Month: July 2021

Attention, all you agriculturally ignorant city-slickers out there!

This one’s for you…

“Oh sh*t. Dad’s not going to be too happy about this…”

I sat there on the side of a dirt road, trying to take a nap in the cab of our neighbor’s tractor, waiting for my dad to show up. In addition to the mid-morning July sun, my ability to snooze was severely handicapped by the persistent thought that, indeed, the patriarchal figure in my life would indubitably be disappointed in the predicament in which I had found myself.

Now, pissing Dad off to no end with my agriculture-related shenanigans and general farming ----- -ups was nothing new. However, I had just taken it to a whole ‘nother level with this here Pirate-Tractor. And I can’t say I was very hopeful that he would give me points for creativity.

Hmmm…I suppose I should back this tractor tale on up and tell you how I got here in the first place, though…

‘Twas back in the middle of the Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99, and I was working full-time on our family farm with my dad before heading off to start college in the fall. We had been having problems with the two tractors we owned breaking down on us, so we had to resort to borrowing a spare one from a fellow farmer for a few weeks.

We’re not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, so when the left rear tire–one of the big ones, mind you–began gradually working its way off the rear axle, did we complain and ask for a refund? No! Why? Because we had no choice!

Instead, we learned to co-exist with this modest inconvenience by regularly jacking up that side of the tractor off the ground, laboriously moving the tire back in towards the cab, and then tightening all the bolts down with the heaviest-duty ratchet you’ve ever seen.

Well I had finally had enough of that horse baloney after having to do it 4-5 times, so I decided to that I was going to tighten them bolts down so friggin’ tight that they would never come loose again. Fortunately, we had brought the tractor home for the holidays¹Before we took a day and half “vacation” for the 4th of July. so I was able to scrounge up an array of steel pipes and bars from around ye olde homestead, and MacGuyvered myself a cheater bar²A cheater bar is any bar or pipe that is used to effectively lengthen a ratchet handle, enabling one to apply extra torque when tightening/loosening a particularly stubborn bolt or nut. See Figure 1. about 6 feet long.

Yes, you read that right: 6 feet. Picture a ratchet. Just a regular ratchet, not the one in the figure above–I need to make this as dramatic as possible. Now picture that ratchet, but ~10x bigger. On the wheel of a tractor. With my lightweight ass hanging off the end of it like a hyperactive sloth, with both my feet and hands wrapped around it, bouncing up and down like a regularly-active monkey.

I rinsed and repeated this thorough procedure for all 8 or so of the lugnuts, and upon completion, proudly proclaimed to Dad, “This ----- ain’t going nowhere!”

A few days later, it was time to get the tractor back into action, so early that morning Dad told me to “road”³I.e. Drive the tractor down the highway. it to one of our fields about 20 miles away while he ran errands in town, and then wait there until he got back.

Relatively speaking, it seemed that I had a relaxing morning ahead of me, so you didn’t have to ask me twice to hop up in that thing and haul tail down KS Highway 51. Granted, “haul tail” in a tractor means maxing out around 22 mph, so all in all, I had almost an hour commute ahead of me.

Fast-forward to about an hour later, with a little under a mile to my final destination, I started to feel a slight shaking. I thought it was a bit odd, so I started looking around to see what might be causing the ruckus. Just as I turned to my left, I saw the strangest ----- thing my life: a giant tire speed past me.

What. The. ----- .

You know how in old Wile E. Coyote cartoons where he runs off the cliff, but there’s a split second when he’s suspended in mid-air before he realizes he’s about to fall, and somehow gravity doesn’t kick in until he acknowledges it?

It was exactly like that.

It’s hard to describe the cognitive dissonance I experienced in that moment–how the hell could anything be passing me?!? This stretch of highway was closed for repaving, so I was literally the only traffic for a good 5-10 miles in each direction.

“So where the heck did that tire come fro–“

Oh.

Sh*t.

That’s…that’s my tire.

“But, wait! How, then, am I still rolling down the road uprigh–“

*creaaaaaaak*

“Oh, hello, Gravity,” I thought aloud as the laws of physics reasserted themselves and the entire tire-less quadrant of the tractor plummeted 4 feet straight down.

*THUNK!* went the left side of the axle as it landed hard in the freshly-paved road, making a rather noticeable divot.

I sat there tilted sharply to my left at a 45-degree angle, stunned and desperately trying to comprehend that that just happened, watching my tire roll on down the road without me.

After about a quarter of a mile, it veered to the left off the highway, down the ditch…and out into the smack-dab middle of the field where I was supposed to ultimately end up at. Oh, the irony.

On the bright side, thanks to the highway being closed, there was no oncoming traffic, because if there had been any, I’m pretty certain a rather gruesome and fatal car accident would have ensued. I mean, that’s some Final Destination-level sh*t right there.

On the other hand, the road closure meant the only thing I could do was just sit there and hope the KDOT⁴Kansas Department of Transportation crew would show up and decide against strangling me for completely undoing all there hard work with the nasty divot I had made.

And eventually they did–and no doubt that was a WTF moment for them when the rolled up to the scene with me just sitting there in the tractor sideways. Lucky for me, they found it more humorous than anything else, and graciously took pity on me. They ended up wrapping a chain around the now-naked axle and then around the teeth of one of their front-loaders and helped my peg-legged little Pirate-Tractor hobble off onto the dirt road right there off the highway. They propped me up by putting a couple blocks underneath the axle, then were like “OK, see you!” They were happy to get me out of their way, but weren’t going to help me out beyond that…so, thanks?

…and that is where you found me at the beginning of the story, anxiously awaiting the wrath of Bob J. upon his return.

Of course, “running errands in town” took him 4x longer than promised, so I had to sit there in that stupid ----- Pirate-Tractor from 10 am until around 2 or 3 pm–almost 5 hours–before he finally showed up.

In the meantime I thought I might have been able to prop up the Prodigal Tire and roll it back to the tractor, and maybe even put it back on before he returned. But one very important life lesson I learned out in the middle of that dusty-ass field was holy crap, tractor tires are heavy! Yeah, I couldn’t lift that a centimeter off the ground, though it’s probably for the better, as I indubitably would have run the risk of getting crushed by the 500-800 lb thing at some point during the hypothetical wheel-wrangling.

No, if you came here for an actual near-death event in this story–my death anways–then that would have been when Dad and I nearly got into a fist-fight over which one of was responsible for it coming off.

You may be surprised to hear that I actually had a pretty strong case against him. As it turned out, back when I was tightening all the lugnuts–remember that?–there was the usual 8 in a circular pattern, and then one oddly off to the side. I had asked him whether or not I should tighten that one, and he told me no, so I didn’t touch it.

Well, as it turns out, that was the one that actually kept the tire on the axle. Go figure.

But honestly, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago–about 20 years after the fact, and long after Dad had passed away–that I finally admitted that, yeah, he was right: I should have been paying attention to that rascally tire. You know, instead of be-bopping down the road like a cool cat without a care and all that.

Anyways, that is the point of the story: pay attention, Dumbass.

Otherwise you might end up being the guy or gal who finally does it–who finally manages, as they say, to put the “laughter” in “vehicular manslaughter”.

Editor’s note: This was one component of the Near-Tragedy Trifecta of the Summer of ’99. You can read about the other two [less exciting] close encounters with grave bodily harm here.

Content created on: 8/9 July 2021 (Thurs/Fri)

What could possibly be more interesting than life on the farm?

Death on the farm. Definitely “death on the farm”…

“He gave his life in service of his country.”

Usually when you hear that phrase you’re bound to assume that a “fallen soldier” is the topic of the solemn and hushed conversation you’ve just awkwardly intruded upon. But what if I told you that’s not always the case? Truly, there are other unsung heroes across the Fruited Plain of this great nation that have laid down their life–or at least came darn tootin’ close–for the betterment of their fellow citizens. Case in point: the Semi-Involuntary Farm Boy.

And I’m here to tell you first hand: the danger is very real and very present…

Let me be real with you: I hated growing up on the farm. Me and agriculture? We simply didn’t get along. But on the bright side, it sure is nice having a tidy collection of Crazy Farming Stories in my back pocket, ever-ready for whenever I need to impress my city-slicker friends.

Amongst my favorite of these are what I call the Near-Tragedy Trifecta: the 3 consecutive¹Okay, so technically I think these unfolded over the span of about a week. days in July 1999 where my life played out eerily similar to what I imagine a farm-themed installment of the infamous Final Destination movie franchise would indubitably have looked like–with the exception that I managed to walk away relatively unscathed.

For context, the Summer of ’99 was the summer between high school and college for me, and I spent it toiling away with my dad on our family farm so I could buy a car of my own. Surprisingly, this is the first time I’ve talked about that summer in these parts, because, whew-wee, boy! That was one crazy-ass summer!

In Exhibit A, I present to you here, in non-chronological order, 3 of the several times I probably should have died over the course of those 3 months…

Sunday, July 4, 1999: Around the Fourth of July that year, my dad and stepmom decided to celebrate the birth of this fine nation…at the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation, in the finest casino their reservation had to offer, that is! Since said nation/reservation/casino was on the other side of the state, they kindly left me in charge of the basic day-to-day operations of our farm in their absence.

Now, when the farm is in “just keep shit running before you run off to hang out with you honey” mode, one of the primary tasks is to make sure that the crops are being watered, and this usually means making the rounds to check whether all the farm’s irrigation motors and sprinklers are running. On the morning of the Fourth, my grandma and I were hauling tail around Morton County doing just that, me with high hopes of knocking my duties out early and being able to take off to Beaver (Oklahoma) to celebrate the day away with my Amazonian girlfriend, Teri.

Well, the Law of Averages will tell you that if you have 7 irrigation motors, then at least 1 of them is not going to be running when you go to check on it, and sure enough a motor on one of our pumps was in need of being brought back to life.

After some basic maintenance, I went to crank that bad boy back up, and tentatively pressed the ignition button, praying to hear that sweet sweet hum of staying on schedule to see my lady friend.

Engine: “Vroom! Huff-chuff-huff-chuff!”

Me: “Oh, ----- yeah. Ain’t nothing gonna keep me away from Beaver tonight!”

Engine: “VROOOOOOOOOOM!”

Me: “The ----- you say, Mr. Engine?!?”

Driveshaft *Wildly flapping around at a few thousand RPMs*: “Wheeee! Look at me, I’m a helicopter!

Stunned, I sat there staring in awe as it spun out for about 30 more seconds before losing its momentum and coming to a stop…though it took my racing heart another 30 minutes to return to normal afterwards.

After a quick investigation, it was discovered that the bolts fastening the motor to the driveshaft had just straight-up snapped off–ergo the 3000 RPM, 40-pound chopper wannabe that had just been spinning way to close to my cranium.

Fortunately, though, the mechanical failure had been on the motor end of the shaft, otherwise had it came loose from the pump side, the motor would have kept spinning it faster and faster. And, based on where I had been standing, there’s no doubt in my mind that my final, violent moments would have horrifically included getting my skull bashed in and a couple of my precious limbs grotesquely maimed.

The good news is that I ended up making it to my Beaver-based booty call later that day.²PG-rated, that is. Given that I was thiiiiis close to being on the wrong side of a closed-casket funeral, I would definitely call that a win…

Thursday, July 1, 1999 (est.): Irrigation engines must have really had it out for me that week. Mere days previous to the Drive-shaft/Helicopter Brain-Basher incident, Dad had sent me a few miles from we were working to check up on a different pump engine in a nearby field.

Now, on the Farm of Bob J., there were many idiosyncrasies, and this particular engine fell squarely in that category. As I recall, it had a bad battery on it, and so you could only use it to start the engine–but if you left it connected after that it would short-circuit and explode. Fun times, indeed, right?

Also, this engine ran on natural gas, but for some reason we didn’t have a proper valve on the gas line. Now for those not in the know, I guess you have to turn the gas supply down pretty low when you start these types of engines (or something like that). In our case though, we had no flow control and were forced to completely remove the fuel hose and then quickly reattach it once the engine got to spinning.

Anyways, this engine had died, and so again, after some basic maintenance and trouble-shooting, I was ready to see if it would fire back up. But instead of turning a key or pushing an ignition button, I had to bend down to where the battery was inexplicably residing on the ground, and re-connect the battery cable.

This was very confusing to me, though. No, not this oblique and convoluted version of “Gentlemen, start your engines!” It was the fire that was so confusing.

HOLY SH*T, WHY WAS THERE ONLY FLAMES WHERE MY ARM SHOULD BE!?

While my brain was processing the philosophical question of whether or not spontaneous human combustion was for realz, my body was busy getting my perhaps-phantom limb the ----- away from that fire lickity-split! Lucky for my dumb ass, my central nervous system had acted quickly enough in yanking my hand out of el fuego that the only damage done was that all the hairs on my arm had been singed off. Once, I got over the shock, I quickly realized what happened and rushed to shut off the emergency valve to the gas.

You see, when I had disconnected the gas line, I hadn’t realized that it was aiming straight down at the battery. And since it was still blasting that beautiful natural gas, it just needed a single tiny spark courtesy of a freshly hooked-up battery cable to turn that ----- into a full-blown flame-thrower!

I guess it just wouldn’t be the Fourth of July without some fireworks, right? I just wish the Universe would quit taking sh*t so literally though…

Well, Dear Reader, originally I had planned on sharing all 3 stories with you in one sitting, but alas, we are out of time for today. But that’s okay! Near-Tragedy Trifecta Tale #3 truly deserves a post dedicated to it alone.

So I guess the point of the story is you have a full week now to build up yourself some anticipation for…”The Tractor Tire Story”–trump-bump-a-dum!

Oh, and for realz, don’t forget to thank a farmer for sacrificing life and limb to keep your face fed. Perhaps you even know one personally…

Content created on: 2 & 4 July 2021 (Fri/Sun)