Never the Same IC#23 Hay Baling Comes First

Baling hay definitely wasn’t what Kirk planned to do under his time constraints for the stock car. And while doing that, he didn’t want to become a red smear on the hay field.

 

 

“Time is 8:38, temperature 66 degrees.”

Kirk listened to the current temperature on the telephone as he sipped his black coffee. He hung up the phone. His father rustled the newspaper and began ranting and raving about something the president did concerning taxes. With a Democratic president, there was always something the administration had done that Kirk’s father could complain about. And he would go on. And on. Kirk took his father’s ranting and raving like everyone else in the family without comment.  

Kirk couldn’t care any less about his father’s ravings whatever it was that time. He dialed another number he knew by heart. Fascinated like usual, he listened intently.

“Today, Saturday June fifth forecast is for mostly sunny skies, winds out of the southwest at 8-12 miles per hour with a high temperature reaching about 83 degrees. Tomorrow will be sunny, high about 85 degrees.”

The weather wouldn’t be stopping the baling of hay this weekend, Kirk realized after listening to the recordings. Kirk called the toll-free numbers often thinking that weather forecasters were some sort of soothsayers, fortunetellers or mystics. He wasn’t surprised by the forecast because his father had already gloated over the fact that he saw in the newspaper that it would be perfect haymaking weather. The only thing that could stop the baling would be a major breakdown which was highly unlikely.

When Kirk hung up, his father jumped on the open opportunity. “Need to get out there and rake at noon,” he said. His father never addressed Kirk by name with most times avoiding not calling him anything specific. When introducing Kirk, he’d always refer Kirk as his boy even though Kirk was not a boy anymore. Kirk said nothing at those times often rudely gazing elsewhere away from his father’s cronies.

“I have to work on the baler and another way to haul hay from the field, so be here on time, hear?”

This time Kirk said simply, “Yeah, I know. I’m going over to the garage this morning. I’ll be back in time.” He recalled what he got done and what had transpired yesterday afternoon when Mike got off of work and returned home to the garage where Kirk spent the day alone.
            Yesterday, Friday afternoon.

Kirk felt tired after getting after the stock car all day long by himself though looking around, he didn’t get as much done as he had hoped on “his” stock car. The radiator mounting and driveshaft shortening were the two things on the top of list of “must do” tasks on the car. He did get the seat removed from the car to cut the short metal stubs down to allow him the necessary headroom. Mike had raced the car lightly before giving it to Kirk, but Mike had a shorter stature and then they lowered the roll cage and body inches more yet, scrunching down the headroom significantly. Kirk didn’t want his butt right on the floorboards but with his current adjustment to the seat height, the seat would only be an inch and half from the floor. Though not much of a noticeable difference in the grand scheme while piloting a stock car. 

Mike and Don arrived at the garage late that afternoon just as Kirk adjusted the seat’s stubs once more with a grinder. He already had the seat in and out of the car a couple times because it just wouldn’t sit level. The garage door bust open as Kirk fed the seat frame through the window once again. Kirk jerked a little with the noise and one of stubs scraped the silver window frame leaving a gouge. He didn’t say anything and leaned in the window to check the seat level and cover the gouge at the same time with his belly. Without looking, Kirk greeted the two men.

“Hey, guys,” Kirk said sounding hollow inside the car’ cockpit.

“Skipped work today to work on the car?” Mike inquired.

“Yeah, I needed to get some of these things done because my weekend is shot.”

“How’s that?” Don asked peeking in the back window of Kirk’s coupe stock car.

“My father insisted�"insisted! that I help bale hay this weekend. Not much time left for getting this car ready for practice day.”

“You’ll be fine,” Mike added. “Look all I have to do on the truck and trailer. I’m not worried�"much!” He let out a laugh. “So, what did you get done?”

 “Shortened the driveshaft, but I’ll have you finish welding it there on the bench. Got the radiator mounted but not hooked up. And I’m lowering the seat right now.”

Kirk wobbled the seat and found that it didn’t sit flat�"still. He made a mental note of the stub that needed to be shortened again. He wondered if he’d end up with the seat on the floor anyway if he kept “adjusting” the stubs. He pulled the seat through the window, very careful not to scratch the window frame again.

“Anything I can do to help?” Don asked.

Kirk was not a great one for delegating or assigning tasks. He used his linear style of work to get tasks done by himself. In other words, see what needed to be done and just do it. Besides that, he’d prefer to do all the work himself no matter how hard it was or how far behind he was in getting it done.   

“No, thanks. I’ve got a handle on things here, Don.”

He ground down the longish stub and tried it once again. Pretty close, but by this time the stubs were only about an inch long. He looked at it and shrugged. Putting the seat back in as square as he could by eye, Kirk thought he’d weld it in seeing Mike and Don were already busy on their tasks with the truck and trailer. He dragged all the equipment he needed in the window again, turned on the welder, donned the helmet and went to strike an arc. And again. Nothing. Once again. He set the handle down careful not to contact anything. He crawled out the window and there the ground clamp lay on the floor. Didn’t I connect that? Damn Pixies!

 He re-connected the heavy-duty clamp to the frame and wiggled it back and forth to make sure it made contact. He crawled back in and tried to strike an arc. Snap! Flash! Temporarily blinded, he waited a few seconds for his eyes to recover from the floating bright spot in his vision. Changing position several times in the cramped space, he welded the four stubs from all sides to make sure the seat was plenty secure. He was happy with his welding and carefully crawled out with the handle in hand while careful not to contact the body and that paint job. After shutting off the welder, he looked back at his handy work. Damn! The seat looked obviously crooked. After deciding it must have moved with his crawling in and out, he pondered his predicament. It wasn’t that bad, it’ll do.

Even though the metal still felt relatively hot from the welding, he reinstalled the fiberglass shell to the frame with the six bolts. Then he put the thin, barely there cushion back in place by stretching it over the shell and the metal frame. Turning about in the cockpit he shifted his butt sideways and sat down. He felt above his head checking the headroom. Now it had to be a good two inches which gave him plenty of room for when he wore his helmet. An image of racing appeared in his mind’s eye even though he had never experienced it.

A wave of adrenaline coursed through his body, stiffening his back and shooting up into the top of his skull. For some reason that image of a racing scene really hit home in his consciousness.  Kirk took a deep-down breath that ended in a sigh. He unwound from the car once again by sticking one leg out the window to step down and scrunched his body through to painfully withdraw the other leg.

Looking around and noticing how late it was he decided to call it a day, even though he thought he should have gotten more done. He shrugged to himself. Kirk said good night to the two guys who were busy under the hood of the old car hauling truck. Kirk didn’t want to know. He got into his beloved Firebird and drove home tired, drained and unsure of his future.  

So, back to Saturday morning.

Arriving at the garage, Kirk found Mike still sat under the hood of the truck though he had probably quit at dark the night before. Mike had the distributor cap with the octopus of spark plug wires sitting on the fender.

“Problems, Mike?” Kirk asked simply.

“Yeah, this thing hasn’t run right since I bought it. Misfiring off and on. I replaced the points and condenser, but now I found out that the rotor is hitting the cap’s terminals but only on one side it seems. I think the distributor bearings are shot. Have to get another, I think.”

“That’s a bummer on top of everything else, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mike mumbled head back down in his work.

Kirk moved on to his stock car. He didn’t have time to dilly-dally having only the morning to work. Having a couple ideas that he’d maybe accomplish in a hurry; he grabbed the radiator hoses that he had removed when mounting the radiator. He found the set up vastly different than the previous engine’s installation. The bottom radiator hose could work on top, but the upper hose wouldn’t work either way. Using the trusty tape measure, he got an idea for what he required. Heading out back, Kirk cringed with the scenes of auto desolation.

Memories. There sat his inherited Blue Bomb with weeds growing around it still as he left it with a smashed-up passenger side corner. The bright red El Camino sat there as well. He left it there needing an engine overhaul that no one ever got around to complete.

 

Cue: “Kiss on my List” https://youtu.be/YOuhYuZLNYw

A flash appeared in his mind, the warm, pleasant memory of Dee and him sitting on the El Camino’s warm fender making out. Her long, prolonged humming kisses or the rapid-fire machinegun kisses with lip-smacking sound effects had the couple sharing 50 KPM (kisses per minute.) Kirk loved endlessly kissing Dee’s soft, tender lips and staring into her beautiful brown eyes.  

Oh Dee! Why didn’t you want to stay with me?

A prompt answer from the cosmos came to Kirk. Because you were a boring, naïve, immature boy, even as a seventeen-year-old boy with a fifteen-year-old girl. She ran away from you because she was bored and wanted, needed more!

As stated before, Kirk was Never the Same after Dee, but in his future Dee would affect him in a way that would leave him forever Never the Same!

 

After gazing into the firmament for several moments, Kirk abruptly recalled why he stood knee-deep in the weeds amongst the dead and broken automobiles. He wiped the corners of his eyes and shook Dee’s tender lips and sweet countenance from his mind. (Could this scene be a metaphor?)

He trudged on to inspect the other abandoned cars.

With a rusty s-screech, he forced open an old Ford’s hood that had belonged to his sister. He measured the hoses and found the top one close to the size he needed. He did a quick inspection and deemed it “good enough.” With a deluge of antifreeze on the ground that surprised him, he wrenched the hose off. He headed back to the garage. Sizing up the hose first, Kirk stuck one end on the engine, and then bent it over to the radiator. It fit, not perfectly, but it’d work. He dug around to find good clamps, took one end of the hose off, slipped them on and tightened them up.  He seemed to be on a hose course so he thought he’d hook up the fuel line.

Mike kept a couple sizes of fuel line on spools in the garage. Taking the 5/16inch spool and tried to stick the loose end on the fuel pump n****e. Naw, wouldn’t fit, next size up. He switched up to the 3/8inch that fit right on. The old steel gas line ran from the tank, protected within the frame rail to the engine compartment and poked out not far from the engine. Kirk snipped off about a foot of the rubber hose, returned the spool, and grabbed a couple small clamps. He already had the screwdriver in his pocket from the other hose replacements. After a bit of a struggle, Kirk got the hose to slide on far enough and cinched down the two clamps. The line from the pump to carburetor already was in place.   

Kirk looked at the clock. It was 10:45. His heartrate went up when he realized what he needed to get done on the car yet and that he had to go home to bale hay. He wished that he had the balls to tell his father off and ditch the baling, but if there was one thing Kirk was and that was that Kirk was responsible for his responsibilities. (Undoubtedly, that’s a horrible sentence!)

He glanced back to his stock car. Now his mind was swirling with too many issues and so his main nemesis indecision set in. No hood. No wiring. No battery. No performance parts. Nerf bars needed replacement. Engine hasn’t started. What should he do now in his limited time? The wiring dangled from the firewall. The heavy cable he picked out of the bunch. Easy job to hook up to the main starter terminal. He pulled the cable toward the starter. Apparently, the starter was on the other side of the previous engine. He looked at the clock. Damn.

Kirk went back to the trunk, or what would’ve been the trunk originally. He checked the empty battery box to see if there was slack in the cable. Eyeballing the situation, he didn’t think there was any extra cable. On a creeper, he scooted underneath and followed the cable back up to the firewall. NO extra cable. It dawned on him that if he pulled the cable all the way through front to back, he could feed it through the other frame rail and then it should reach. With some difficulty with the cable snagging here and there he pulled the cable out and then fed it into the other rail.  It didn’t take long for him to realize when it got stuck over and over that this “easy” job was a no go. He’d have to feed a stiff wire through to fish the cable through. He looked at the clock. His morning time ran short, and he couldn’t concentrate on anything. He gave up.

Kirk drove back to the farm. When he drove in the driveway, his father was bent over nailing on some heavy thick planks. He gave Kirk the stink eye. A long time ago, Kirk had found out that his father had taken a carpentry class in his early days, but Kirk couldn’t recall his father building anything noteworthy using carpentry skills. What he built currently, Kirk had no clue.

Kirk climbed on the old John Deere parked atop the hill, released the brake, jammed it in gear, and popped the clutch. With the characteristic “pum�"pum, pum” the engine caught and ran. He ran it over to the gas storage tank. Using a cedar shard, he opened up the gas tank and stuck the stick in and pulled it right out. About a quarter of a tank. Kirk took a deep breath of irritation. They say you’re not supposed to refuel with your engine running, but the farm situation often precludes safety concerns. Yeah, injuries and deaths occur on the farm because of that mentality. Sticking the gas nozzle up in the tank, he started cranking on the pump handle doing about four rotations per gallon. After a couple gallons he switched arms. Finally, just by the sound, he knew the tank neared full up. Good enough.

Without acknowledgement from his father, Kirk throttled up the tractor and flew out of the barnyard. Kirk usually picked this tractor out of the two. Actually, his favorite tractor was built during the war�"World War 2 that is. The tractor overall was lighter than the other despite being the same letter model. The frame was cast iron versus stamped steel, the copper radiator was replaced with aluminum, and it had two fuel tanks, one small gasoline and one larger for kerosene. During the war, gasoline was at a premium so the tractor could be started on gas, warmed up, and then switched to kerosene. On the farm, they never used kerosene. The part Kirk liked was that the tractor was geared higher than the other. In his younger days, like when he was 15, he’d drive the tractor and implements from his grandparents 18 miles away. The drive was a thrill back then, now after college, not so much.

He headed out to the humongous field of cut hay having hitched up the rake in the field they had previously baled. He couldn’t rake the whole field and still have time to bale so making a judgement call he picked an inner swath that he’d double up to leave room to rake the other swaths. He engaged the rake, put the tractor in fourth gear and took off. The gear selection was the fastest he could rake where the windrow stayed put and didn’t fly into pieces making it impossible to bale and bring his father’s rath to a boil.

After an hour or so he neared finishing and spotted his father heading his way with the other tractor and baler. Hmmmm, no wagon behind. Kirk wondered why for a few minutes until his father pulled into the field dragging the flat wooden thing his father previously nailed together. Now what?

            Kirk finished and parked the rake. He strolled over to his father who waited impatiently. Stepping on the wooden thing, Kirk knew what it was but didn’t want to admit he knew to himself or his father.

            “What’s this thing,” he asked.

            “A stone boat for hay,” his father said, obviously proud of his handy work. “A ‘hay boat.’” A stone boat in Kirk’s limited guessing ability was a flat platform used to skid rocks out of a field when clearing it of said rocks. Kirk didn’t like the looks of the hay boat for bales because it wasn’t solid, for it had rather large gaps between the planks.

            “Won’t the hay drag on the ground?” Kirk asked.

            “Not if it is stacked right,” his father said, as an obvious dig. “Let’s go.”

            Kirk’s father engaged the baler and they began. Kirk had pretty good balance while stacking hay on a moving wagon but this was a whole different animal. As they moved along, the ground moved under those couple inches where he stepped, and he could see it there in the gaps. Right off the bat Kirk imagined taking a misstep and stepping on the moving ground and getting his foot stuck underneath. Kirk further imagined his father not seeing to stop and just  keep baling. Kirk could see himself becoming a red smear across the hay field. Kirk’s stomach knotted up as he precariously carried the bales to the back and stacked them. Suddenly, he mis-stepped once which gave himself a thrill but he caught himself in time before getting sucked underneath and becoming the dreaded red smear...

            As the bales kept coming out of the baler and he kept stacking, the danger of stepping wrong seemed to diminish. The pile on the hay boat got bigger and bigger; Kirk noticed that the tractor’s tire chevron tracks seemed to be getting more pronounced in the soil. From the previous time they went around the field, Kirk noticed the hay boat’s skid marks that scarred the field.

On one end of the field there was a slight upward grade. Kirk noticed out of his superb peripheral vision and his sharp hearing as he stacked that the tractor smoked thicker and chugged harder up the grade. He saw the tires’ tracks actually began slipping in the hard soil. He smiled to himself knowing what would happen the next time around, but he kept stacking. When they went around back to the field’s opening, his father stopped the baler and pulled off the side and signaled to unhook. So much for his father’s hairbrained experiment.

Without a word Kirk, jumped on the other tractor and retrieved the regular hay wagon. From there it was a sweaty, hot marathon of baling, loading, stacking and unloading, getting four regular loads completed. Afterward, Kirk’s father hitched onto the hay boat and dragged the invention up to the barn making grooves up the lane, around the barn and through the barn yard. After unloading it, to say the least, that was the end of the “hay boat” excursion.

So, after Saturday’s hay work, Kirk found himself tired and famished. His mother solved the latter, but only sleep could solve the former, so he went to bed early in preparation for the next day. Sure, he thought about the things he needed to do on the stock car for a few moments, but he was down and out in a few more moments.

Sunday pretty much followed the pattern of Saturday except Kirk didn’t even bother going to look at the car. He did the raking just the same and luckily there wasn’t the “hay boat” involved. There were four and a half loads of hay to bale, stack and put away. Kirk pretty much had it with the farming way of life, but for the time being Kirk remained Just the Same as Usual.

However, the following week would be a gamechanger for Kirk after his surprise on Monday!