I took a shortcut home by way of a county road the other day and whizzed — as much as my red Ranger can whiz — past a field where prairie grass was being wind-rowed ahead of a date with a baler.
With window down — the Ranger’s only answer to air-conditioning — the odor of newly mown grass triggered nostalgia.
From my early teens until after high school, my main source of income of any consequence came from hauling hay — smaller, 100-pound bales not today’s huge ones. I was fortunate to be hired on by the Works brothers, Jack and George. Part of the opportunity no doubt came from George’s son, Bob, and I being best of friends.
I’d liked to say that started when we were born a day apart in 1943, but it was much more from high school. We had similar tastes, including having girlfriends, both of whom we married. A handful of years the four of us celebrated his and my birthdays with a picnic on a bluff overlooking the Neosho, a fond memory for all of us.
Putting up hay together cemented our friendship.
George, Bob and I often worked together in the field, two of us bucking bales on trailers attached to the baler, while the third drove the tractor pulling the mechanical procession.
Things occasionally cropped up to relieve having to pull one bale after another onto the wagon and tying them into tiers five or six high.
Once in a while it was a snake, usually dead but sometimes still wiggling, that the baler disgorged with a bale. Another time the underpinnings of the wagon gave way and we found ourselves lying atop bales that had to be loaded again.
Minor injuries — really nothing to worry about — occurred now and then. I’ve had a leg pinned between the baler’s chute and bales, but it came loose without more than a bruise. A time or two I had a bale hook find flesh, but when you’re young such wounds don’t mean much. Except … there was a time I was working with Ronnie Middendorf on his dad’s farm and somehow — certainly not on purpose because Ronnie was another great friend — I nailed his hand with a hook. But it was in soft flesh and after bandaging, we kept on going.
Those of us who worked with farmers developed a rapport and thought we were a little something special when we’d roll back into Humboldt toward sundown. We’d be filthy from head to foot, covered in sweat and dust — and wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Sometimes we’d stop by a little diner on the east side of downtown and wolf down a chicken-fried steak, bragging to anyone who’d listen about how tough it was putting up hay.
Sometimes we even told the truth.
