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.

      

       

 

 

 

How the Mighty are Fallen

      It was about the size of a BB.  It was more cylindrical than orblike, like a short piece of a nail or a spaghetti noodle, less than 3/8 of an inch long.

     “It” was responsible for three days of agony, hair-tearing, and more than normal number of oaths I’ve vowed to stop using.

      All during the dry winter and spring, I held off stirring any dirt for fear that the terrible winds we had during May would start things blowing, like the 30’s or the 50’s.  Late in May, we got a nice heavy wet snow.  And before that all dried out, in early June we got a little over an inch of rain.

     Suddenly, it was time, past time, to get the ground ready if I was going to plant millet.  All the dry spring, the dry ground remained sterile.  After the snow, the weeds began to come.  Before the June rain had dried enough to farm, the weeds got to be 4—6 inches tall.

      So on a nice June day, I set out with the old Allis and the Calkins rod weeder and tried killing a few weeds.  It was still too wet, and the weeds were going over the rod alright.  But so was enough wet soil that some of the weeds were surviving.

       But there was another problem.  The tractor engine was dragging down, losing rpm’s as if it were overloaded.  Which of course it wasn’t.  Or was it?

       I decided the tandem disk offered a better opportunity to kill more weeds, so I returned to the farmyard and made the exchange.  All this took hours, of course.

       When I returned with the disk, the tractor still acted like it was overloaded.  No way.  Not with that disk.

     I found that if I stopped for a few seconds, the tractor would run top speed for about 30 seconds, and then start dragging down again.  I played that game for 30 minutes.  Stop and wait ten or fifteen seconds.  Go for thirty or forty-five seconds.  Do it again.

       I decided that was no good, so I headed back to the farm thinking, “What am I gonna do?”  It almost certainly had to be a fuel starvation problem, there being no ignition issue for a diesel. 

      The first thing I tried was changing the fuel filters.  Back in the field, it was stop and go, still.  This time, I pulled the fuel line off at the tank.  Plenty of flow there.  Next, I pulled the line off in front of the fuel pump.  Good flow there.  I pulled the line in front of the filters.  Fuel flow there seemed okay, though not as robust as in front of the electrical pump.

      Back to the field.  Same old problem.  Again, I managed to get over some acres when it decided it could run up-to-speed.  The key was once it got to running correctly, don’t stop.  Mother Nature determines that strategy has some problems, bladderly speaking.

      I got to thinking maybe the electrical fuel pump I added last years was too small, was restricting fuel flow.  The next morning, I went to town to try to buy a bigger fuel pump.  No luck.  All they had was what was already installed.

      With some vague hope that the problem had cured itself overnight, I went to the field with the disk.  But after about five minutes of the tractor dragging down, I knew that I would have to fix the problem some way somehow.

     Like most problems in life, determining that I could and would find and fix the problem set me on the right path.  That and centering on the fuel pump. 

      Back in the yard, it was quick work to remove fuel lines.  I had been down that road a few times very recently.  This time, I removed the line right in front of the filters and in front of the fuel pump.

      I put a piece of an old sheet over the fuel pump inlet.  I put some compressed air in the fuel line that connects to the filter, forcing air back through the fuel pump. 

     When I removed the piece of old sheet from the fuel pump inlet, there was my “rubber bb”.  Hard to imagine that a piece of rubber about the size of a whole peppercorn could shut down a giant tractor.

      Even the stone David used to take Goliath out of the picture was a boulder compared to what I held in my hand.  But the lesson was the same:  How the Mighty are Fallen.

      Back in the field I had every confidence that things would run correctly now.  And it did, too.  I finished disking the millet field and moved into the summer fallow that will be wheat in the fall (if moisture conditions allow).

     That afternoon as I retired from my day’s work and inspected things while the tractor filled with fuel.  I discovered two more problems.  One was quite apparent.  The air conditioner had stopped working.

     Two gangs on the disk had bearings that had failed.  My spirits sagged.  Would I never get this job done?

     I had to return to the city to keep an appointment with the eye surgeon.  (We scheduled surgery in October to correct double vision.)

      I used the trip to buy refrigerant but I couldn’t find disk bearings.  NAPA could get them in overnight.  It took one day to remove and disassemble the disk gangs.

      An eight-foot cheater (a section of 1-1/2 inch pipe in this case) and two big pipe wrenches were required to remove the nuts holding the disks on their shaft. Even had I the bearings in hand, which I didn’t, I was pretty much done for the day after that chore.  I’m not as young as I used to be!

       Another day of reassembly wore me out again.  On the third day, I began by recharging the air conditioner.  Success!  I headed for the field with a-c and disk working great.  Maybel

      I pressed the lever and dropped the disk in the ground.  I got ten feet into my chore when the tractor died dead. 

      What now?  When I tried to restart the tractor,  I found everything dead.  Pushing the starter button produced nothing.

      That has to be electrical, I thought.  I brought the portable generator and the battery charger to the field.  Still nothing.  An hour of checking battery connections and other electrical things led me to a solenoid that didn’t appear to be working.

      Back to town.  They had the solenoid.  When I tried the starter button after replacing the solenoid, I got the old “click-click-click” that means only one thing.  Dead battery, plural in this case—two of them.

       I put in a quick call to NAPA before closing time, in case they had to order the batteries in overnight.  They had the batteries.  For only $579, the two new batteries would be mine!

      The batteries are huge weighing about 80 pounds apiece.  Gravity assisted in getting them down from their perch above the tractor tires.  I wasn’t looking forward to getting the new ones in place.  Gravity switched sides in this battle.      

      Day four of this nightmare began with a trip to town.  The young lady who waited on me at NAPA had to have assistance to get the dolly with the batteries on it tilted back enough to roll them to my pickup.  Between the two of us, we got them loaded and the old ones on her dolly.  She didn’t volunteer to help me get them to their proper place in the tractor.

      The 4010 with frontend loader came to my rescue.  The scoop just below the tailgate of the old Dodge pickup made it possible to slide the batteries into the scoop.  With the scoop perched above the battery box, gravity was once again on my side and I managed to drop both batteries into the battery box.  

      Some minutes later, with baited breath, I tried the starter.  The tractor whirred to life almost before I could worry about what to do next if this didn’t work.

      Two days later, the summer fallow was done.  Now, to plant the millet.  But wait!  There’s more!

      Weeds were coming up in the millet field.  The disk didn’t kill everything.  The field would have to be worked again before planting.

      This job took only two days with the Calkins machine and everything running correctly.  Another two days of getting the drills calibrated and loaded with seed and I was planting.

     I finally finished planting July 7, about a month behind schedule.

     Is somebody trying to tell me something? I wonder.

     On the other hand, Mother Nature blessed me with .75” of rain the evening of July 8.  That should be the perfect amount to get the millet off to a good start.

     Another old saying:  "Hope springs eternal in the human breast."

      

 

 

The Golf Cart

      It rolled off the assembly line in 1965.  It’s been rolling along ever since.

     It probably rolled across golf courses for some years, but for the last thirty-plus years, it hasn’t been too close to a golf course.

      “Uncle” bought the old Cushman many years ago to serve as a yard cart for the motel-RV Park.  The work for the cart wasn’t abusive.  But there wasn’t anyplace to keep the cart inside.  Local juveniles found they could easily hijack the old girl and take her on a joy ride.

       Uncle would have to go out and find the cart, where the batteries had run down, or in at least one case, pull it out of a ravine where the miscreants left it for dead. 

      Removing the keys was no help.  The thieves knew to hotwire across the switch.  Chaining and locking the thing to a light pole slowed things down.

        When “Auntie” and Uncle retired from the hospitality industry, Uncle sold the cart to Mom.  She wanted it serve as a carrier between the garden and the house.  Mom and I rented a small U-Haul trailer from La Junta and took her S-15 GMC to get the cart.

     The trailer opening wasn’t quite wide enough for the back tires on the old golf cart, but Uncle took care of that by taking a full-speed run up the trailer ramp.  The cart went in.

      The days of being garaged outdoors were over when Mom got it.  The old cart  had a permanent place in the garage.  One car had to be parked at a slight angle to make room for everything, but it worked.  It’s still working.

      The poor old thing has suffered some abuse in its present situation.  This time, from grandkids and even great grandkids, who also found thrills in joy-riding around the farm.  It has lost both bumpers,  lost a few screws and bolts, and suffered cracks to its aging fiberglass body.  But it still runs.

       Maintenance was highly necessary this spring.  I knew it would have to have  new batteries.  When I folded back the body to reveal batteries, I discovered a broken tube that serves as the frame for the machine.

       I can fix that.  I took one piece of angle iron that would fit inside the square tube, and another piece that would fit over the tube.  It took some doing, but eventually I got everything lined up and clamped in place. 

      I “rivet” welded the two angle irons.  That means I did what I usually do when welding—burned a hole through outside angle iron, the tube and even the inside angle iron.  Once the hole is through everything, I backed the rod out and attempted to patch the hole—also standard practice for my welding.

      So far, it is working.  The angle irons can’t move and they keep the tube in place.  That job done, I turned to replacing the speed switch plates.  There are four copper plates about an inch by two inches.  They are stationary.  A “movable switch plate” rotates with the foot pedal to vary the speed of the cart by contacting the stationary plates. 

     The old plates were burned and rough and the moveable plate couldn’t return to its resting place, so the thing was always in gear.  I had either to shut off the switch or grab the foot-feed and pull up to disengage the contact plates and stop the cart.

      A thorough cleaning and new batteries and I was ready to go.  Except:  after an initial lurch, the thing wouldn’t go.  It was dead. New batteries, cleaned cables and contacts and nothing.  When I hooked it up to the charger, it wouldn’t charge.

      To make a long story short, I spent a lot of hours when I wasn’t working on something else, while waiting for it to maybe rain, trying to figure out why that thing wouldn’t run.  I used an electric meter to test this lead and that lead.  I changed the solenoid.  Nothing.

      Finally, I traced the problem to one particular cable.  It would carry current when I tested it with the meter, but when it was under any kind of load, including charging, it finked out.  I had cleaned the terminal when I replaced the batteries, but the problem was corrosion where cable and terminal meet, the clamp that hold the cable wires and the terminal together.

       I used the most sophisticated of tools to figure it out—a pair of pliers.  Thinking maybe one of the new batteries was no good, I made brief contact across the negative and positive battery posts.  It would spark if I went directly from battery post to battery post.  But when I shorted from cable to cable, nothing.   

       It was a week or two of either walking or driving a pickup when I had to carry stuff around the yard, from shop to machine.  Redoing the cable connection took no time at all in comparison to the amount of time I spent scratching my head.

      You will have trouble imagining the thrill I felt when I first pressed the foot pedal and the old gal jumped to life. 

      So, the old Cushman golf cart rolls on.  It lives to serve another day.