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Jackie Zimmerer is a wife and mother of four sons. She attends St. John's Catholic Church in the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas.
That day my husband, Albert, and my three youngest boys hauled 540 bales…square bales (hehehe)…for Albert's uncle who lives next door to Albert's Grandma (yes, Albert's Grandma is still living and what a wonderful, active lady she is!). They were working with a tractor, an old fashioned hay trailer and lots of water; Josh, who is 13, drove the tractor while Albert, Ryan (15) and Adam (16) traded the loading/stacking duties. No pop-up, either. All was well (if you can call hauling hay in July-in-Texas heat “well”) until Josh bruised his ankle about 4:00 and needed to come in to Grandma's house for a while. We put ice on his foot, settled his hot, dirty body on top of an-afghan covered chair, and he fell almost immediately asleep.
Now, I've never driven a tractor before, BUT, there's a first time for everything. (Can you tell what's coming?) Josh had been the driver. Then, out of my mouth came the famous last words of a fool…”do you need me to help?” Gulp. They did.
I'm a real woosie about the heat but since Uncle Jim was paying the boys…no hay hauled, no pay…and Albert had been helping them all day (some vacation, huh?)… I sucked it up and out to the barn I went.
There it sat. The 530 Case tractor. Not large by tractor standards, but ARGGHH. It was as if I'd never seen such a machine before. I WAS raised on a farm, after all…
First I had to figure out how to get up on the thing. Now, a tractor was designed FOR men and BY men without a decent means of ingress or egress. Add the fact that the stuff you're supposed to grab to climb up with is HOT. Geez. But I was determined not to whine. I got myself into this.
I hoisted myself up there. Not too delicately, but I was up. Next quandary: how to get my feet and legs where they were supposed to be without stepping on anything important. Funny, never bothered me as a kid, but maneuvering my svelte physique (I'm not a little bitty woman) into that seat was a trick all by itself. And all those gizmos and gears, peddles and leavers, knobs and doohickeys… none of which looked like anything on the inside of my suburban. I've lived “around” farm equipment all my life so it's not like it was foreign or anything, but I'd never paid much attention to any of it. It just hadn't seemed important. Duh! Suddenly it looked like, well, like an imposing monster of a thing.
After a rather un-delicate procedure, I was finally seated. There was nothing ladylike about my demeanor (surprised?). I was determined to be a good sport. If they could do this all day, I could do it for a couple of hours. Now for the trick. To drive something I've never driven, not break anything (especially Albert, Adam and Ryan), not to run over or into anything (or anybody) nor turn anything over and, at the same time, to deal with a knobbed leaver poking not-so-gently into my right thigh and the fact that the place to put my feet was almost too hot to do so. But I did have an umbrella over my head, so this couldn't be TOO bad……could it? Shorts, Big Dog Mom T-shirt. 4:30 p.m., 23rd of July in Texas. How many bales of hay? Where? Gulp.
That leaver poking me turned out to be the gear shift, which was unceremoniously protruding (who thought this up, I wonder?) from the platform below me to the right of center of the tractor. Well, I was stuck with it. Literally. Albert walked to the right side of the tractor, told me to push in the clutch (after he showed me which peddle it was) and put the machine in 2nd gear (huh?), then he climbed up behind me and did something to another one of those leavers. And, for those of you who knew it couldn't be that simple, the seat was set for Uncle Jim who is significantly lesser of frame than I….get the picture? I looked like………..Well, I'd tell you what Albert said but I'd get kicked off this web site, SOOOO I'll behave (for once).
Without much more ado, we were off, albeit with a rather jerky release of the clutch (they were prepared so at least no one fell off), at such a rapid pace that the boys could (and did) jump off the trailer and walk beside me. My hands were glued to the wheel. Dear God, I thought, don't let me hurt anybody.
The next trick was knowing where I was going. As I had never been past the gate behind Grandma's house, I had no idea where we were going. Albert was yelling something from the trailer behind me, most of which was unintelligible over the engine noise of the tractor. A few swings of his gloved hands, lots of yelling and pointing and I began to get the picture. Through gates, across terraces, dodging holes in waterways, driving with fences on both sides of the lane, turning corners and then through those last two gates, one on the near side of the field, one 90 degrees around the corner to the right… and a stock pond to the left of me. Why they didn't just open the gate that went straight into the field I'll never guess.!? Give it some gas, Albert yelled. Yeah, right, HOW? But, hands STILL glued to the wheel, I made it. Ever heard of the back 40? Now I was there.
They loaded 120 or so bales on the trailer, I managed not to run over anything (or anybody), nor pass out from the heat, and then it was back to the barn. This time with two very hot teenaged-bodies sitting on a hay bale in the loader bucket at the front of the tractor. One (also VERY hot) body standing on the tongue of the trailer was holding on to the umbrella. I couldn't see directly in front of me and I had a full trailer behind me. Gulp. I can do this. Back through that double gate (they STILL didn't open the one that would take me straight though). I managed to stay out of the stock pond, the trailer stayed behind me and I got redder and redder in the face. Sweat pored. I was one HOT Momma. I dodged the same holes in the waterways (albeit with lots of wild pointing and gestures from the bucket-sitters sometimes), managed to drive up the lane, across the terraces, in 3rd gear this time, and back to the barn, all the while with just my toes on the platform and that gear shift still sticking me in the thigh.
More gestures and wild pointing and I managed to make it through the last gate and around the barn, all the while avoiding the obstacle course of the various and sundry farm equipment, the terraces, what's left of spring-time waterholes AND not managing to loose ANY bales (or bodies). WOHOO!
Needless to say, I went straight to the water hose! I'm surprised you didn't smell me…..
Can you say MAR-GA-RI-TA?
