This is a true harvest truck driver story from decades ago. A 60-something farmer used his seniority on his farm to claim the job as harvest truck driver, while all the younger members of his harvest crew were assigned the sweaty, itchy, boring jobs.
Now, this farmer, ol’ “Poppa” Topp, liked two thing about harvest truck driving. One, he could have someone in the cab of his truck to keep him company and listen to his constant chatter. And, two, he could drink beer on the job and not have to worry about wrecking the combine. Poppa, apparently, saw no danger or hypocrisy in drinking beer and driving the truck back and forth to the grain elevator. But, remember, this was back in the days of more lenient driving laws.
On the day of this story, Poppa asked a 9-year-old neighbor’s son to ride with him to the elevator. On the way back to the field from dumping the grain at the elevator, Poppa stopped in front of a local bar and grill, handed some money to the kid, and instructed his youthful passenger to “go inside and buy me a six-pack of cold Hamm’s beer.”
The innocent kid went inside, climbed up on a tall bar stool and said to the barkeep, “Gimme a cold six-pack of Hamm’s.”
The barkeep, who didn’t recognize the kid, replied, “Son, you’re way to young for me to sell you beer.”
The kid replied, “Oh, it ain’t for me. It’s for Poppa Topp.”
“Oh, well,” replied the barkeep. That’s different. Sure. Here’s your beer.”
When the kid returned to the truck, he handed the six-pack to Poppa, who quickly took a cold can from the package, snapped it open and took a long, cold satisfying draw.
Then he shoved the rest of the cold-six pack under the truck seat and took out the remnants of a hot six-pack of Hamm’s, smiled at the kid, and said slyly, “We’ll give these cans to the crew when we get back to the field. Keep your mouth shut about the cold ones.”
And, that’s what happened.
***
On occasion, I get to have very interesting conversations with dedicated column readers. The most recent wuz a phone conversation with a 96-year-old reader, ol’ Bitsan Rowells, from close to Greeley, Colorado.
Bitsan liked some of my recent columns about Old Iron and had an old-iron story to share. He said he graduated from high school in 1947 and his first job was working for a farmer near Holly, Colo., who owned land on both sides of the the Kansas/Colorado border.
The story he told wuz that the farmer bought a 15-foot one-way disk, but he didn’t have a big enuf tractor to pull it. However, he did own two John Deere model 30s, one with an electric starter and one with a crank starter.
So, the farmer got creative and engineered himself a more powerful tractor. He took the front tires and axle from the crank tractor and somehow welded the rest of the tractor to the rear of the electric-start tractor. Then he hooked the one-way to the hitch of the rear tractor, put it into a desired gear, and then started the front tractor, and put it into the same gear as the rear tractor.
Then he put Bitsan in the seat of the front tractor and Bitsan started driving. The pulling immediately started the rear tractor and away he went with the dual-tractor rig.
Bitsan told me that the dual-tractors had plenty of power to pull the one-way, but turning them around was problematic. It wuz unwieldy, to say the least. But, Bitsan said he got all the land tilled with the innovative rig.
We ended our conversation with Bitsan telling me that later in his life he began making bits and spur for folks with horses. Then he started collecting bits and spurs and has put together a nice collection. All in all, it wuz a very pleasant conversation.
***
Living in today’s U.S.A. can make a person gnash his/her teeth. Three things that bug me are the government shutdown, the ever-growing intrusion of big government into our personal lives, and disfunction in our educational system.
So, I did what I often do. I wrote three limericks about the situation. Here they are:
***
Our Congress is broken — I stress —
And gotten our country in a mess.
It shut the government down,
And promptly left town,
And left us voters under duress.
***
Our Founders sought limited government.
Personal independence was their intent.
Now our bureaucracy rages,
And has created 175,000 pages,
Of rules and regs, sadly, with our consent.
***
Our education system is quite numbed.
And, to “money’s the answer” succumbed.
Yet, the more money we send,
For our schools to spend.
Declining test scores leave us all bummed.
***
Words of wisdom for the week, after all the recent election results have been tallied, come from former Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis. He said: “The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.”
Wise words, indeed. Have a wonderful fall week.
