Veteran of hot, dusty hayrides sweats first fall frolic
By Burton W. Cole
I've been invited to haul a hay wagon around a neighboring farm this fall during corn maze season. It will be one of the few times I've chugged around a hayfield without a beat-up, red International Harvester hay baler hooked between tractor and wagon.
The farm boy in me giggles a bit about revisiting my past. Have tractors changed much in the last 45 to 50 years? Reverse is still the one with the "R," isn't it? If not, it could turn into an interesting experience, especially if "R" now stands for "Race." Dad never let me race along the windrows.
I tried "race" once with the manure spreader, but quickly found out that the faster the speed, the more of the payload gets flung at me. I slowed down to a putter pace before I became encased in flying cow droppings.
I imagine if I hit "race" across a rutted hayfield with a wagon full of people, I could end up with a small child or two flung around my neck. I shall slip the tractor into "P" for "putter." If tractors have a "P."
Growing up, my entire summer seemed to be one continuous hayride. Sometimes, I drove the tractor, other times I stacked bales on the wagon. It was hot, sweaty and dusty work that always ended up in a hot, sweaty and dusty hayloft.
Come fall, when the signs for hayride events went up, my city friends grew giddy with anticipation.
"Why?" I wanted to know. "You sit on hay bales on a wagon. The bales aren't even stacked. You haven't lived until you're sitting 14 feet high atop shifting, jostling blocks of hay while the wagon bumps and sways across a rutted field. Now THAT'S excitement."
"Did you ever fall off?" they'd ask.
"I got to surf the bales to the ground once," I said. "It was exhilarating. But this hayride thing you're talking about, what, you just sit there safe and low, doing nothing? What gear is the tractor in? 'B' for 'boring?'"
"You're not doing it right," my buddies would say. "It's fall. You're outside. It's cold. So you snuggle in close and hold your gal to keep you both warm. Bring on the hayride!"
The girls I baled hay with in the summer were my cousins. They slung 75-pound, tightly packed bales around like battering rams.
Also, did I mention hot, sweaty and dusty? Have you experienced the aroma that a gob of hot, sweaty and dusty teenagers emit? Even if the girls weren't my cousins, no one wanted to hug anyone. Blech! Stay on your side of the wagon, buster!
But in the fall, with girls who aren't your cousins, and too cold to sweat, that could be delightfully different.
Still, come October, I stayed home.
One: I didn't have a girlfriend.
Two: How can you cuddle comfortably on rock-hard bales with all the dried, scratchy ends of cut hay poking out? Whoever romanticized the notion of frolicking in the hay didn't live on a farm. It would be like wrestling on bricks of cat claws.
Also, many of my city friends couldn't tell the obvious differences between hay and straw. If they ever bought a cow, the poor thing would starve because they'd be trying to feed it bedding.
But that's another story which I haven't time for now. Because I need to prepare for my first fall gallop with bales of timothy and clover.
Does anyone know if the gear shift pattern on tractors still looks like a big "H"? You know, for "hayride."
Take a ride with Cole at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.