42. Bird Dog

Harvest Crew

Many small famers can never afford some of the machinery they need to farm. These machines would only be needed once a year for a very short period of time so it wasn’t cost effective to own them. A combine was one of these machines only needed for a few days at harvest time. A harvest crew supplied the combines, trucks and manpower to bring in a farmer’s harvest for a per bushel or acre fee. The large grain trucks pulled trailers that held the combines, These were driven by uncle Wayne and my cousin Dick (with his wife, Jerry and daughter). Aunt Vida drove the duel wheel pick up truck and pulled the header trailer. The headers are 24 foot long that hook onto the front of the combine that must be removed to transport. I pulled a 24 foot travel trailer that Dick, his wife and infant daughter and I would live in for the summer. We were quite the caravan as we moved south to Hobart Oklahoma for our first stop.

 

Hobart, OK

We setup in a small trailer park on the edge of town. Uncle Wayne and aunt Vida stayed in a little motel. We often met up at the local café for breakfast on our way to the field. Jerry spent the morning at the trailer but would come out at noon with lunch. Aunt Vida drove Wayne’s grain truck and he drove his combine. I drove Dick’s combine and he drove his gain truck. We had to service our machines when we got to the field around mid morning. Hand pumping gas and greasing everything that could be greased. We couldn’t start cutting till the dew from the night before dried as moisture content determined if a grain was excepted at by Grain elevator. Refused and we had to wait for the wheat to dry in the bed of the truck which meant all progress stopped because we couldn’t empty our on board grain bins. Once we started, we didn’t stop till the dew fell late into the evening.

I had just turned 16, had my license since I was 14 but had never driven anything bigger than a pickup or tractor. I had never towed anything. But back in the day, they often just threw you into a situation that you just adapted to and learned as fast as you could. This was also the case when we got to our first field. I was terrified as my cousin had me ride with him as we did the first lap around the field. I was even more so as he stopped and told me to take over. Running a combine was a multitask job back then before computers.

There were numerous settings one had to be monitoring at all times. How fast the combine was moving (How rapidly wheat was being fed into the combine), how open or closed the cylinder that separated the wheat form the chaff was (to open and you send wheat out the back onto the ground, to closed and it could plug, not fun digging this out), how high or low was the header on each side of its 24′ spread (too high and you miss wheat stalks, to low and you dig into ground or pickup a rock…)

My first day, on my 2nd or 3rd round, I pickup a $1500 rock (over $6000 in todays money). It all happens so fast. I see it making its way down the header. up into the combine where it hits the cylinder, bending numerous cylinder bars. I couldn’t shut it all down fast enough. We will be down for several days as we repair. I’ve just cost my cousin more money than he will pay me for the entire summer. I am dead. He will send me home and Harley will kill me. I waited for the verdict and sentence.

But none ever came. Dick was upset but he and my uncle joked about it. As we repaired the combine they both shared their own stories of picking up their first rocks. Although not entirely convinced that this still wasn’t going to end well, It was a very different perspective than I had ever experienced. Mistakes were not punished but used to teach and move on. Absolutely a foreign concept to me.  Once we got it back up and running, I was extremely focused on my task at hand. Vigilant as I hunched over my controls, monitoring everything with every bit of my attention. As we came in for the evening, over the CB I heard Wayne yell out something like “Bird Dog” to my cousin. It was joke about the intense way I was running my machine. Like a Bird Dog that was on point. That is how I was given my CB handle, which I still claim today, Bird Dog.

We would cut wheat in this area for a few weeks before heading back to Stockton KS.  In Hobart I went to my first Honkytonk and saw a live band with some locals.  No one checked ID’s back then and guys like me, in these small towns, were often treated like celebrities’. People would pull over as we made our way down public roads to the fields. Children waved enthusiastically. Farmers we cut for would invite us to lunch or dinner. Farmers wives brought us fresh baked treats and ice cold chocolate milk (Milk that had been milked that morning from local cows) in large glass gallon Jars. And I was getting paid for the incredible experience I was having

America at it’s best in 1979

 

Stockton, KS

This was home for my uncle and cousins family. The same area our grandparents had lived and were now at rest. Fields that went on as far as the eye could see. Amber waves of grain. I had settled into driving my combine. It had become second nature. I would-be out there in the field for hours upon hours, left only with myself and my thoughts. My cousin would come around in his truck and I would unload on the move never stopping the machine beneath me. I didn’t realize it at the time, really only now as I write this, but was it was a break I dearly needed from the chaos that was my life back home. I healed a little… a great deal over that summer, my heart opening back up having been closed since grandmas passing, the house burning and a life I had known ripped away. It was serenity. I still feel it today when I see a photo of a ripe golden wheat field.

Aunt Vida comes to pick me up from a field I had just finished. She is in Wayne’s Duel wheel Chevy pick up, one of the first of its kind and still pretty new. We are in the middle of a 40 acre field. Vida ask if I’d like to drive. I have no idea how, but as Wayne would ask, “how did you hit a combine in an empty 40 acre field?” I put a good 16′ scratch along the bed as I was trying to make a U-turn. I’m freaking out, flash backs to Harley, as we drive to the other field. I’m definitely getting sent home now. In this moment I also realize Aunt Vida is singing along to the radio, ‘Bad Girls’ by Donna Summer. It’s such different insight into my Aunt. I love her even more than I did before and that was quit a bit. I had always loved her. She was so kind and genuine. When I was with her it was like her attention was totally focused on me. I think she treated everyone that way. Everything an Aunt should… could be and more.

When we get to the other field, Vida jumps out of the pick up and heads straight for Wayne. I’m not sure what she said but Wayne makes a joke, Dick joins in, I’m not sent home and its never spoken of again….well it is but only in jest. “It’s only a 50 acre field, think you can turn this around with out hitting something on the other side of it this time?”

 

My cousin, Dick, is a bout 10 years older than I. He had 68′ Firebird from his youth stored in his garage. One weekend he allowed me to take it out on the town. How Very cool was I in this hot muscle  car. I cruised up and down the main streets of Stockton, summer of 1979. It was a time when cruising was a favorite pastime for teen-agers and this car was a head turner. When I got up the next morning and took him the keys he said “it’s got quit a bit of power, doesn’t it?” I stood there wondering how he knew Id been hot-rodding it a bit and making the tires squeal. Everyone knows it’s his car and the phone didn’t stop ringing from the time I had left the house. Was it stolen or sold?

I relished the hours on my combine. I had two 8 track tapes, one K-tell and Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Baker Street’ and the radio. I can still sing every  song on those two tapes word for word. I was at ease with this family and days just drifted by. Its late summer and we are now heading further north following the ripening wheat… and the end of the summer …the end of my respite.

 

Miller, South Dakota

More of the same but different. I saw 100 acre fields of sunflowers in full bloom. It amazed me how they turned their faces and followed the traveling sun. Dicks best friend and wife came to visit and her and Jerry took a trip across the state to Mount Rushmore, leaving us 3 guys’ to our own devices. A bottle of Wild Turkey sets the  tone for our night on the town. I had only sipped some wine a couple of times up to this point in my life. They got “lit” pretty quick but I remained relatively sober as I faked taking turns on the bottle. I was not accustomed to teh “Buzz” so was cautious.  We went to the Dairy Queen, and then a local bar and just drove around most the evening. I being the jokester, had them laughing constantly. I heard a lot of stories that I will not repeat out of respect and the code of trust I realized guys out drinking adhere to. That became a part of my character. A confidant and safe place to share. I still take pride in this attribute

Somehow at some point in the evening the conversation turned to Harley and Wayne. I learned a number of things and was confused by a number of comments. It all makes sense now that I know what I know. Most of the family knew I wasn’t related by blood and were aware of  how badly Harley and his father treated me. None approved but none could do much about it… But Dick and Wayne did. I found out that evening that this is why they offered to take me that summer. I never spoke about this to anyone. I doubt Dick remembers the conversation but it forced me to not feel like a victim for the first time in a long time. That was something I desperately needed and was thankful for.

Heading Home or Leaving Home?

I stayed on into the first month of school back in Colorado. Harley didn’t hesitate when I called home to ask. In hindsight I truly believed he hoped I would not return and would just disappear  from their lives. But I had no intention of not returning. I missed my mom and siblings. Dick and Wayne helped me buy a car with my summer earnings. Leaving them, Uncle Wayne, Aunt Vida, Dick, Jerry and their daughter was as heart wrenching as leaving my family had been that spring. I had never been treated so well or lived without fear for such an extended time. I now know a different way of living and that bell could not be un-rung. I cried for the first hour on my journey home but as the miles passed beneath me, getting ever closer to my old life, my sadness slowly transformed into anxiety and dread. Even the excitement of the reunion with mom, brothers and sisters could not sustain as Harley’s dark shadow encroached.

But regardless of this feeling of impending doom, It was the adventure of lifetime. So many people and places I had met and seen. The beginning of the opening up to the rest of the world. I could, I did make it out there and would make my way out and into the larger world again, with confidence built over this summer, just a few years later. I now knew the value of solitude and the gift of introspection. This was my new church, as close to god as I have ever felt. Communion.

A few years later I got the call. Aunt Vida didn’t go with uncle Wayne that year. They found him alone in his Motel room, taken by a massive heart attack. I was already living in Austin Tx at this point. Mom called to let me know and I called Dick to extend my condolences. I felt so guilty as I had never spoken to any of them since that summer. I was a young animal just trying to survive so had not yet developed an appreciation of time and how it takes the ones we love from us. Let that someone who made a even a small difference in your life know before its to late. But then again, it’s never truly to late. They will know.

I got the news last spring, 2022, that Aunt Vida had passed at the ripe old age of 90. She never slowed down after Wayne’s passing and actually was incredibly active right up until she passed. Thru my cousin Mike’s daughter, Jennifer, all grown up now and living a wonderful life in New York city, I was able to get a letter to them a few years ago expressing my gratitude for what they had meant to me and my life. I will always love them and how they loved me. They made a significant impact on my life journey.

For Aunt Vida