“You busy this weekend?” my brother asked. He really wasn’t interested if I was busy, it was his way of asking for help. My dad asked the same question the same way. We all did.
My brother’s weekends started on Friday morning. He was baling hay and I’d help him.
I didn’t mind baling hay with that old International baler he bought from Dad. It only had one pace: its own. Too slow or too fast and the bales wouldn’t tie. We could work with only two people all day long with one driving the tractor and the other stacking the bales on the wagon. Being the youngest meant I stacked on the wagon. We never took much of a lunch break and I gulped down water switching wagons and ate a sandwich while hauling the load to the barn. It was steady work, if you followed the rhythm of the baler.
We kept at it until the dew started setting in on the hay about an hour or so before sundown. By the time we brought the equipment in from the field along with the last wagon full of hay we saved for unloading the next morning, the sun sunk down too far. We didn’t have lights in the barn.
Calling it a day, I shuffled my dusty and sweaty self into my car to head home in the dark. My solace was the radio station broadcasting a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game. That is, unless they were playing the Cubs in Chicago. At that time, Wrigley Field didn’t have lights either but I was lucky. That night I had the deep voice of Jack Buck calling the game and the wind through the open window as company.
The gravel dust seeped into the car through the open vents as I drove back from my brother’s farm on the hilly roads. Ozzie Smith started another double-play as the car dipped into the valley and I wished I had remembered to put on a dry shirt with the air cooling off.
After getting home, I missed the rest of the game. Sleep was a little more important as we had more hay to bale on Saturday.
For those wishing to see a baler in action (not my video)
Linked to Poets and Storytellers United: Friday Writings #19: Of Age and Aging and Such…
Thanks for taking me back to my belonging place, where work was long and life was simple! I remember the hay fork that carried the bales into the hayloft. I often got to pull the trip rope!
ReplyDeleteWe were fortunate to have an elevator but I worked for a neighbor who used a hay fork and too many of the bales burst when dropped.
DeleteI'm glad I could take you back, Beverly.
Be still, be still, be still my heart!! A Cardinals fan from the tender age of 8 or 9, long enough ago that there were two teams in STL, the Browns and the Cards. Memories of all the greats right now ... Of course, everything else you wrote is great too.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Helen.
DeleteMy grandmother was a huge Cardinal fan and it was sacrilege to even mention the Cubs!
When on a tractor during the day, I listened to the Cubs games and driving home at night, it was the Cardinals.
Manager Whitey Herzog was one of the greatest strategists of the game
So beautifully told, I felt as if I was you experiencing it!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rosemary. That means a lot to me.
DeleteAnd I am left with the feeling that something is going to happen on Saturday... can't wait!! Love the writing!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rajani.
DeleteI may continue bringing back old memories soon
Loving this atmosphere and the narrator's voice is so inviting. I was there, watching the hay get dewy, seeing the sun set, walking home in the dark...
ReplyDeleteLike Rajani, I'm wondering (and excited) about what will happen next...
Thank you, Magaly.
DeleteI've been working on my "atmosphere" in my stories and I'm glad this worked a little.
Sounds like intense work. I wonder if it ever took on a meditative quality because the pace was so steady. Though I imagine that its best to keep a steady focus while working with big machinery like that. I really like the mood you set up in this piece. There's something steady and down to earth about it all.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rommy.
DeleteSo long as I paid attention to what I were doing, I sometimes created stories in my head but too much distractions would lead to missing fingers or hands.
I've worked on crews where two of us could barely keep up on the wagon. I'll share one of those stories someday.
I enjoyed the story and its vicinity, which I have never experienced- a Snowy area.
ReplyDelete