LadyLedLuxury and Elevare Products

    How hard it is to tell this story.

     I learned something.

     I always wondered why a rape victim would not report the crime.  Afterall, it is a horrible crime and the perpetrator should be stopped to protect others, if not punished, for it.

     There is shame.  Plenty of shame.

     There is the overpowering feeling that it could have been avoided, that I could have, should have done something to stop it.  But I didn’t.

     It was an ill-fated weekend.  The Good wife was scheduled, at least we thought she was scheduled, to help out at the Sculpture in the Park event on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  We reported to the park at 2 p.m. on Friday as the schedule that we received directed.  She also had times on Saturday and Sunday.

     But when we got there, they had no badge for her.  A lady took her name and left for the tent housing the bigwigs.  In about five minutes, she returned, saying the Goodwife was not scheduled, that her application had been received too late.

     Why did they send her a schedule?  She couldn’t answer that one.  Oh well. 

     On Saturday, we returned to the park, paid our $20, and wandered around among the artists and the wealthy who can afford to buy sculptures.  I turned down the opportunity to drink a Bud Lite for $9.  (Budweiser should be paying folks $9 to drink the stuff.)

      Since our presence on Sunday was unneeded, I suggested we take in the county fair.  All was well.  We strolled along the pathways, observing the food vendors, the carnival rides.  We noted that some of the rides would certainly separate us from recently-eaten food.

     We even took in some of the 4-H kids participating in the swine show.  It was reminiscent of the old shaved-ice days at the county fair.

      We had about finished our stay when I saw the building where the vendors were demonstrating their wares.  According to the fair schedule, there was a water-skiing squirrel appearing there.

     “Want to go see what the vendors have to offer?” I asked.  Boy, do I wish I had swallowed those words.

      When we went in, the local paper had a booth.  I stopped to chat with the representative, since our subscription had expired.  Maybe they  had a good deal.  The Goodwife didn’t stop when I did. 

     I panicked a little.  Did she have her telephone?  Would I be able to find her?  I interrupted my conversation with the newspaper guy long enough to see that the Goodwife had been sucked in by skin care products booth, one LadyLedLuxury, selling Elevare products.  

      Oh dang.  I knew it was going to cost me something.  I just had no idea how much.

     By the time the newspaper guy and I had established that there would be no good deal for a current subscriber, and walked the short distance to the LadyLedLuxury booth, the salesman had already applied the wrinkle cream under her left eye.  “See how the wrinkles under the left eye have disappeared compared to the right eye?”

    Yes, yes, yes.  How much?  After taxes, $213.40.  Okay, if it makes the Goodwife happy.  But wait, there’s more.  The Salesman, Leo, turned us over to David, the real pro. 

     Because the Goodwife such a good person and good customer, she was entitled to a “free facial”.  “Boy, they saw us coming,” I muttered to the Goodwife.  Truer words were never spoken.

     As we were sitting there, the two salesmen were having a whispered conversation behind a barrier.   What were they saying?

     David, the pro, used this cream on this spot and that cream on that spot, and treated the spots with some kind of light gun.  He threw a carton of this and a carton of that into a fancy bag.

    How much?  “Mumble, mumble two thousand mumble.”

    “No way!’ I exclaimed as I stood up.  “Two thousand for that?!”  David laughs as if I am making a joke. 

     “Oh, you want your wife to be happy.  You want the best for her.”  Not at that price, I don’t.

     At that point, I might have escaped, but the Goodwife chipped in.  “You have been spending a lot of money for things you want”—a reference to the machinery I have been buying.  “Why can’t I spend some?”

     The salesman jumped right on that.  When I still refused, the Goodwife says, “I’ll use my own money.”

      My doom was sealed at that point.  She began rummaging around in her purse for credit cards.  She pulled out a debit card, but I nixed that.  “It’s not activated,” I told her.  I told David, “These products will only gather dust on the bathroom shelf.  She’ll never be able to figure out how to use them.”

    Undeterred, he took her Discover card and began the process of running it through his little handheld machine. 

     And now, comes the regret, the feeling that I could have, should have done something at this point to stop the whole process.  I had other opportunities before that, too, I can see now, to avoid the sale.

     I could have taken her purse and given her her phone and told her to call me when her “free” facial was done.

      I could have asked her to wait fifteen minutes.  If, after 15 minutes, she still wanted to pay $2k for those products, I would buy them for her.  But none of those things occurred to  me.  It’s only in retrospect that I thought of those things.

    I did ask David for an address where I could return the products.  He laughed off  my first couple of requests, but after a third time, he gave me a business card with a Las Vegas address on it.

      “Is this where I send the stuff?”  I asked.

     “Yes,” he said.  He never mentioned once, oh yes, you won’t be able to return any products because of fear of COVID contamination.

      After the Goodwife signed her name on the little handheld machine, he whipped out a form and asked her to sign it.  “It’s just an agreement that you won’t resell these products.  You got such a good deal on them, you could make a lot more than we are charging you if you sell them.”  Yeah, right.

     I didn’t read the agreement.  I should have.  Among other things, it stated that we would NOT be able to return products due to COVID restrictions.

     But then, it would not have mattered much.  The credit card transaction was done.  There would be no reversing the transaction.

     Truthfully, at that point, all I wanted to do was slink out of there, to try to deal with the shock of spending $2K in less than 30 minutes for products of questionable effectiveness, to try to hide from. . . . from what?  From myself for having been taken to the cleaners?

     No, I didn’t want anyone to know I had been taken.  I just wanted to leave that miserable booth.  And we left.

     With our bag of stuff, we wandered around the place.  We did get a glimpse of the water-skiing squirrel, but I had little interest in it.  There were several quilts hung on display.  I tried to divert my attention to other things, other than the high-pressure sale we had endured, by looking at the name of the quilter attached to each quilt to see if I recognized any of them.

     I did see a name I knew, the wife of a brother of a Methodist preacher we knew in Kansas.  We left the fair grounds and returned home.  I sat the sack of goodies on the counter, a reminder of our afternoon’s experience.

      Eventually, I looked at the credit card receipt.  $2987.60.  What!  Over three thousand dollars when you add the first $200.  When I showed the credit card receipt to the Goodwife, she went ballistic

      In desperation, I called Discover card.  The lady was sympathetic, but no, they could not cancel a transaction.  I must work that out with the merchant.  Discover would help if I wished.

     I have been down that road before.  It amounts to a conference call with a credit card representative and a representative of the company.  The company man stonewalls, and in the end, the only satisfaction is a chance to vent your feelings about the company.

      That was Sunday evening.  Monday morning, I called customer service to see if we could return the products for a refund.  The first thing I had to do was send a copy of the receipts.  I scanned and sent the receipts. 

      Then the salesman, David called.  He was sorry, he said, but the company can’t accept returns due to COVID.  They got sued by someone claiming they got COVID from products that had been returned.  Therefore, no more returns.  But he gave us such a good deal, a lot more products for the price than other people got.

      I was using speaker phone.  The Goodwife jumped in and told the guy she had cancer and we couldn’t afford to pay that amount.  Well, a little stretch of the truth on our side.   Oh, David was sorry but there was nothing he could do.  COVID.  He would call us tomorrow.

      After the call was ended, the Goodwife started putting on her coat.  She was headed back to the fair to get into David’s face.  I managed to talk her out of that.  Why?  I didn’t want to be part of a scene.  Let’s go through the proper channels to try to right the wrong, I told her. 

     Shame and guilt.  Let’s not expose our shame and my guilt in public. 

     I took her to Walmart to lay in jelly-making supplies.  We were planning a trip to the western slope to visit friends and get some fresh peaches.  Soon, she had forgotten all about it.

      Later, she would burst into tears and tell me how sorry she was that she had allowed that bunch to talk her into spending that much money.  I consoled her and told her to try to forget about the whole thing.  She pretty much has forgotten it, too. 

      I removed the bag of products out of sight in the spare bedroom.  I found it one morning near her bathroom, so I hid it my clothes closet.  She has not mentioned the products or the experience.  I think she does not remember anything about her experience.

      Tuesday came and no word from David, so I tried calling him two or three times during the day.  No answer.  Then came a text saying,  “Hello Steven, your case is under review and investigation in our office, don’t worry we did not forget about.  Please allow us up to three business days to return a call.  We will do our best to help you guys, as we do with all of our customers.”

      I got a call on Friday, but we were on the western slope and had no cell service much of the time.  It was Sunday before I realized I had missed the call from customer service.  I called, on Sunday.

     I got a man who said he was the manager and not customer service, that he only answered the phone on weekends.  So I stated my case and asked to return the merchandise.  He would only say that they couldn’t accept returns due to COVID. 

      I told him that was an outdated policy, that clothing stores now allow shoppers to try on garments, and if they don’t purchase the clothes, the clothes are hung in a store room for a few days to be sure that any COVID viruses are dead.  He would have none of that.  Nope, can’t accept returns, period.  That lie would be revealed later in email exchanges with the real (I guess) customer service.

     As the conversation went on, I got angry. Besides hiding behind the COVID policy, he kept telling me how much he wanted to help me.  I told him, no you aren’t trying to help me.  If you really wanted to help, he would assist me in getting my money back.  Can’t.  COVID.

       Apparently, I waxed foul.  In exchanges with customer service,  they asked me to be more civil.  The only thing I remember for sure is telling Mr. Manager at the end of the call that after dealing with him, I felt that I had been screwed twice, once when David used high pressure tactics to foist a bunch of products that are useless to us because the Goodwife would never be able to follow the use instructions, and again after all his “help.”

      There followed a series of email exchanges with the company in the next few days.  Here is the main one:

   “ Dear Steven  after investigating and talking with the representative even though he deeply regret and wanted us to help first of all we would like to apologize about how you felt and the representative david gal will be invited to a hearing in this matter 

“Unfortunately due to COVID regulations we cannot accept any returns we extended your exchange policy from 14 days to one year if you have any concerns plus your life time warranty is already registered and cannot be reversed 

“With more investigation we understand you signed three times for the products and return policy of the vip membership stating you know the COVID regulations and

"We also got a picture of you with the products received  happy 

“You can still contact Elevareskin.com and ask for reverse from your hand but it's up to them register  the life time warranty 

“we deeply regret for your unhappiness and will be available to you 24/7 when you need us for guidance or help.”

      I asked for an explanation of their explanation, but I didn’t get much.  There is indeed a picture we took after the $200 purchase.  I asked them to identify the salesman in the picture, who was not the one who sold us the nearly $3000 worth of “goods.”

      I also asked for a copy of the warranty.  Customer service only replied to the warranty request.  I must contact the salesman  After three or four exchanges with David, via text messages, I gave up ever getting a copy of the warranty.  I still don’t have one.

     Eventually, I filed two complaints, one with the Colorado Attorney General’s office ( a waste of time), and one with the Better Business Bureau.  The Better Business Bureau sent the company my complaint.

       They responded with the usual garbage about COVID and an outright lie.  My email to customer service:

“I have a quote from your reply to my BBB complaint.

 ‘At no time did our customer exchange or attempt to exchange the purchase. We are willing to exchange this purchase.. .’

Are you willing to accept a return for a refund?”

      Their reply:

    “Of curse me ottem will be happy to exchange you the products in points or other products you choose for no extra charge ! 

“Please give  us the chance to help you !

“And we do ask if you can please be more easy with the representative you talk on the phone we got some complaints on disrespectful tone and language to some of them thank you !”

     So, now it’s okay to return products for other products or “points” whatever they are?  Wait a minute.  What about the COVID policy?  No returns? 

       So I sent an email and apologized for using offensive language and asked once again for a refund in exchange for merchandise, since it had been established, at least to my understanding, returns were accepted after all.

    I received no response, so after four days, I asked, “May I have the courtesy of a response?”  I got the following reply:

“Yes, of course you can.

Our company lawyers advices us to not contact you until your bbb compliant will

Be closed and fir the tone our representative experience with you mr otto

Thank and have a great day 

בתאריך יום ג׳, 31 באוג׳ 2021 ב-11:51 מאת:”

 

       I copied and emailed the notice from the BBB that the case had been closed, and I got this response:

	Aug 31, 2021, 2:24 PM (5 days ago)
“Dear mr ottem for our understanding till the case will be deleted and fully resolved in the bb system  we Cannot continue to respond by our lawyers advise   t we can not help please contact bbb  please  this is first time we have a complaint there in 15 years all of our costumers   are happy and satisfied

בתאריך יום ג׳, 31 באוג׳ 2021 ב-12:52 מאת ”

 

     My response:

 

to Customer

“I would like to be  happy, too.  Would you please refund $3201.00.  I will gladly return the merchandise.  And I will leave you alone forever.”

 

     Lest you think I exaggerate, please know that I changed nothing in the emails.  I have the entire record of our emails quoted verbatim.

      As of now, I am resigned to the fact that I will never get my $3000 back.  I have few options at this point.  I should give in to the urge to hide my shame and guilt and let this entire experience die.

      But there is one other emotion I am experiencing that I wonder if rape victims experience.  It is an overpowering, sometimes uncontrollable anger when I think of how we have been treated by LadyLedLuxury.   Can I let that go? 

      Should I be doing something to see that no other old lady suffering from dementia doesn’t fall victim to the same treatment we have had from this company? 

     Or is it merely a selfish motive compelling me to seek revenge?

    

    

 

  

 

 

      

 

      

Newest (Latest?) Addition

        I had about given up.  I placed the ad in the Miles Saver about five weeks ago.  I got three responses.  Two of them I rejected outright, as what they had to offer was close to junk status.  It would have taken lots of work and hard-to-find parts to get them back to usable.

    The ad said, “Wanted: Miller, Flex King, or Calkins chisel-rodweeder, 40 feet width.”  It ran for two weeks.  The three responses came during the second week.

    I drove about forty miles to a farm where there was both a Flex King and a Calkins.  The Flex King was 50 feet wide, a bit too much.  The Calkins would cut a 36-foot swath, with three 12-foot sections.  It was missing a drive shaft, and the tires were all rotted.  Both machines were semi buried in thirty years of dirt and grass.

      Going for either one of those machines was tempting because they were close, and I could get them from there to here with the 1959 Ford 4 X 4.  But either would have to have at least two new tires before I could move them, and once I got them here, I would have lots of work to get them field ready.

     A week went by.  I got a text from a man who was liquidating his mother’s estate, including a Calkins machine about the same one that I had looked at nearby, along with other machinery.  I asked for pictures.  This one was all above ground and had usable tires.

     The Goodwife and I went to take a look.  It was in fair shape but would take some work before it could go to the field.  The drawback, it was 75 miles from the farm, somewhere south and west of Otis, Colorado.

     I was right loathe to set off that far with the 4 X 4.  It uses quite a bit of gas and there aren’t many filling stations on the way.  It doesn’t have air conditioning.  It’s really hot this summer.

     Dave, the estate liquidator, gave me the name of a neighbor who does quite a bit of trucking when he isn’t farming.  I contacted him but he didn’t want much to do with transporting the thing.  He mentioned over-width permits and/or pilot car.  Moving it would cost as much or more than the machine.

      A week or more went by and I pondered how to move the Calkins.  Then Dave texted again.  His part-time hired man also hauls a lot of scrap iron to smelters in Denver and elsewhere.  He was willing to move the thing. 

      I contacted the hired man and we struck a deal.  It took them a few days to ready the machine for transport.  The wings fold up for transport, but when they hooked the tractor to it and began raising the wings, a hydraulic hose broke.  Once they succeeded in getting the wings up, they decided they should remove the tires from the wings in case they needed a spare tire enroute.

     All obstacles were soon overcome and Dave the scrap iron man took off about 7 a.m. on Thursday.  I went out to remove some fence no longer needed.  I thought 10 o’clock would be the earliest he could get there.  I also thought I would be able to see him arrive, but I didn’t.  He arrived before 10 a.m.

     He had unhooked the Calkins from his pickup and was pulling out of the yard as I approached from the east.  I flashed my lights, but he didn’t see me.  I phoned him and he returned. 

     He had made the trip in three hours.  There was, however, a drawback.  He had lost one of the driveshafts along the way. 

     It took us about an hour to hook up to my tractor, let the wings down, and put the tires back on the wings (he made the trip without a tire failure).  The entire time I was thinking how I would replace that driveshaft, a square shaft with a universal joint on one end.

     We went to the house to do the paper work.  I had to sign a bill of sale for the estate.  I had to write two checks, one for the machine and one for transport.  The Goodwife offered Dave her breakfast of peanut butter on toast topped with fresh peaches.  He took her up on her offer.  He said when he arrived and I wasn’t there, he planned to go to Limon to eat breakfast and then come back to finish the deal.  She saved him a trip to Limon.

      Dave left.  About twenty minutes later, he came back.  “Forget something?” I asked.  Without saying anything, he went to the back of his pickup and pulled out the drive shaft.  He found it at the junction of 28 and 3T, about seven miles from the farm.  One less thing to worry about.

     I have put in a few hours trying to get the Calkins ready to go to the field.  I’m not there yet.  There’s really no rush.  If it doesn’t rain, the weeds don’t grow.

 

     

The Latin Teacher

       We passed by the building, which we have done many times in the past few years.  This time, something stimulated a memory of my time student teaching in that building.

     Perhaps it started when the Goodwife asked about how I knew my way through what to her is an unfamiliar maze of roads and landmarks.  I replied that I had been down that road many a time.  Why?

     Because I did my student teaching there.  Which reminded me that I didn’t do a lot of driving in that experience.  Three of the teachers that taught there lived in Greeley.  Two of them invited me to join their carpool.  Which I did.

      After I drove once or twice, they generously offered to let me off the hook when it came my turn to drive.  After all, they said, they were splitting the duties between the two of them, so it would be no extra cost to have me ride along.  Besides, they said, I was a poverty-stricken  student, and they would be helping me out.

       Which was true.  It might have had something to do with them not wanting to ride in, or be seen in, a doggy old black-and-white ’55 Chevy, too.

      One lady’s husband was a preacher.  I’m not sure why they lived in Greeley.  The other lady’s husband was a student at Colorado State College.  The typical story, wife finding a job within commuting distance to keep the family afloat while hubby works on a degree. 

     The third Greeley resident was a guy who only rode with us once or twice during my nine weeks there.  I don’t remember what he taught, but his duties required  him to  be there early or to stay late, which didn’t work out in a carpooling arrangement.

       As I recalled those days, memories of other faculty members sprang to life.  Two of those faculty folks were a married couple, an old couple.  They were probably in their sixties, ancient in my mind at that time.

      They had to be near the end of their careers, but they were also somewhat victims of the change of retirement systems.  PERA was fairly new and perhaps they didn’t have enough time to qualify for retirement yet.  I don’t really know, but I wonder why they continued to teach if they could have retired.

      I don’t remember what the old gentleman taught.  He was quiet, not terribly outgoing, and seemed content to follow his wife and let her do the interacting with others.  I only saw them in the morning when we all arrived and left coats etc. in the teachers’ lounge.

      One morning early in my tenure there, the old couple came into the lounge and removed their wraps.  The old lady, who was the Latin teacher, proceeded to open her purse and remove a carefully-folded 8 ½ X 11 blue-inked ditto master.

      She moved to the “copy machine”, which in those days was the “spirit duplicator”.  The mere mention of the machine brings to mind the alcohol scented blue-inked pages teachers used to distribute copies to students in those olden days.  (It would be more than a decade before “Xerox machines” would replace the Gestetner ditto duplicator.)

       “What was up with that?” I wondered, as she unfolded the ditto master and clamped it into the drum of the duplicator.  It would take a while, but eventually I got it figured out.  It was in a way a game played by the Latin teacher and her students.

       It seems that the classical teacher would assign her students something to learn every day at the end of the class period, I know not what, but it couldn’t have been a huge assignment.  An assigned spy, some kid who arrived early every day and was there when the teachers arrived, would stand by the door where the old couple entered the building.  He would observe whether she had a ditto master in hand.  If she did, there would be a quiz at the beginning of the class hour.

     The spy would spread the word and the students would hurriedly do their homework  before reporting to class—or make their cheat sheets, perhaps.  Somehow, the old lady caught on to the students’ system.  Thus it was, ditto sheets were borne not in hand, but smuggled into the building in her purse.

      As I reflected on that memory, it occurred to me that teachers in my day were more concerned with students learning than playing gotcha.  Perhaps the well-intentioned Latin teacher should have reacted by carrying a duplicate master in with her every morning, whether it had anything typed on it or not.

     But that is second-guessing.  I, too, found myself having to play gotcha in my day, when students tried to outsmart the system.  I am thinking of one girl who charged $10 for a book report.  She insisted that her customers copy her prose in their own hand.  She sold only one copy so I never got the identical report from two or more students.

       When I switched to multiple choice tests to relace the old book report, I found some enterprising student managed to copy the answers and hand them off to a classmate who happened to be in another section of the same class.  Making cheat sheets for vocabulary tests never went out of vogue.

      In the end, my hat is off to you, old Latin teacher.  I appreciate your effort to defeat human nature!

      

      

Old Phone New Phone

       I got a new phone a couple of weeks ago.  It’s just the third phone I have had since my first cell phone.  Unless you count the smartphone I bought for the Goodwife some four or five years go.  

     She was always complaining that we were out of date, that I didn’t want to try something new.  So I bought her the smart phone. 

     She never figured out how to use it.  She kept going back to her old flip phone.  One evening we dressed up a little to attend an event of some kind, maybe an alumni reunion.  She put the smartphone in her sweater pocket.  There it stayed for months.

      Normally, I could find it by calling it.  But this time, the battery was discharged and it refused to ring.  It lounged in the closet in the sweater pocket for months, until the Goodwife decided to wear that sweater again.  There it was.

     By that time, I had quit paying the bill for the thing. Upon discovering it, I decided if she wasn’t going to use it, maybe I could.  It had one attractive feature for me.  Its driving directions were much better and much more up-to-date than the Magellan (worthless) and the Garmin (somewhat better than worthless) we keep in the car.

      I reupped with Tracfone.  We had to have a new number.  We lost the old one when we quit paying for it.  I used the smartphone when we travel.  It’s handy for finding a motel you can afford or a nice place to eat.

       I really needed to replace the old flip phone.  The smartphone is too bulky to carry when I am working.  Plus, it is subject to breaking when I carry it in a pocket.

     The old flip phone has lost its external speaker.  The environment has to be pretty quiet in order for me to hear it ring.  The hinge on the cover has lost its spring and won’t stay closed.  If there is something besides the phone in my pocket, like my ear plugs, they can find their way between phone screen and cover.  That turns on the light and runs the phone battery down.

    The old phone is so old it doesn’t use the standard charging port.  I had to keep one cord just for that phone.  And one thing I will miss:  the old phone had a charging cradle.  Pop the phone into the cradle correctly and it charges without fumbling around trying to line up port and plug.

      Most of my arguments against having a smartphone have an answer.  There are smartphones that have a cover to keep it from getting broken.  There are smartphones with teeny-tiny screens so they aren’t all that bulky.    

     I held out for an old-fashioned flip phone.  The new one is quite a bit bigger and heavier than the old one.  There are many more features than the old one, too, like a camera, “cloud”, U-Tube, maps, Google, internet, email, FM radio, weather, and other stuff.

     Wait a minute.  This isn’t a smartphone?  It’s certainly smarter than I am. 

     I am making progress in using the new phone.  The old one was a Samsung, the new one a Nokia.  Different systems, different way of doing things.  It takes a few more button punches to get to the phone book, for instance.

     When I changed from my first phone to my second one, the store clerk magically held the two phones head-to-head, said a few voodoo words, and all of the contacts from the old phone magically appeared on the new one.

     This time, the young man who tried to help us couldn’t perform that magic.  He said since my old phone did not have Bluetooth, he couldn’t make the transfer.

     The Goodwife’s old phone did have Bluetooth, but he couldn’t figure out how to make the transfer of contacts form her old phone to her new one (identical to my new one) in one fell swoop.  He showed me how to do it one contact at a time.  So I did it, and it took a little time.  He said his time was worth $30 an hour to make the transfer.  My time wasn’t nearly that valuable, so I did it.

      I had to transfer my contact list one at a time, too.  But I had to type in the names and numbers.  That took a lot of time. 

      The process asked for first name, then last name, then number.  If there was more than one number, I had to punch “Add a Phone”.  After I put in that number, I had to punch “Change Phone Type” and select home, or work, or whatever.

      I discovered that the thing was alphabetizing by first letter of first name.  No, I can’t have that.  I started entering last names in the blank for first names, and the first name where the last name goes.  That didn’t work, either. 

       I go a-hunting (“A hunting I will go”) whenever I have to find someone in my contact list.  I am not sure how it is alphabetized, now.  If all else fails, I start at the beginning and scroll down.  Fortunately, my contact list isn’t that huge. 

     Ah, these time-saving devices.  I have figured out how to set the ringtone (“Nostalgia”—bell sound like an old landline phone) and the volume.  I can hear it now.  And I do know how to answer it.

     Give me a call.

Flex Rod

   I stood behind the running tractor in the hundred-degree heat, hands on hips, surveying the damage, wondering what else could go wrong.

     The story actually began in May when I dug the old Flex Rod out of its grassy cover, its last use in 1989.  The Flex Rod was built in Bird City, Kansas, probably in the sixties or seventies.  The factory was short-lived,  so there are probably not many left in the world.

     I came by the machine from my local ag junkyard, which I sorely miss.  It proved to be a little too big for my 2-cylinder John Deere tractors, so it didn’t ever get much use.

      When I dug it out in May, it was just to be a fallback in case I couldn’t find something bigger and better for my “new” tractor.  Sure enough, I haven’t found anything yet, and the weeds in the summer fallow refuse to engage in a cease-fire while I continue my search.

     So, last week I began restoring the old thing.  It had one inflatable tire, two tires more than half consumed (I suspect ground squirrels or pocket gophers), and one rotten tire.  On Saturday, I arranged for four new tires and delivered the old rims to the dealer.

     I picked up the new tires on Wednesday and spent Wednesday afternoon and much  of Thursday packing rusty wheel bearings with grease and mounting new tires.  I finished the job Friday Morning.

      It was all complicated by the hundred-degree heat (combined with 74 years of experience) and the tall grass that the wet spring produced.  Using the frontend loader on my other “new” tractor, I was able to dislodge the machine and get it out of some of the grass, but there was still plenty of growth since May.

       The last wheel packed and tire mounted, late Friday morning found me trying to get a hydraulic cylinder mounted.  My first choice wouldn’t work because of plumbing problems. The one that worked had to be removed from another machine.

     Then, I had to free up the rods and grease u-joints and other bearings.  Finally, about 2:30 P.M.,  the minute of truth arrived and I took it out for a test run.  It passed!

       I took off for the summer fallow.  I had the machine out of the ground to travel the half mile to the field.  But I didn’t get very far.  Bouncing up and down over the rough ground dislodged the hitch pin.  The hydraulic hoses were all that was dragging it along.

     Fortunately, I looked back in time to see what happened before any real damage occurred.   No longer fastened to the tractor, the weight of the Flex Rod was all behind the wheels, resulting in  the front end of the machine, the hitch frame, sticking up about six feet in the air.

     After a few moments of contemplating who or what in the universe had it out for me and was enjoying my frustration, and a few (more than a few?) unprintable words, I realized the solution was to carefully lower the machine using the hydraulics, trying not to let it fall with a thump and really do some damage, to itself, to the tractor, or to me.

      Once both front end and back end were safely on the ground, I disconnected the two hydraulic hoses and went through the process of hooking up to the machine all over again,  (Note: when speaking of farm implements “hooking up” doesn’t mean the same thing as it means in modern parlance.)  In about ten minutes, I was on my way again.  This time, the hitch pin was also pinned so the tongue could not escape no matter how severe the bouncing.

     I am happy to report that the powers that be found no more amusement in frustrating me.  I was able to get over the 160 acres without further incident.

 

     “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.”  Gloucester, in King Lear.  Or maybe they just pester us some.       

Aw Hail

       It didn’t look like it would amount to much.  I could keep disking, I thought.

      But then, it started sprinkling.  Within five minutes, it was really letting its hair down.  I was headed for the house when the ice started falling and the wind really picked up.

     I rode out the storm in the tractor cab.  It didn’t seem so bad at first.  The trees didn’t lose any leaves.  The weeds didn’t get knocked down much.  The rain gauge showed a half inch.

      That was Saturday afternoon about 3:30.  We took off for the weekend Sunday morning.  When we returned on Wednesday, nothing looked quite right.  The wheat seemed prematurely ripe, losing its green color.  Some of the grass around the farmyard, which I hadn’t mowed for three weeks, showed signs of damage, drying up, not rank and green as it should have been after a rain.

      About 8:30 Thursday morning, I called the insurance company to report Saturday’s hail storm.  By 10:00, two hail adjusters pulled into the yard.  They had been nearby, checking out hail damage.  They stopped in because they were close. 

      I was greasing tractor and disk, getting ready to try to finish disking the newly chiseled ex-crp ground.  It has been a long haul.  Taking a week to empty a grain bin that should have been done in two days, two flat tires on the new tractor, various and other breakdowns, I am behind in my work.  Nothing too unusual about that, I guess.

      I started disking and the crop adjusters took about 45 minutes to do theirs.  They waited for me at the end of the field.  They didn’t have much good news. 

      Maybe three to five bushels per acre, he said.  Damage?  No, expected yield. That’s what’s left. Ouch.

      The heads were not finished filling.  Damage to the plant would prevent the filling process from finishing.  What was left would not be very high quality, low test weight, for example.  Plus, severe weather such as wind and heat would further deteriorate the quality of the crop.

    Options.  Let the crop stand.  Plow up the crop.  Hay the crop.  Harvest the crop, three-to five bushels of poor-quality grain.

     Not too many good options, for sure.  It’s too late in the season to plow it up and get anything planted.  The neighbors have moved a swather into position, apparently ready to make hay of their ruined crop, when it dries up enough.

      I will explore the possibility of having someone make hay out of it.  I don’t need any hay, so I would have to try to find someone who does need it.  With the wet spring we have had, good-quality hay will probably be abundant this year. 

     So, it looks like leave it stand, the fallback option.

      Anyway, it wasn’t a good year to lose a crop, having bought “new” equipment and all.  I guess there’s never a good year to lose a crop.  That’s why you buy crop insurance.

     “Into each life some rain must fall,” old Longfellow wrote and the Ink Spots sang.

     Hold the ice, please.

 

Jack's Bin

     It might have been a cobra in that pit, its beady eyes mesmerizing the three of us as we peered through the narrow doorway.

     But no.  It was grain, wheat, slowly sliding down the sloped concrete floor into a running auger.  It was a sight we had hoped to see three days earlier.  It was, at last, a welcome sight.

     On Tuesday, three trucks showed up to carry away the contents of the grain bin at Jack’s place.  Brother Harry and I had been working hard to get things set up and ready.  We had loaded a pickup with tools, gas, shovels, belts, and two augers.  A third auger on wheels dutifully followed the 4010 to the bin sight.  

      Using the front-end loader on the 4010, we had managed to drop one of the augers down the tube and into the grain at the bottom of the cone-shaped pit.  Three semis pulled up about that time.

     We were just getting ready to start moving wheat, but when I started the other auger, the one that relays the wheat from the pit auger into the truck, the belt driving the pit auger flew off and got eaten up by the second auger.  In the process, the belt got cut in two.

     That was how the rest of the day went.  Though I had brought a bunch of belts, none worked.  Eventually, we pulled that pit auger out and replaced it with one run by an electric motor.  The electric motor is powered by a generator.  We had trouble getting the depth of the auger set so the electric motor could turn it.

      When we finally got it turning out a good-sized stream of grain, it overheated and shut itself off.  By that time, we had one truck loaded and on its way, and another truck less than a fourth full.  Attempts to find another motor failed.  Finally, about 8:30, we resolved to find a different motor the first thing in the morning and two truckers spent the night in Jack’s yard.

    Wednesday morning, one truck left empty to meet other commitments and Dave, the head driver, satyed to help us get the job done.  Failing to find another motor, we pulled the pit auger up a bit so it was barely in the wheat.  The electric motor’s overload protector had failed to reset, so we bypassed it.  The lighter load was to prevent the motor from burning up.

     It worked, but it took five hours to load the truck.  After the truck left, I returned home to try to finish chiseling CRP grass that will now be grain-producing again.  I was within three or four hours of finishing when the bolts on the chisel frame sheered off, letting one I-beam fall and twisting the remaining I-beam pretty badly.  My chiseling was done. 

     I went back to the farmyard sans chisel and hooked up to the disk.  By the time I got the disk ready to go, it was quitting time.  Thus ended Wednesday.

     On Thursday, Dave the trucker called saying he had ruined two tires on his trailer and he would be a little late.  So I set out to disk.  Things went well for three hours.

      Then I saw that the right rear outside dual tire was totally flat. Once again, I was nearing completion, but, no, fate denied me.

     As I was mulling this over, Dave called to say he was five miles out.  I parked tractor and disk and hurried down to Jack’s.  Where we sat for another five hours, letting the truck slowly fill.  It was past 8 o’clock when I got home.  And that was Thursday.

      On Friday morning, I debated whether to risk disking with one flat dual.  I opted to mow the yard instead.

     About noon, Dave-the-brother arrived with a spare motor and an ammeter.  With a spare waiting in the wings, we could be a little more aggressive with the original motor.  Dave attached the ammeter and we slowly lowered the auger deeper into the pit until the motor was pulling 10 amps.  This time, the truck got loaded in about two hours.  

     The bin still had wheat left in it.  Good news when it comes to getting a check for the wheat.  But not such good news for those weary of the struggle.  Dave-the-trucker thought there might be more than he could haul, too.

     So, Saturday morning, Dave-the-brother and I got out the big Dodge truck, aired its tires and headed for Jack’s place.  Dave-the-trucker was there by nine, a little ahead of us.  After about an hour, the bin bottom began to appear beneath the slowly sliding wheat.  It was a sight we sorely needed to see. 

     We went through the usual ritual of finishing off a grain bin, shoveling, sweeping, getting the last shovelful out.  We moved the wheeled auger out of the way, fired up the 4010 and pulled the pit auger out.  Dave-the-trucker was soon on his way back to Nebraska.

      Dave-the-brother and I ferried augers, tractor, and truck home.  After a lunch break, we returned to Jack’s with a shop vac and finished cleaning up the bin.  It was past five when we got back from that job. 

     The job that should have taken two days stretched to five days.  But at last, it was done.