XMAS 2022

      The sun sank well south of Pikes Peak.  I sat in my winter coat on the porch swing.  My spirits went down with the sun.  Christmas fun was over and wouldn’t return for another year.

      In spite of the whole week away from school that still stretched before me, it wasn’t enough to raise my spirits.

       That was nearly 70 years ago.  It was the beginning of the end of Christmas excitement for me.  Such an emotional slump wasn’t comfortable. 

      As I look back, it was also an early symptom of a “disease” I have been afflicted with all my life:  “Sundowners”.  As the sun sinks, a restless dissatisfaction on the mild end, fear on the other extreme, sets in.  The feeling lasts maybe an hour or less. 

     I think the term was invented by some employee in a nursing home who noticed that all hands-on deck sometimes wasn’t enough to care for cranky old people as dusk nears.  Aunt Ruth noticed decades ago that I needed some kind of chore to divert me at sundown when I was visiting  her home.  Bless her!

       In this old folks’ home, where the staff tends to itself, the stratagem still works.  We spend five minutes wrapping up in warm clothes to journey the 40 yards, if you go by the sidewalk, 20 yards if you cross the lawn,  to the post box.  If it’s not too cold, we wander a ways down the block to an intersection where we can do a U-turn.  

        Somehow, the brief walk in the cold is enough to dispel the depression.  Back in the safety and warmth of the house, we can begin to prepare supper.  No time to dwell on the negative.

     I think that eons ago, our ancestors found it expedient to hibernate during the winter solstice.  Some foolish progressive thought it would be okay to do some chores or otherwise stay awake in the cave during winter’s onslaught. 

      Christmas probably began as a celebration when the astronomers of prehistoric times proved that by the third or fourth day after the solstice, the sun was indeed exposing itself to us a little longer every day.  Reason for a celebration!

     Along the way, some ancient pope decided if you can’t whip ‘em, join ‘em.  He declared the day a celebration of Jesus’ birth.  Then old Santa Claus intruded.  Amazon Prime made off with Santy’s bag of toys and goodies and there you have it, our modern Christmas.

      The post-Christmas depression of my youth has been replaced by a weary gratitude at the end of the day that the madness is over for another year.

       I have found it expedient over the years to try to avoid spreading my disease to others.  I wonder if wearing a mask would help?

      This year, I am doing pretty well for an Xmas-Phobe.  Being in a barbershop quartet helped.  We treated ourselves and our mates to a rather expensive dinner (even McDonalds is expensive these days) at an eatery in downtown Greeley before we attended The Nutcracker at Union Colony. 

     We signed on to sing some carols in the lobby before the show and during the intermission.  We did that, but we weren’t a big hit.  Most of the attendees were relatives of the dancers or musicians, and they were far more concerned with what was going on backstage and how things were going to go on stage than they were in hearing some old guys singing carols.  When your audience isn't too enthusiastic, you fall back to enjoying yourself, which we did.

     That was Friday.  On Saturday, we found ourselves in the north part of old Fort Collins at a Christmas party in an old house that had been revamped nicely.  It was a sad-sweet gathering we came to find out, as the house’s owner was finally celebrating Christmas after the loss of his spouse two years ago.

      We wouldn’t have guessed that from our reception.  We got there by way of a Rotary silent auction.  One of our guys is a devout Rotarian.  He put a performance by us on the block, and the guy who bought it asked us to provide some entertainment for his Christmas party.  Nobody knows how much we brought at auction. We sort of wanted to know, but on the other hand, maybe we didn’t want to know.  What if we didn’t get beyond the minimum bid, whatever it was?

  So, there we were amongst the merry-makers.  We were a bit apprehensive going in because we heard that a bluegrass band was also on the docket.  Quite a lineup for a private Christmas party in a not-too-large old house with maybe 30 or 40 people there.

     We needn’t have feared.  As word spread that we were there, people gathered from all around, even coming in from the backyard where there must have been some source of heat, because it was not a warm night.  Well, they did have a source of internal heat from a well-stocked table doing business as a bar.

       We put on about a thirty-minute program standing among the audience, who gladly joined in on Christmas carols and other old songs that we do.  Some of the most enthusiastic singers were members of the bluegrass band who call themselves Blue Gramma. 

     The young guy who told me their name when I asked, pronounced it “grAW-muh”.  “Do you have a business card?” I asked.  I didn’t quite get the name.  Well, yes, but they didn’t bring any cards.  He explained that it was a grass native to Colorado.  Then he spelled “Gramma” and I said, “Oh, Blue Gramma,” and the old guy in the band standing there said to me, “Yeah, that’s how most of us pronounce it.”  He and I laughed.

     We regretted that the band wasn’t quite ready to strike it up, so we left, finding it expedient to get home to our ladies on a Saturday night.  Some of them don’t appreciate being “barbershop widows”.  It would have been fun to see and hear what those boys and girls could do.

      On Sunday, we made a late-afternoon trip to DIA to deliver the Goodwife’s sister, who visited over the weekend, into the hands of TSA.  We took Monday off.

     On Tuesday, more singing at our regular Tuesday-night meeting of the barbershop chorus.  The Goodwife had to go with me, as her usual lady friend who takes her to Bingo on Tuesday nights was under the weather.  I think my bride found two hours of rehearsing for a January program rather boring.  A visit to the local “water hole”, also known as Applebee’s, was somewhat less tedious for her.

     On Wednesday, a mammogram in Longmont was followed by a visit to the Longmont Museum.  For ten bucks, it was a good way to stay warm and get out of the house for a while.  By the time we got home, the mammogram results were in.  All clear!

      On Thursday, the singing kicked in again.  The chorus, the old guys who are retired and don’t have to work, sang carols at five assisted living places, three in Loveland, and two in Fort Collins.

      On Friday, the quartet did our public service duty by singing outside in the cold in front of a King Soopers while ringing the bell and collecting for the Salvation Army.   We started at one and ended at three. Enough already.  We did stray from strictly doing carols.

     When our relief showed up at three, he checked the little red kettle and determined that he needed another bucket.  We had pretty well filled “our” kettle.

      Christmas approaches.  I hope I remember to cancel my trial membership with Amazon Prime.  Santa Claus might not be happy if he finds out.

     Merry Christmas!

     Call me when it’s time to wake up!

      

 

    

Fall Colors

              “The most colorful Fall we’ve had in a long time,” heard several times this October.

 

                     Our Fall walks around some of the “Seven Lakes” were quite colorful.

 

      The backyard blushed a little before it dropped its leaves to reveal the hospital parking lot across the way.

     Meanwhile, back at the farm, Mother Nature conspired to color the world for the early birds, in the absence of leaves.

 

     Those who missed the summer visits to the pool found another way to take a colorful swim.

 

                                                

                                                

      I would like to say I have raked up all the leaves in my yard, but I can’t.

    And now, “Old Winter’s Song” without regard for my schedule.

The Eyes Have It

       It all began around 2011 or 2012.  I began to notice some double vision.  My right eye lid wouldn’t fully open.

     In 2012, I got in to see an ophthalmologist—not an easy task, without an optometrist’s referral.  He opined that I was suffering from too many birthdays, but made an appointment for me one year later, in 2014. 

     Lots of other things were happening.  My regular optometrist retired.  For twenty-plus years, I had taken thyroid pills. The PA was reluctant to renew the prescription without more testing, quite an unusual protocol.   Usually, he would look at the lab reports and renew my prescription.

      Then we moved to Colorado.  I ran out of thyroid pills.  I called on a local PA who needed me to take all these tests before she would write a prescription.  Her conclusion was that I no longer needed to take the medicine.  She was leaving for a new job, and suggested I call on an endocrinologist.

      We made our final move to Loveland and an endocrinologist’s office was two short blocks from our new home.  After a bunch of tests, the endocrinologist discovered a “lobe” on my thyroid that was over producing, thus my no longer needing Synthroid.

     Meanwhile, I scheduled  with a local ophthalmologist, but before I could see The Man, I had to go through  his pilot-fish optometrist, who saw nothing wrong.  Wait a minute, this drooping eye lid, and now eye ball (I had continual double vision by this time, the right eye slanted down) is normal?  He saw that I was having thyroid problem and concluded I was suffering from Grave’s Disease. 

      I reported back to the endocrinologist.  She was adamant; I most certainly did not have Grave’s Disease.  She arranged for me to see a local ophthalmologist. 

     I scheduled with one.  I got a call that they were switching me to another, more suited to my condition.  When I actually showed up, I was handed off to yet a third doc, but by the time the two pilot-fish got done with me, they actually referred me to a fourth guy.  I began to feel like a fumbled football, except no one wanted to cover me.

     In the meantime, after a bunch more tests, including collecting my urine for 24 hours, twice, the endocrinologist concluded that I needed to reduce the size of my thyroid, because it was now hyPER-active.  I had two choices:  surgery (no thanks, I remember my mother having that done.  She hardly got over her seemingly-permanent sore throat.)

      Or I could ingest a radio-active iodine capsule.  Which I eventually did, but I had to find a time when I didn’t need to be around people for five days.  I took the capsule five days before my appointment with the ophthalmologist, thinking I would be clear of my radioactivity by then.

      Reading the fine print, I discovered I was cleared to be around healthy adults after five days, but should avoid pregnant ladies and children for another few days.  So I called the ophthalmologist’s office to be sure none of the persons attending to me would be pregnant.      

     I mentioned to the lady on the phone that I shouldn’t be around pregnant ladies or children.  She exclaimed, “Oh! Doctor Arnold is a pediatrician.  His office will be full of children.”  Appointment cancelled.

     In the meantime, we established contact with a new family physician who listened to my tale and immediately ordered an MRI of my head.  He felt I had classic brain tumor symptoms.  He was astounded that none of the other doctors had suspected that.

      A few times in my life, my father suggested I needed to have my head examined.  You can guess when he said that.  So I had my head examined.  Sure enough, just as Dad suspected, they found nothing there.

     Dr. Prows, the family physician, got me an appointment with one of two neuro-ophthalmologists in the state.  I had to drive across Denver to Aurora to Anschutz eye clinic. I did that for three or four years.

      Dr. Pelak diagnosed me with myasthenia gravis.  She put me on prednisone.  Not bad until I had to withdraw.  My right eye came back up.  My eyelid stopped drooping.  I had single vision again—for a while. 

     My right eye kept moving up.  I had double vision again.  For a year or two, I took Imuran.  Dr. Pelak felt I no longer had symptoms of myasthenia gravis, so we tapered off Imuran.  My eye stabilized, and she advised that I could possibly have surgery to correct my double vision.

      The surgeon told me he couldn’t straighten out my double vision by operating on the right eye alone.  He must work on both eyes.  Fearing unfortunate results, I exercised the surgeon's option two:  live with it.

      Eventually, I decided I might want to try to have single vision once again.  I did not want to have to make several trips across Denver, so I went back to Dr. Arnold, the pediatric ophthalmologic surgeon I was scheduled to see all those years ago.

       After another year of anguishing over what to do, in April, I scheduled the surgery for the last week of October.  That date got complicated when our daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer and her surgery date was on the very same day.  We decided that we should both keep our dates with the surgeon.  And we did.

      I went in at 6:45 a.m. and was back home by 10:30 a.m.  I had a patch over my right eye hiding two or three loose sutures.  There was one suture not tied up yet in my left eye as well.  I returned to the doctor’s office at 12:45. 

     A young lady checked my vision and used prisms to get me zeroed in on eye charts near and far.  She wrote down a bunch of numbers and Dr. Arnold came in, looked at the numbers, and began tugging at the loose sutures in my eyes.  That was the most painful part of the ordeal.

    He would pull a while, and I tried to keep my squirming to a minimum.  Then he would check my vision on the wall chart and up close with a target on a stick he kept in his breast pocket.  We went through that procedure three or four times.  Each time, the tugging lessened.

      When he felt I was zeroed in on the targets, he knotted and clipped the sutures.  How he could do all that with the fine sutures, invisible to me, wearing rubber gloves, is beyond my ken.  I have nothing but admiration for his skills.

      The sutures would eventually disappear, he said.  Now, it is up to my brain to adjust to the new field of vision.  It will take a while, weeks, probably, he said.

      We were home again by 2:30. I had single vision at an intermediate distance, not yet far off or close up.  Post op advice said I should watch television, avoid trying to do close up work, like reading.  I understood.

     The problem with close up work is the eyes have to slightly cross, and to do that hurt.  It’s like a sprained ankle that you have to use very carefully for a few days while the muscles heal.  Two weeks later, I can read pretty well with magnifier lenses that I have used for a few years.

     I have single vision close up with magnifiers, and also at a distance.  I still have some double vision on the periphery, left and right, and up.  The “up” business is a bit disconcerting, because I am used to looking over my glasses to see really close.  That’s not working.  Maybe I will learn to use my bifocals?

      It takes some time and muscle work to expand my single vision, but that is limited by the muscle fatigue.  My eyes get tired and it can be painful to look right, left, up and down later in the day.  Each day the muscles get stronger and I am hopeful that one day I will have single vision in all fields.

     In the meantime, the daughter has had a second surgery to remove more lymph nodes.  We await lab reports that hopefully will confirm that the lymph system is cancer free.  She has radiation and reconstruction left to go.  It has been a long road, but the road is less rocky than it would have been fifty years ago.  Modern medicine has made great strides and we both are grateful for our health care.

     Now, if you got this far, I apologize for indulging in old people’s favorite thing:  discussing health issues and doctor visits.  But then, you didn’t have to read this!

 

 

    I tried to take advantage of my blood-shot eyes for Halloween, but it wasn’t too effective.  I have the wrong head shape for either Lurch or Frankenstein’s monster.  I failed to scare a single trick-or-treater.

 

        The current state of affairs.  “This too shall pass.”

 

 

Fall Chores 2022

      Twenty Twenty-two proved that Eastern Colorado is the best next-year country in the world.  Maybe a bit of an exaggeration.  It was a disappointing year, farm-wise.

     The wheat crop was 38 bushels—not per acre.  A total of 38 bushels, which sold for $300.  The price of wheat went as high as $10 per bushel.  None of us in the neighborhood had any wheat to sell.  Typical!

      I did raise a bumper crop of sunflowers following the disastrous wheat crop.

 

 

      Not much income from that kind of sunflowers.

     The millet crop looked good.

 

 

      It yielded a little over 800 bushels, total, about five bushels per acre.  That sold for $19.50 per hundred-weight.  A hundred pounds equal two bushels.

      Nothing to do but plant next year’s wheat crop.  Keeping the weeds out of the summer fallow wasn’t too great a challenge, given the dry conditions.  But we did have occasional rains throughout the summer, enough to bring the millet up.

      A dry spell was broken about mid-August.  I actually began planting wheat on the last day of August and finished before Labor Day.  That hasn’t happened for decades. 

      When I was a kid, the farmer I worked for started planting on August 21, unless that was a Sunday.  As the summers got hotter, the planting date got pushed back. 

     Last year, I planted in October.  A lot of that wheat didn’t come up until April.  Some of it either never came up, or sprouted and died in the drought conditions that persisted throughout the winter of 2021-2022.

      In August, I had the moisture, so I planted.  I have wheat up this Fall!

 

 

     The wheat was up fairly well when it rained over an inch in less than 30 minutes.  Thus, the mud in the lower part of the picture.  I should have a good stand next spring when the winter wheat breaks its dormancy.    

     The wheat up, the millet done, nothing to do but clean up and put stuff away.

     There is always some sadness, along with some relief, when it comes time to shut down for the year.  True, it is nice to be able to relax a bit and look forward to days that don’t hit 100 degrees.  But the summer is over and colder days loom ahead.

        This year, I had to remove the old green machines to make room for the “new” stuff.  The new combine is a 1995 model, a 30-year jump from the old 1964 John Deere 95 combine.

      Putting a machine out in the open to rust away after it has been shedded during the off-season for thirty years is a little like sending a trusty old work horse from the stable to the glue factory.

 

 

        Except for the junk that always finds its way into a farm building, the shed was empty.

 

 

       I had to remove the top section of the combine’s exhaust pipe and the air intake apparatus to get clearance under the doorway.  It went in.

 

 

 

     Then the tractor, and the trucks.

 

 

      In the Fall, an old man’s fancy turns to firewood.  The felled elm tree has been split and stacked.  There remain the smaller branches to be dealt with.

     And look forward to next year!

     I live in a good “next year” country.

 

Another Tree—er—Elm Bites the Dust

     “That’s not a tree.  That’s a weed.”       Minnesota native Marvin Ekgren circa 1963

 

     The tree would be some 60 years old.  I don’t think it was planted.  It was a result of one of the characteristics that earns the Chinese elm the designation as a weed—the blizzard of button-sized disks that sweep the landscape with every March or April breeze.

     I have seen the seeds growing in rain gutters with too much trash in them.  Mr. Ekgren complained about them taking over the fence rows.  I can see that happening in a wetter climate.

      A bramble of raspberry bushes used to support the east side of the picket fence near where Rommel’s house now stands.  All of the tree’s brothers and sisters would have been uprooted as a matter of course in the spring when the raspberry thicket got its spring tending.

      Somehow, this one survived.  In time, it shaded and sheltered that corner of the yard.  In its time, it provided relief from the hot  summer sun, and even served as some protection for unhoused vehicles during a hail storm or two.  It was a nice place to wash a car or pickup, particularly when we were still shaving ice and needed a clean pickup to haul the equipment.

      In 2021, its shade capability diminished.  By the end of summer, its bare branches were not the result of the regular Fall leaf-drop.  It was dead.

      A sister elm fifteen or twenty feet to the east had been planned and planted.  It died in 2020 and was removed a year ago.  It wasn’t as big as this one.  After taking that one out, I wasn’t up for another one.  It wouldn’t hurt to let this one age and dry for a year.

      All of the summer chores done, the wheat planted, the machinery housed, it was time to take on the tree.  I had studied the proper procedure quite a few times before actually mounting my attack.

      I would need a rope to safely direct the tree’s descent in case my lumberjack skills weren’t quite up to felling the thing in the right direction.  In danger were Rommel’s house, the hedge less that two feet away, and even the northeast corner of the house.

     Step one was to take out a west-leaning branch that could lead the tree to fall the wrong way.

      That done, it was time to harness the Dodge Dakota to the tree as high as I dare go with a step ladder in the pickup bed.

 

     The old eighty-foot well rope secured to the Dakota, it was time for the coup d’ grace.  I was working on  the finishing touches of the fish mouth when I heard the tell-tale cracking that indicated the tree was coming down. 

    But wait!  I hadn’t even nicked the back side of the tree above the fish mouth.  No time to contemplate what went wrong.  The shadow of branches crossed me and I ran.  I ran like hell. 

     I wasn’t sure which way that thing would fall, but in the instant, I chose to run south.  Good choice.  I stood there, thirty feet south of the tree, the idling chainsaw in my hand and looked at the north half of the tree that fell north and managed to miss the burn barrel.

     

     The best laid schemes of mice and men. . . .

       The rope was affixed to the south branch, the main trunk.  It had no effect on where the north half of the tree fell.  I had cut through the good wood and left only the rot in the center of the tree supporting the north branch.

     Oh well.  When you get bucked off, get back in the saddle before you have much time to think about it.  When my heartbeat returned to something like normal, I went to work on the back side of the fish mouth. 

     This time, before I heard the ominous cracking sound, I installed the Goodwife in the pickup and told her to put it in gear, but don’t step on the accelerator.  Let the idle pull out the remaining slack in the rope.

     As the rope tightened, I got ready to go back and make a final cut, but before I could move away from the Dakota’s open right window, the ominous cracking sound came again. 

      I stood in my tracks and watched as the pickup inched forward and the tree began to tilt in our direction.  In an instant, gravity exceeded the pickup speed.  The rope slackened, but the tree fell almost where I  had planned for it to fall.

     The excitement was over.  Now, the grunt work.  Cut the tree down.   Cut the tree up.

     I had filled the chainsaw gas tank and oil reservoir twice.  By the time it ran out of gas the second time, I was also out of gas.

 

     Long October shadows bring cool temperatures.  The fire in the trash barrel warmed us as we fed it the smaller branches from the tree’s destruction.

     I coiled up and stowed the heavy old rope.  The chainsaw in its case in the shop, time to enjoy some fruit of the day’s labor. 

     A fire in the small kitchen wood-burner cheered us as we prepared our supper and watched the long shadows turn to night.

Galena

      Paul was Romanian, I think.  He came to America as some kind of petroleum engineer.  He became a citizen and retired. 

     Paul complained about the company he worked for, how they cheated him.  I forget the details.  He wasn’t well-off, which explains why he settled in a small town in Western Kansas.  Housing is pretty cheap.

     Paul spoke Russian, which is probably how he came to know Galena.  What random chance occurrence led the Goodwife to strike up a conversation with Paul I don’t remember.  It’s been a while ago. 

     Paul and Galena showed up for supper one night, and we had an interesting, if somewhat laborious conversation.  Galena spoke very little English.  Paul got a workout translating our comments to Russian and Galena’s to English.

      Galena was a journalist.  She wrote stories from America and sent them to a paper in Russia.  She did a story on the Goodwife.  She showed the Goodwife an English translation for her approval before she sent it off for publication.  I’m not sure how it got translated.  Paul?  A computer program?

     I don’t think Galena got paid very much for her efforts.  When we met her, she was working as kitchen help in a hospital.  Later she worked in the kitchen at the Good Sam.  She finally landed a job as head cook at the hospital in a town west of us.  She must have had a green card.

     I don’t remember much about our conversations, which we held on two or three occasions, except one time when we tried telling jokes, in English which Paul translated to Russian, and then Galena would tell one in Russian which Paul converted to English.

     We were trying to see what jokes translated well.  Ones with a moral, or an understandable punch line, worked.  Ones that relied on an idiom for their humor fell flat.

     We got together a few times, especially as Galena, with Paul’s help, interviewed the Goodwife and wrote her story.  The Goodwife invited Galena to come to the farm and they would go on to Denver and go shopping and look at quilt shops and the like.

     Paul didn’t understand that he was to bring Galena to the farm in Colorado.  He called us from our Kansas “farm” and said nobody was home.  About three hours later, they showed up to “The” farm.

     I was in the process of flushing drip irrigation lines for my tree project.  Paul made the trip down to the trees with me.  I unplugged a line and caught water in a five-gallon bucket until it ran clear.  To start irrigating without flushing would mean removing every nozzle and cleaning crud out them.   

     It sometimes took ten gallons to get the water to run clear.  When it was clear, Paul stuck his hand in the stream and tasted the water.  Tasted good, he said, but too much sand!  As far as I know, he never suffered any ill effects from that exercise.

     After two or three hours, Paul took off for home.  No talking him into staying the night.  He might have had pets at home.  I don’t remember.

      The girls left for Denver the next morning and stayed for a couple of days.  I don’t remember how Galena got home.  Maybe Paul made the trip again.

     What I do remember was another time (the last time) Paul and Galena came to our house.  We were getting along with our conversation, and Galena was confident enough to speak some English on her own, relying on Paul when she ran into difficulties.

      I don’t know how the subject came up, but the Goodwife mentioned how great a guy Gorbachev was.

     KABOOM!

     Galena exploded.  He was not a good guy!  He was a traitor to Russia.  He presided over the fall of the Soviet Union!  He should be in jail, executed, etc., etc.

      But Galena, the Goodwife asked, don’t the Russian people appreciate the freedom Gorbachev gave them? 

     Assuredly they do not!  Personal freedom is nothing.  Having a strong country is most important.

     You don’t want Russia to be a democracy?

     No!  I want a Czar again!  We need to be a strong country in the world!

     Galena calmed down a bit (she had risen almost to standing and flailed her arms over her head during some of this).  The Goodwife asked the obvious question:

     If you feel that way, why do you stay in America?  Why don’t you return to Russia?

     No answer.  Before long, Paul and Galena decided it was time to leave.

     We never saw them again.

     Two or three years later, we learned that Paul had died from some sort of cancer, and that Galena had given up whatever job she held at the time to nurse him through his final weeks of life.

     What became of his meager belongings, an old car, a mobile home and its contents?  What became of Galena?

      The recent death of Mr. Gorbachev brought this episode back to the old frontal lobes (maybe).   I reflected when this happened and I reflect again.

       Are there really people in the world who would prefer to live under a dictator rather than a democracy?  Apparently so.

     Democracy will never work in such a world.  Have we been deluding ourselves to expend so much time, effort, and capital in trying to grow something where it can never grow?

 

 

The Harvest That Wasn’t

     “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

     Or is it, “I can handle the big things.  It’s the little ones that get me”?

      This saga actually began over a year ago when I bought Neighborly’s 1995 New Holland combine at the auction where the family disposed of many of his possessions, including an impressive gun collection.  The combine hadn’t been used for a few years, but it had been inside all that time.

     I thought it should have a few good seasons left in it.  My $10,000 bid won the prize.  A week or so later, a June hailstorm destroyed the growing wheat’s ability to produce seed.  It produced heads, but no seed.  My 2021 harvest was over before it started.

     Neighborly’s heirs kindly shedded the combine for a year.  When I finally finished planting millet during the first week of July this year, I retrieved the big yellow machine.  Jim had the header in the yard minutes after I parked the combine proper. 

      I turned to getting trucks ready.  One of the tires on the big Dodge truck hissed at me when I tried to pressure it up to match its peers.  The truck still has split rim tires, and Hugo is one of the few places that will still work on split rims.  Of course it was Friday afternoon, and I couldn’t pick up the tire until the next Wednesday.

      Eventually, I did get the header and the threshing machine reunited.  I had (still have) quite a few things to learn.  When I put the separator in gear, the reel wouldn’t run.  By the time I figured out that I had failed to connect a hydraulic hose properly, I had burned a belt in two.

     Hydraulics are not my strong suit.  Whenever I deal with hydraulic connections, I end up feeling like the greased pig at the county fair.  The thought frequently crosses my mind during the process:  couldn’t this be done with compressed air instead of oil?

      I had to “crack” a line (loosen a threaded connection a little) to release enough pressure to make the connection properly.  I would have to wait until the next day to try running it again since the burned out belt lay on the ground mutely accusing me of incompetence.  A trip to the parts store would bail me out, but of course it was past 5 in the afternoon.

       The reel problem successfully solved, I had to deal with another real problem.  Somewhat reminiscent of the small globule of rubber in the fuel pump inlet the shut down the Allis tractor, this small item was a sheer bolt, smaller than ¼ inch in diameter and about two inches long.

      Everything was running except the auger bringing clean grain into the grain tank.  I couldn’t find a replacement sheer bolt on a Saturday morning, so I bought a  6-millimeter bolt, slightly smaller than a ¼ inch bolt, but still too big to fit.  I ground it down enough to go into the holes that connect sprocket and cog that turned the shaft that turn the gears that propel the auger shaft.  

      The auger ran for maybe a minute before with a crunch, a hammering,  and a thump,  it quit.  The jury-rigged sheer bolt had sheered.  Something had to be in the auger tube obstructing things.  If there was, I couldn’t find it.

      Another try or two had the same result.  In the meantime, I had contacted three folks to see if they might be interested in cutting the wheat, since I wasn’t getting anywhere.  Two were neighbors and the third a custom cutter. 

     They all three were smarter than I am.  They didn’t want to have anything to do with cutting the thin crop with lots of weeds.  The custom cutter said I had to get the combine running.  He found a cotter pin the right size and used it for a sheer bolt.  That didn’t end with us living happily ever after.

      The cotter pin went a few revolutions and then a clunk and the cotter pin’s role as a sheer bolt came to an abrupt end.  I had to find what was jamming that auger.

      Along came John.  I had called to see if he might want to do a little custom-cutting.  He didn’t.  But he was curious.  He went right to the gear box that transfers power from sprocket, sheer bolt, and cog through a system of five gears, to the auger. 

      It became apparent that we were going to have to remove a lot of stuff, including the “tailings” elevator, to work on the stuff inside the gear box.  John dove right in.  In about three hours, we had yellow metal lying all about, and a pile of grease.

     We also had a few bearing rollers spread around in the gob of grease that was in the gear box.  It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to tell us the rollers from a failed bearing were getting into the gears and causing all the trouble. 

     John set about pulling gears off, after he removed a pound or two of grease.  That’s when I began to get nervous.  I have known friends to tear something apart and find it convenient to be gone when it came time to put it back together.

     With gears out of the way, we could see on the end of the auger shaft where there should have been a bearing, only an inner bearing race remained.  We had to get up into the grain bin to pull the auger out.    

     About this time, the custom cutter returned.  He wanted to take some pictures of some of the old junk in the farmyard.  He had to see what we were doing.  He asked if we were having fun and suggested we might want to replace the other four bearings in the box to avoid having to do it all again.

    We concurred and John set about removing snap rings and shafts.  Our day ended when the gear box was empty and all the gears and shafts and bearings were soaking in greasy solvent or perched on rags.  I was reminded of James Herriot’s description of replacing a cow’s prolapsed uterus:  would we ever get all that stuff crammed back in there?

      The next day I spent cleaning bearings so I could get numbers off of them and cleaning and checking gears.  I called the parts store and they had three of the five bearings.  The other two would be available in the morning.

      The next day, I ended  up making two trips to town to get all the right parts.  About halfway home on the second trip, the old Chrysler got hot and I had to stop.  Fortunately for me, the other neighbor I had visited with about cutting wheat called me just as I shut down, unfortunately for him.  He ended up towing me home.

     Where would I be without neighbors?

     Also fortunately for me, John came back.  He couldn’t be there until 5 and we worked until 8 when I was out of gas.  We had the gear box mostly back together.

     So John made a third trip the next morning and in a couple of hours, we had everything back together and running correctly.  John also made a ”chain run” and tightened up all the roller chains he could find on the machine.

      I tried to pay John something, but he would have nothing to do with that.  He was in his truck and out of the yard before I could do much more than say thank you.

      I headed for the field for my maiden voyage with my “new” combine.  I went a hundred yards or so and stopped to check on things.  The new bearings hadn’t really been tested because when I crawled up and looked, there was no wheat in the bin. 

      I began looking around and under the combine to find the gigantic hole that was letting all the wheat out.  Nothing.

       I scratched around in the stubble behind the combine to see if I was throwing grain out the back.  Nothing.

      I knew I was cutting stuff because there was a few straws and some weeds that obviously had been ground up.  I could see a few stalks of stubble.  Mighty few.  And there were quite a few wheat stalks lying flat on the ground, impossible to pick up with any sort of machine.  Sawfly, the experts say.  Apparently, they attack the wheat straw at near the ground level.

     Nothing to do but try to find “greener pastures”, or in this case, a heavier stand of wheat.  I spent an hour going around the field.  A few checks proved I didn’t have any leaks in the machine, and only a small amount, mostly shriveled, lightweight kernels, were going out the back end.  There were a few bushels of weedy grain in the grain bin.

      I left Field 6, southeast of the yard, and headed for Field 11, northwest of the yard.  I pecked around on the north for an hour, cutting where it was mostly wheat and not so many weeds.  The best wheat was just north of the farmyard in the lee of the trees north of the farmyard.

       After another hour cutting here and there, getting what looked like the best wheat, I unloaded onto the old GMC, maybe 50 bushels, I thought.  I was done for that day.

     The next afternoon, I set out again to cherry pick in Field 6.  After another hour, I was done there, too.  The A-C wasn’t working very well and it was hot in the cab.

       I dumped the dab of wheat onto the GMC and headed for town.  Where I weighed in with 38 bushels of wheat.

      Here endeth the saga of the 2022 harvest, the harvest that really wasn’t.