crap, corruption, hellfire, damnation and shit!”

      The words rang out in the heat of the July afternoon.  For a moment, the only other sound was the rustling of wheat heads in the hot breeze.

     Stunned shock soon gave way to muffled snickers and feet shuffling through the wheat stubble as we stepped around the green 1950 Ford pickup to see what caused a totally unprecedented burst of profanity.  

      We knew the main cause—a 1940-ish 21 Massey Harris combine.  But what in particular?  As far as we knew, the old “bitch” was nearly back together after a nearly-two day breakdown. 

     Dad bought the combine from George Warwick, the salesman at the local John Deere store.  It runs in my mind he paid $800, a phenomenal amount in the fifties.  He had taken a job “custom cutting” for a neighbor, Willie Suchanek, to help pay the bill. 

     The combine sat in a wheat field north of Willie’s “shed” on “the section”, about two miles north and one west of our farm.  Adding to the usual harvest pressure, mainly fear of ruinous hail, was an audience of idled “truck” drivers waiting for the combine to be repaired so they could get back into action of hauling the wheat. 

      The “truck fleet” consisted of two 1950 Ford pickups, our green one and L. M.’s black one, and Willie’s Dodge pickup. L. M. was Willie’s hired man.  If memory serves me correctly, L. M. had a grain bin or two in his South Limon back yard where Willie was storing his wheat.  

      The pickups all had wooden grain sides anchored in the stake holes of their metal sides.  The Fords would easily hold two dumps from the old Massey’s thirty bushel grain tank.  But Willie never wanted more than 50 bushels dumped on his Dodge. 

     If they were hauling to a grain bin, Willie had an auger to lift the grain up into the bin.  But the pickups didn’t have hoists, so the driver had to shovel 2/3 of the load off the back of the pickup and into the auger. 

     If they were hauling to the elevator, the driver pulled the pickup front wheels onto the thick planks of the hoist and got out.  Thick cables lifted the hoist, front wheels of the pickup and all,  until all the wheat slid out of the box.  Much easier than going to the grain bin, but not without risk.  Once in a while a pickup would roll off the raised hoist.  Plus you could get stuck in a long line of pickups and trucks waiting to dum p their loads.  In such a case, the combine could be sitting in the field with a full grain bin waiting to unload.

       But not in this case.  The combine breakdown had idled the hauling crew.  I don’t remember what exactly had to be repaired, but it seems many parts had to come off to get to the part that needed to be replaced.  Very little if anything on the Massey was accessible.  Even checking the engine oil required a trip under the feeder house and negotiating an array of axle, I-beams, drive shafts, etc. to get a hand on the dipstick.  Then you had to raise the dipstick through the maze, trying not to get any of the ubiquitous chaff or dust on it or into the engine when returning the dipstick.

      There was a cross shaft at the back of the Massey that had pulleys on either end.  To get it off and on, you had to drop elevators and auger pans and a few other things.  Reassembly always is much more difficult than disassembly.  When you take off enough bolts, things will just fall apart.  Getting parts back into position, getting bolt holes aligned, bolts inserted, washers in place, and nut started takes time patience and skill.  Dad had expended his patience.

      We had never heard our father use such profanity before.  The shaft was in place, all the parts back together and tightened down.  When he went to put the pulley on the end of the shaft, Dad came to the inescapable conclusion that the shaft was installed wrong-end-to.

     It all had to be done over again.

     Bear in mind that it was a time when Clark Gable, aka Rhett Butler, was still shocking Midwestern audiences with his final words in “Gone with the Wind.”  By today’s standards, Dad’s outburst would be considered mild profanity indeed.  Would that that was the worst thing you hear on the silver screen, your laptop, or smart phone.  But his words shocked us.  And amused us.

      They wouldn’t be the last profane words the Massey provoked.

To be continued

Of Knowledge and Wisdom

      “I shall do so another time,” said Jack.  If you remember the story, Jack started for home after his first day on the job with a coin which he dropped and lost.  His mother told him he should have put it into his pocket.  So the next day, Jack was awarded a jar of milk for helping a dairy farmer.  He spilled most of the milk trying to get the jar into his pocket.

     So the mother told him he should have carried it atop of his head.  The next day he came home with piece of cheese (a hunk of butter in some stories) melted into his hair.  The next day he started home with a cat (piglet in some stories) which he tried to carry carefully in his hands, as per mother’s instructions for carrying cheese.  When he earned a chunk of meat for his next day’s work, he tied a string around it and “led “ it home as if it were a live animal.

     Old Jack gets a passing grade for knowledge, but a zero for wisdom. 

      I once heard a famous baseball player say that playing professional baseball was a daily lesson in humility.  What?  Million dollar star athletes being humbled?

      He went on to explain that if you hit .400, you were making an out six out of ten tries.  How many of us would consider four successes out of ten tries something for the Guinness Book of World Records?

      In many professions, the longer you hang around the more you learn, and you can avoid making the same mistakes.  Wisdom.  Poor old Jack didn’t have enough sense to learn from his mistakes.  In baseball, I would guess a hitter’s accumulated wisdom is balance by aging reflexes.

       As a high school teacher, part of my “other duties as assigned” was to help sponsor a class.  In this case, the class was the senior class, the event was graduation. 

     Traditionally, the graduates would recess to the auditorium to form a receiving line.  The sponsors stuck around until everyone who wanted to congratulate the graduates had passed though. We sponsors would go through the line last and then the line would collapse, the graduates would mingle and say their formal goodbyes.

      Each class seemed to have its own personality.  Some found it difficult to say goodbye.  The parting could take an hour or more before we could remind them how much they hated school and wanted out and now they had their wish.  Besides, parents, relatives and friends were waiting for them to show up at the many private receptions being held around town.    

      One class we had was gone within ten minutes of the last citizen who shook their hands.  This was a difficult class to work with because they didn’t work well together.  They didn’t seem to like each other.  It was difficult to get them to work on a project, such as making a float or decorating a wall for homecoming, or serving at the refreshment stand during junior year to raise funds to decorate for the big event of spring, the junior-senior prom.

      At this particular graduation, I watched the principal go through the reception line.  It was the Leo Buscaglia era when it was okay to hug everybody.  So the principal gave each of the graduates a hug.

     But he was having trouble getting away from one student.  Bert just wouldn’t turn loose of the principal.  He hugged him repeatedly.  As I watched my eyes were opened.  Move over dull, lazy Jack.  Make room for another dullard who couldn’t connect the dots.

     Old Bert had spent a lot of time in the principal’s office, not to get hugs, but in an adversarial position, behavior referrals from his teachers.  I even sent him there two or three times in the two years I had him.

      Bert was from a one-parent family.  He had plagued his mother at least since junior high.  She couldn’t control him.  He was always in some kind of trouble.  He had a sister who was polar opposite, likable, easy to get along with.

      As I watched the principal and Bert in their new-found affection for each other, a scene with Bert and me flashed through my brain.  I had deemed it necessary to physically remove Bert from my classroom.  The times when I actually laid a hand on a student could be counted on one hand—okay, maybe two.

     But in this case, something strange had happened. I grabbed his arm, lifted him from his seat and escorted him to the door into the hallway where I asked him to remain.   As long as I was in physical contact with him, he didn’t struggle, resist, or mouth off at all.  He just relaxed.

     What Bert wanted, needed was actual physical contact with a male, the father he didn’t have.  I managed to finally see that as I watched Bert and the principal, here on graduation day.  Strike three.  “Oh Jack, how could you be so foolish?”

     Wisdom requires knowledge.  Knowing what to do is mandatory. But timing is equally important, knowing when to act, when to speak.  “For everything there is a season, a time for everything under the sun.”

      A sign hanging on the wall in Aunty and Uncle’s house:  “Ve get too soon oldt und too late smart.”

     Lazy Jack was luckier than most of us.  On his last day of work, his pay is a donkey.  He shoulders the donkey as he should have done the chunk of meat.  On his way home, he passes by the prince’s house.  The prince’s daughter has suffered a tragedy and is withdrawn and can no longer speak.  Her doctors tell the prince, the only way to get her out of her shell is to make her laugh.  Many clowns have tried to make her laugh but failed.  When Jack comes staggering along the road with the donkey, legs sticking up in the air, on Jack’s shoulder, the princess breaks into peals of laughter.  She is cured, the prince marries her to Jack, and Jack and his poor old mother’s troubles are over.

     All of the unwise should be so lucky.