Thursday, January 05, 2006, 20:22
A Job To Do
When the telephone rang at a little after 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, our 460 Farmall tractor was the farthest thing from my mind.
"Hi, this is your neighbor, Kathy," said the voice on the other end of the line. "Is Randy home?"
The next-door neighbor's place is a half mile down the road.
"Ummm, no. He won't be home for another hour or so," I said. "What's wrong?"
"Well," she said, "one of our horses died. I've got the rendering truck here, but he can't get back in by the barn, and we need a tractor to pull her out."
"What about our other neighbor?" I said.
"I already called him. He can't get his tractor started," she replied.
I thought for a moment.
"If I can start the tractor and drive it down to your place, will the rendering truck guy drive it to pull her out?"
I knew full well that while I was 'technically' and physically capable of driving a tractor to pull a dead horse out of a barn -- the emotional aspect was a different story. I was sure that if I had to pull that horse, I would be crying the whole time and would have the 'willies' for days afterward.
"Oh, yes, I'm sure he will," she said.
"I'll go down to the barn and see if I can get it started, then. If I can, I'll call you right back," I said.
I put on a coat, went down to the barn and pushed open the door.
"Well, old girl," I said to the 460 Farmall, "we have a job to do. It's not a very good job, but it's got to be done."
I climbed up on the tractor, pulled the choke, pushed the starter button -- and she fired right off.
I went back to the house and called the neighbor.
"I got it started," I said. "I'm going to let it warm up for 5 minutes, and then I'll be ready to go."
I put on a stocking cap and gloves and then went outside to tie Charlie up. Our Springer Spaniel loves to run beside the tractor, but I figured we didn't need to have him in the way.
A few minutes later, I drove the tractor out of the barn, tire chains clanking. 'If it's muddy around their barn,' I thought, 'at least we've got the chains for traction.'
Once I made it out to the blacktopped road, the clinking and clanking of the chains grew louder. I didn't want to drive too fast because it wouldn't do anybody any good if I lost one, or both, of the chains during the half-mile drive.
Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the neighbor's place. The rendering truck driver motioned me to pull into the second driveway, the one that runs back to the barn. Once I got behind the house, I immediately saw a problem. There was a fence -- and the gateway wasn't even half wide enough.
The truck driver tried to pull out the steel post that held the middle of the short section of fence. But of course -- it was frozen solid.
I idled down the engine.
"Let's use the tractor bucket to pull that out," I yelled.
I drove up to the fence and raised the bucket on the tractor. The truck driver wrapped the chain around the bucket and then around the steel post.
When I hit the lever to raise the bucket farther, nothing happened.
Again and again, I bounced the bucket upward, and gradually, bit by the bit, the steel post gave way. Finally it pulled out of the frozen ground.
"Where is she?" I said.
The truck driver pointed to a lean-to built against the side of the old dairy barn.
"In there," he said.
No wonder he couldn't use his big truck to get her out. I pulled up, turned the tractor around and started backing toward the barn. I had to back through another gateway, and this one was just wide enough -- with about two inches to spare on either side of the tractor tires. I had to raise the tractor bucket several times to avoid to smashing a couple of fence posts, but finally the tractor was in position.
The truck driver attached the chain to the drawbar.
"Can you pull her out?" he said.
"Oh, sure, I *can*," I said. "But I'm not going to. I'll let you drive the tractor."
I climbed down, walked along the lane and turned the corner back toward the house where our neighbor was feeding her other horse grain and trying to keep him calm.
The mare that died was 29, and the remaining gelding is 30.
My mother always claimed that it was my neighbor's dad's fault that I like horses so much. When I was a very little girl, I used to go with my dad over to their place when Dad checked on his crops. At one time, we owned that farm, too, and then my mom and dad sold the house first and several acres along with it. If Merlin happened to be home, and their pinto mare, Bliss, happened to be tethered out on the lawn, he would put me up on her back and I would sit there, as happy as could be, while she picked grass and Dad drove back to check on the hay or the corn or the soybeans.
As I stood there talking with my neighbor, we could hear the sound of the tractor moving out from the barn and down the driveway toward the rendering truck. I wanted to keep her occupied with conversation so she would be a little distracted from what was going on -- from what we could not see on the other side of the house.
The two old horses, I knew, were not just horses, they were members of the family, just as all of the neighbor's animals are members of the family, just as my animals are members of the family.
By the time we walked back around by the barn and I had helped her put the fence back up, the mare had been winched up into the rendering truck and the door was closed.
"Thank you so much. I didn't know what we were going to do," the neighbor said.
It is just the three women living there -- my neighbor, her sister and their mother -- which is why Randy drives the tractor down there to push snow out of their driveway whenever we have a snowstorm.
"Not a problem," I said. "It's good for the tractor to get out and run once in a while."
A few minutes later, I was on my way back home. I had gone no more than a hundred feet when a truck pulled up behind me. By this time, it was getting dark, and I had turned on the headlights and the flashers.
The truck, of course, was my husband coming home from work.
He pulled up ahead of me and then parked on the shoulder.
"What are you doing out here with the 460?" he asked.
"One of their horses died, and they needed a tractor to pull her out of the barn," I shouted above the sound of the tractor engine.
"Oh," he said. "Do you want me to drive the tractor back home?"
My husband was wearing dress pants, a good shirt and a light jacket -- hardly the best of attire for driving a tractor a half mile on a winter's day.
"No," I said. "I'm dressed for it. You're not."
A little while later, the 460 and I were safely back in our driveway, and I discovered that my husband, bless his heart, had made a pot of coffee as soon as he walked in the house.
By this time, I was chilled to the bone. I had thought about putting on a pair of coveralls before I left, but I didn't want to waste any more time. It would take me at least 15 minutes to drive to the neighbor's, and I knew the rendering truck driver would not wait around forever.
And so, the 460 and I had finished the job we set out to do. It was not a "good job" done -- but it was done.
And I can honestly say that a cup of hot coffee has never been quite so welcome.
Have had a recent experience with helping a neighbor -- or with a neighbor helping you? Click on the "comments" link below to tell us about it. |
Wednesday, January 04, 2006, 21:19
Getting Rusty
It is cloudy and foggy and misty today.
Again.
To me, it feels like it has been cloudy forever. So I decided to look back in my weather records.
The last full day of sun here was on December 19, 2005 (last year!) when it was 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
It warmed up shortly thereafter -- and has been cloudy since then.
I looked farther back in my weather records and discovered that it has been 28 days (almost one whole month!) since we have had two sunny days in a row.
The last time we had three sunny days in a row was back in October on October 14, 15 and 16.
In the time since October 1, 70 days have been cloudy. So in other words, in the last 96 days, it has been cloudy 73 percent of the time.
No wonder I am beginning to feel that I might start to rust soon!
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not complaining about the warmer temperatures. Winter days when the highs are in the 30s are days to be cherished. Much better than those days when the "high" is 10 degrees below zero.
The warmer weather also is easier on the LP tank. The furnace only comes on a few times during the day to keep the house at a steady temperature, rather than running every half hour to keep the house warm. And with higher fuel prices this year, any kind of savings is a bonus.
Unfortunately, I do miss the sunshine. And seeing the sunset. It seems like a very long time since I have seen a sunset. But -- it's just a 'fact of nature' that when the days are warmer in the winter, it is cloudy, and that when the sun is out in the winter, it's usually because we under arctic high pressure.
Along with the warmer temperatures, the roads have turned slushy. I keep hoping that the slush will disappear before colder weather sets in, because if it doesn't, well -- it's going to be one BUMPY ride out of here until spring.
LeAnn R. Ralph
