A Grandson and I were headed “up north.” He has lived in Scotland for the last ten years, and he is enrolled in a Scottish university for the fall semester. He was going to ride the combine with Matt Mills, who was harvesting wheat on our land. It is the land my Grandparents settled on when they moved to this area from around Tahlequah OK back in the day. We call it “up North.”
As we drove, I said to Ezra, “Did I ever tell you about the time I went on harvest crew?” I’m an old guy, and I have learned to ask such a question before I start one of my stories. Older Grandkids usually do not care to hear a story twice, and I am fine with that. Younger grandkids, however, are happy to listen no matter how many times you want to tell it. I am almost out of younger grandkids.
Ezra politely answered, “I don’t think you have,” and I sensed an opening.
It wasn’t long before we arrived at the field, and Ezra was on the combine. Matt’s John Deere machine is state-of-the art with a 40-foot header, a roomy comfortable air-conditioned cab, and all the automation and data one could ever want.
I explained quickly to Ezra that the Case 1000 I ran did not even have a useable umbrella if it was windy.
I started recalling, and here is a bit more of the harvest crew story.
It was 1967. I was 19. I graduated high school the year before. Fred Meng, the local Case tractor dealer, asked me to join his custom cutting (harvesting) crew for the summer wheat harvest. I was excited to accept as I had never really been anywhere except occasionally to Guymon or Liberal, Hudson KS for family reunions, and a few trips to far distant Amarillo.
Fred and his crew would take two combines along with trucks and associated equipment to the Kingfisher area of Oklahoma. When harvest finished there, they would follow the harvest north. First back to around home, then up into Kansas, Colorado, and the year I went, Wyoming. That year, we also went into the San Louis Valley in Colorado. I was excited to take part in this adventure.
I remember the day we left town headed downstate. I was driving one of the pickups pulling a trailer loaded with a combine header. I had stopped, waiting for traffic on Highway 54 at the intersection just across from where the Dollar General store is now. We were headed east toward Turpin and then downstate.
The music on the pickup’s AM radio was interrupted by a news bulletin. The Six-Day War as it was eventually called, had started in the Mideast. I remember thinking the world would never be the same.
And I was right.
The machine I ran most of the time was a Case Model 1000. Fred also had a smaller combine.
I seem to remember the 1000 having an 18-foot header, which was big for the day, but Google now tells me it might have been 14 ft. I remember driving a truck loaded with a combine over Raton Pass and La Veta Pass and on into the San Luis Valley of Colorado.
In the “Valley,” we thrashed malt barley for some of the farmers Fred knew.
Weather conditions needed to be optimal for the malt barley to be harvested so it would meet the specifications of the brewing process.
On days when the weather conditions did not allow our machines to run, Fred might take us fishing. This was hard to believe! We could see mountains on every side, and we were fishin’. I was actually getting paid to do this! It was really something exceptional to be working every day surrounded by those majestic Rocky Mountain peaks…and then goin’ fishin’!
Looking back, I am amazed someone my age was allowed to do all I did, driving trucks loaded with combines going down highways and interstates, over mountain passes, working with operating machinery in the fields, driving loaded trucks of grain to town, etc. It is probably against the law today for kids my age to do such work.
It was an exciting and very profitable experience. In those days, that kind of work was just part of growing up in a farm family. Fred was a great guy to work for, and I learned a lot about working and about life.
Our small crew, as I recall now there were five or six of us, stayed in motels, and had our meals in local cafés and restaurants. Motels in those days were not the fancy places we enjoy today.
At one of our stops somewhere in Kansas, I thought I had fallen in love! In the restaurant we frequented, there was a nice-looking waitress. She had a really cute smile. I thought she was about my age. I do not recall actually speaking to her except maybe to order (have I mentioned I have always been a bit shy?) I just admired her from a distance.
I was certain it was meant for us to get to know each other better. I was so certain that I borrowed a pencil from Fred and wrote her a note on a napkin and gave her my address. I carefully placed it on the table when we left.
We were moving out to go further north.
I was absolutely certain she would feel the same way about me. The way she smiled at me, how could she not?
My note must have somehow gotten lost because I never heard anything from her.
Maybe someone else cleaned that table and threw it away. Maybe it blew off onto the floor. Maybe I should have left a tip with it. I am certain that had she read it, she would have contacted me.
It had never once occurred to me that she might not like me as much as I thought. Thinking back, it might have been a good move to have actually said something to her.
In any case, as we know, Providence had other plans, and it has all worked out very well.
A young Granddaughter once said to me as I started a story, “Oh Grandpa, you’re just making stuff up again.” While I am capable of “making stuff up again,” what you have just read is to the best of my recollection, completely true.
(don3518@gmail.com)
(Excerpted from Some Called It Coincidence)