MORE Summer Time Fun!
The site ignited a thrill. It was inexplicable. Other folks don’t feel that reaction. But to me, the fluffed rows of raked hay pique a sensation. Simmering smirks creep across my face.
Sharp fresh-cut scents and promises of oppressive heat, staggering bright sunshine, chicken coup hay barns, and sweat-drenched clothes await. The bare ground between the rows shines hard and dusty.
This is where you walk looking at your feet. Sometimes the pace is a trudge, or a saunter, or a skip, or even a gallop. But always the steps are purposeful with shoulders slumped, arms swinging, head drooping, while your soul begs for a breeze.
The next bale is there; sixty-five to seventy pounds of cut and pressed grass.
The strings are tight and slide burning across gloved fingers.
Your hands are thick, calloused, and forged into a permanent half-closed fist.
Grab both strings with the left hand, jerk it waist high, and swing it so the right-hand goes to the end of the bale. Squint the right eye, look over your shoulder and aim with the left. Lift and throw catapulting the square missile to the top of the pile, or power drive it into its hole in the stack, or, on a rare occasion of humility lift and toss it into place.
The next bale and hundreds more lay ahead. On a good day, a crew will average 100+ bales an hour. If they have an axle-driven elevator hooked to a flatbed gooseneck trailer the average may be better, but then there’s one less man to stack at the barn. There’s also one less man to split the hauling fee. Most days we haul with four-man crews driving pickup trucks pulling 16-foot lowboys.
The hayfield is/was a teen age playground that many of us carried into adulthood. The notion that it is loved by few and hated by many flabbergasts me.
A crowd of our buddies claimed physical disabilities when the temperatures hit triple digits.
Their heads swole like great Halloween pumpkins and they’d wail about allergies, chiggers, or barns with wasps or that severe heat caused their diaper rash to flare up. I stood in disbelief at these utterances describing flawed characters.
The worst excuse in the history of ducking hay hauling was when one friend said, “My wife is making me go to church and play Bingo.” I made him repeat that phrase 30 times and I’m still not sure whether he was lying. To me, it was a major stopping block against ever-harboring matrimonial sentiments.
In a fashion, hay hauling and western calf brandings have much in common – at least in our neck of the woods.
In the American West, neighbors help each other with big jobs like branding hundreds of calves. Such is also true with Amish barn raisings. For us it was hay hauling. Between myself, Stephen Hoelscher, and Walter Kansteiner no money ever exchanged hands.
We hauled each other’s hay, worked each other’s cattle, and lent a hand wherever it was needed. However, the advent of round bales ruined our hay-hauling culture much in the same way that the internet has bred a generation of nincompoops. Nevertheless, a few of us tried to keep the country boy lifestyle in practice.
The Brune River bottom hay- field is 50 acres. I called Hoe lscher and told him there were probably between 650 and 800 bales to haul. He said, “No problem”. I also called Kenton Lilie and James Henneke.
When the boys showed up the bale count was a hair more than 2,250, and the baler was still spitting’em out. Hoelscher thought it was one of my better jokes.
He knew he must give aid to the bitter end. Kenton and James were in high school and were slightly more oblivious.
They were probably also being paid. Hauling out of the Brune’s bottom is horrible. The barns are more than a mile away through rough creeks and pastures.
It is impossible to navigate without tying down the loads. The old barns were built by my Grandpa and Great Grandpa. The cow pen barn and hilltop pasture barn are ovens. The horse barn is worse. One gloried saving is that it was in the days before fire ants.
Hoelscher had to go back to the gravel pit after the third day. Kenton, James, and myself were far from done. We settled into a grind that required sever al more days to satisfy.
The sun baked us and we airfried when the prevailing south wind quit. Between loads, we bathed under the windmill washing multiple layers and coatings of hay dust from our scalded hides and heads.
We labored at a steady pace. The boys never complained not once and we filled the barns one at a time.
The last barn was in the horse lot. It had a loft. Every bale in this barn must be pitched to the second floor. Af ter a week of non-stop grueling strain… I promised the boys a Saturday night out.
We went to the weekly indoor rodeo in Simonton. I entered the Saddlebronc Riding and ignored my wards until after the event.
Then it was Katy Bar the Door and go to the Dance.
But I forgot that one of the cowboy’s Dads self-appointed himself as the Cowboy Police.
Fortunately, he was actually a buffer between us cowboys and the real law officers.
To my surprise, he thundered up to me holding Kenton by the scruff. “This kid says you bought him beer!”
“You damn right I did! He’s hauled hay with me all week! Let him go!”
“You can’t do that in public…” “Hm, okay yeah sure?
Kenton, you’ll have to wait”. Anyway, I miss hay hauling – I miss the way we lived and laughed.
