…And Then Suddenly We Were World Famous Fire-Starters

“We need your tractor. NOW, MOTHER ----- !”

I got to admit, this was not how I imagined my first tractor-jacking would go. I’ll tell you what though: don’t believe Hollywood’s lies. It’s not nearly as romantic as they make it look in the movies…

Of course. Of course.

Of course the Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99 would have to include forcefully commandeering another man’s farming implement. Exciting as that was, though, that only accounted for ~20% of the sh*t that went down that particular day…

But before we go any further, you really should get caught up on last week’s post if you haven’t already.

Yes, that’s right…click riiiiiiight HERE.

It’s okay. I’ll wait.

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Okay, all caught up to speed now? But just in case you have the memory of the goldfish, let’s review:

The Bard–my partner in grime during the Summer of ’99–and I were helping my dad harvest the wheat from the two adjacent fields shown in Figure 1 below:

One important thing not shown on this map is that the Cimarron National Grasslands was kitty-corner adjacent to the southeast of Field 2. Not that anything with words National and Grass in its name would be important to this story or anything…

Anyway, in our attempt to burn the stubble in Field 1, The Bard & I nearly set Field 2 on fire. Despite our most valiant exhibition of “The Pimp Technique”, we were ultimately unsuccessful in putting out the unwanted inferno and had to be rescued by Dad, who successfully implemented the “Harvesting The Fire” method and saved Field 2 from premature destruction.

Or so we thought…

Where we last left off, we were all packed into the combine and halfway through taking care of Field 2, when, through my smoke-filled contact lenses, I spotted what looked like Haley’s Comet shoot out of the back of our mighty harvesting equipment.

And now, with Field 2 indubitably about to be ablaze, Dad gave us the very vague instructions to “get help” while he tried to speed-race through the field in an attempt to get as much grain–and therefore moneyz–into the bin before it all burned to the ground…

What do you when you’re in the middle of nowhere, before the age of cell phones, and your dad pleads with you to get help for the raging wildfire that is on the verge of devouring Morton County Kansas off the map?

Heck, I wouldn’t know!

So then it was a dang good thang The Bard had a good head on his shoulders, right? Upon receiving our marching orders from El Jefe, he drug my dazed and confused ass into our not-so-trusty work pickup¹Oh yeah, I should get around to explaining that whole situation some time. and started hauling tail due north on the Dusty-Ass Dirt Road.

About 3 or 4 miles up the road–which translates to ~15 tractor/combine miles, mind you–we were fortunate enough to spot a random farmer out a-plowing his field. The Bard took a hard right and straight-up tore tracks across this strangers freshly worked plot o’land to where he was just tuttin’ along, minding his own biz. We bailed out of the truck, barely waiting for him to stop the tractor before climbing halfway up to the cab.

As you can imagine, we were met by one very confused country folk-man, and I was actually a bit surprised that he didn’t hesitate to open the door for us.

“What you boys need? Is something wrong?”

Now, honestly, I can’t remember what The Bard said at this point, but I do confidently recall two things: 1) it sadly did not involve the dropping of the F-bomb, and 2) whatever he said was clearly and convincingly communicated, and before we knew it we were all kicking up dust in a ske-daddle rush back to the source of all that smoke brewing off yonder…

We rolled up to our Field 2 rendezvous point right about the same time as Dad, who, while in mid-air leaping off the combine, yelled to The Bard, “get in there and keep cutting, dammit!!!”²Dear The Bard, I actually don’t know if this is accurate, and maybe you can confirm or deny it. Though, I’m pretty certain I was on the fire-fighting tractor, and I can’t imagine Dad would have let the combine sit idle in the meantime.

To the other farmer, he simply said, “Thanks, I’ll take it from here,” as they swapped out, and once I was mostly inside the tractor cab, he threw it in gear and got down to business.

At this point, we were mostly cutting our losses on the wheat crop, and were just trying to minimize the collateral damage to things like, oh, I don’t know, ALL THE CONTINUOUS DRY GRASS IN SW KANSAS, SE COLORADO, AND THE OKLAHOMA PANHANDLE.³…and NE New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle, too!

Don’t believe me? Just take a gander at this map I stole from an alternate timeline, outlining the hypothetical extent of our series of unfortunate events:⁴Source: https://www.thearmchairexplorer.com/colorado/comanche-national-grassland.php

Now, most plows aren’t meant to be dragged through the ground at speeds more than 3-5 mph,⁵Reference: https://www.quora.com/How-fast-mph-or-kph-does-a-farm-tractor-travel-when-plowing-planting-a-field-and-how-many-acres-can-this-be-done-in-one-1-hour but it turns out that you can get up to about 12 mph if you really need to. At least that’s what Dad taught me that not-so-fine day, as he made two laps around the perimeter of the field, saving the rest of the Continental United States that wasn’t a body of water from going up in smoke.

On the other hand, our “shallowly-buried irrigation pipe” that ran to the center of Field 2 in Figure 1? Well, we tried to save it, at least. I vividly remember wistfully looking out the tractor window as we vainly attempted to plow out a buffer along either side of it, only to see grotesquely twisted strips of melted plastic intermittently protruding from the ground, much like a broken bone sticking out of an arm or a leg…

Gratuitous and completely unnecessary analogy aside, that was actually a small price, given the potential consequences our escapades could have had, like, oh, say, MELTING ALL OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA OFF THE MAP.

“But how did you fare personally?” you kindly ask?

Surprisingly, by some miracle, we actually ended up losing very little of our precious wheat crop. And by “miracle” I mean the “level-headedness of The Bard, the executive action and thinking-on-his-feet of Dad, and the selfless-sacrifice-of-his-precious-agriculture-implement-without-a-second-thought of That Farmer Who I Had Never Met Before That Day.”

And while we’re here, you might as well give this crew a hearty thanks for, oh, I don’t know, SAVING THE ENTIRE ----- WORLD FROM BECOMING ONE GIANT FIREBALL.

Well, folks, my MasterClass in illustrating the rhetorical device of “hyperbole”⁶https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole aside, the real point of the story is: avoid growing up on the farm at all costs if you can.

And if you can’t avoid that fate, for the love of the harvest gods, at least don’t drag your semi-city-slicker⁷Yes, Dear The Bard, back in those days, you very much qualified as a city slicker in my book. Oh how the tables have turned now. friends into your literal dumpster fires UNIVERSE-CONSUMING BLAZES.

As much as I would love to say at this point, “Whew, what a crazy day on the farm! I’m glad that’s over!”

Instead what I heard was: “Welp, now that we’re finished up here, time to head the next field of wheat and start cuttin’!” Dad proclaimed like any true-working-hard-af-farmer would.

Wait, what? This ----- day is “to be continued”?!?

Content created on 6/12/13 August 2021 (Fri/Thurs/Fri)

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