You’re dad is cut and bleeding, son, what do you do?
Hop in the farm truck and throw it in Gear 2…
“Schlop! Schlop! Schlop!”
That was odd…last time I had heard that noise, it was the sound made by an over-zealous (and hotly contested) kiss shared by two star-crossed lovers. Yet there I was, in the middle of a Kansan field, working on an irrigation motor with my dad. And we sure the heck weren’t doin’ no kissin’…
“Uh, son, I think I might have cut myself.”
I turned around to see Dad, sitting flat on his ass on the ground next to the pipe running from the pump to the underground riser.
“Geez, Dad, how the hell did you end up on your butt?”
“I, uh, must have slipped in the mud, and tried to catch myself on that,” came his lightly dazed response.
My eyes followed to where he was pointing, a smaller pipe protruding from the larger one, the one which fed coolant back to the motor.
Then my eyes retraced their path, back to his pointing finger suspended in mid-air.
“Schlop! Schlop! Schlop!”
There was that sound again! But this time I could clearly see from whence it came: Dad’s right palm had a huge gash in it and it was pumping out blood like an Apocalyptic Old Faithful or something.
“Oh. ----- . You did cut yourself. I better get you to the Emergency Room ASAP!”
But first, my curiosity had to be sated. My eyes followed their original path once again, and landed on what must have inflected so much damage to his hand.
“Those rascally adjustable steel clamps–they’ll getchya every time…” I half-chuckled to myself.
But then, my attention abruptly jerked back to the copious amount of blood he was losing, and I realized he was barely clinging to consciousness. Not even thinking about it, I grabbed the nearest greasy rag I could find and, dodging the intermittent spurts, managed to get it wrapped around his hand and got the flow at least partially under control.
“Hold onto this for a sec–be right back!” I hollered over my shoulder as I scrambled to Big Red, our Ford F350 flatbed diesel work pickup, and rummaged through our unorganized pile of parts, tools, and supplies on the back.
“Hah! It’s a miracle! I found it!” I came trotting back to where he still sat on the ground, victoriously holding aloft the farmer’s fix-all: a fresh roll of Duck-Tape.
“It’s okay, I’m a future doctor…” Apparently, I thought it to be the perfect time to bust out my best Dana Sculley1From the hit Fox television show, The X-Files. impression as I secured that greasy rag slightly tighter around his gaping flesh wound.
“Alright, now let’s get this blood-bath in Big Red and get you to the ER…”
“Stay with me! Dang it Dad, don’t make me smack you again!”
As it turned out that the Duck-Tape was only doing so much, and I was relying on Dad to stay conscious enough to keep pressure on his make-shift bandage.
“Can’t…you…go…any…fa–” as his words trailed off, I did the only things a son like me could do in a situation like this: smacked his jowly cheeks hard enough to help him keep his eyes open.
Now here’s the irony of all this: flashback to right about 10 years earlier in 1989, when I had broke my arm while staying on the ranch in New Mexico we had at the time. After he gave my arm the full Boy Scout treatment, he loaded me up and hauled tail to the nearest hospital in Raton. About half of that trip was on dirt roads, and when I say he hauled tail, he was hauling tail. I remember glancing at the speedometer from the back seat and seeing that we were pushing 80.
“Whoa, whoa! Geez, Dad, drive safe! My arm isn’t getting any more broken, and I really don’t want to get into accident on the way!”
Yes, I really said that. And yes, he was taking a very unnecessary risk going that fast on curvy dirt roads, even 8-year-old me could clearly see that.
“Dude, you listened to Alanis Morrisette way too much, didn’t you? You clearly don’t know what ‘ironic’ actually means…” you are indubitably uttering aloud right now.
Well, my friend, have you forgotten what year came 10 years after 1989? Yes, that’s right: 1999.
And in which season do you think all this was happening? If you said “summer,” you would be half right–the correct response would be “Crazy-Ass Summer.” (Hey, if you don’t know what I’m talking about when I refer to the “The Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99”, then I suggest you go catch up here.)
One very important detail about that Summer that I’ve yet to share was that Big Red had, shall we say, a slight transmission problem. And it was perhaps this that really made that summer “interesting.”
Okay, so where we now? Oh yeah: Dad’s trying to slur the phrase “Can’t you go any faster?”, and I’m concordantly smacking the sh*t out of him.
I may claim that it was to keep him awake, but deep down, I know I was boxing his overgrown ears because he was harassing me about driving too slow to the hospital, as if it were my fault.
Did I want to be driving that speed? Heck, no! I honestly thought I was going to see my dad bleed out and die right there in the pickup with me.
But what could I do? Had he got the Big Red’s transmission fixed, then maybe–just maybe–we would’ve been able to drive faster than 28 mph, if ever the urgent crisis did arise.
But nooooooo, we were stuck with driving all over Morton County in 2nd gear that entire summer, and now it was all culminating with this, an actual life-or-death situation,
I tell you what, even though it was only 19.8 miles to the hospital (which Dad could have covered in a mere 15 minutes going 80, no doubt), that was the longest 42 minutes of my life.
Good news, I was able to get him there before he bled out, and, after 23 stitches and shot of antibiotic, he was back in the field by then end of the day.
Of course, with him unable to really use his right hand, that meant I was back in the field by the end of the day, doing all the work for both of us…
Now, for entertainment’s sake, I truly believe it’s worth noting here the other headaches and amusements that Big Red’s busted tranny provided for us that summer.
First, there’s the obvious problem of only being able to get into 2nd gear and therefore having to tut from field to field at around 30 mph. The fields that Dad, The Bard,2the friend and classmate who helped us our regularly that summer and I had to service back then were spread all over MoCo3I’m trying to make Morton County sound “hip”. so this really was a drag, man.
If we were ending our day on the other side of the county, near the Colorado state line, then just getting back home would take at least an hour. And driving that slow can mentally wear you out–I don’t recall a single time that the Bard and I went somewhere together where the non-driver wasn’t passed the ----- out by the time we reached our destination.
Verily, one time we were so intent on both of us staying awake, that we decided to take advantage of the fact that our route included a stretch of highway that was under construction, and therefore had plenty of those bright orange and white safety barrels off to one side of the road. But what made this trip so special was that we “just happened” to have some long heavy pipe that was “accidentally” sticking out about 5-6 feet from the edge of Big Red’s flatbed.
So it was a real shame then that I “just happened” to knock over 12 of the 14 barrels I passed with that pipe.
What was even more of a shame was that the Bard nailed all 14 of the ones we passed after we switched players–er, I mean “drivers” halfway through…
Wait. Let me just back up a moment. I forgot to tell you the best part: we couldn’t back up.
You read that right: a farm truck. With no reverse.
Whenever we went to town for parts or lunch, we always had to be very mindful not to pull into a traditional parking spot like a normal human being. Nope, we always had to find some spot off to the side where we could parallel park.
There were a few times that the driver forgot, so you can bet that it was the Bard and I out front comically pushing the truck backwards with Dad steering in those situations.
Even worse than the occasional city-folk parking problem was just day-to-day farming. For example, have you ever tried to hitch up a trailer to your truck without backing up? Didn’t think so. Yet, we had to figure out a way, and yes, it usually involved an unnecessary amount of manual labor on the part of the Bard and me.
And of course, there was the mud issue: it’s not uncommon throughout the regular course of farmin’ that one gets their vehicle stuck in a patch of wet dirt (aka “mud”). Now, ordinarily you would get out of that pickle by alternating between Drive and Reverse, and eventually you will rock yourself onto a spot where you can gain some traction. But did we have that luxury? Noooo. It was only “Forward, Ho!” for us.
Ahh…good times, good times…
Well, y’all, the point of the story really comes down to this: just get your sh*t fixed when it breaks, will you? Sure, relying on a half-assed transmission will provide your son with some interesting dysfunctional farm storied with which he can regale his city-slicker friends 20 years down the road. That’s all fine and dandy.
But then again, instead of bequeathing him with fun and cheeky tales, you just might very well easily burden him with the lifelong trauma of seeing his parent bleed to death while he hauls your tail to the ER at 28 mph.
“Dang it Dad, don’t make me smack you again…”
Content created on: 18/19 February (Fri/Sat)
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