Harvest – A Retrospective

There is a certain sweetness to the memories of harvest, especially if you fade out the heat-shortened tempers, or the seriously itchy spots on the inside elbows and the back of the neck.

It is the only season when there is a team in the field working together. The rest of the year, farming is pretty much a solitary event.

For me, harvest was more like a game and less like work (of course I did not have much responsibility in the early years ex- cept to be in the right place and ready when needed).

In the1960's and early 70's it took 10-12 people, all paying close attention to what they were doing, to do what can be done with 3 people today. The largest of the wheat trucks could take 300 bushels if it was loaded care- fully, and it took some skill to do that. Today there are many trucks that can take on 1,000 bushels. A truck driver was expected to be in position to load without causing delay, as every minute the combine header was not turning in the wheat was a minute longer until the wheat was out of the field and out of harm's way.

Communication was mostly by hand signals or whistle (that special, piercing, lips-stretched-back shriek from between the teeth that can cut through the roar of machinery or carry across distance better than any hoarse voice and is so admired by anyone who has not learned the knack of it). A driver who was inattentive or in the wrong place could cause a "combine-man" to get all red in the face and dance a little jig. The lengths to which a combine driver with a full bulk- tank will go to get the attention of a sleepy truck driver are nearly unlimited (at least in the mind of said combine-man).

One hot, late afternoon in the first week of August 1968, there was a wheat truck parked near the standing wheat in the Sky- rocket hills not far from Prescott. The young driver, in his first year of hauling wheat from the field to the grain elevator during harvest, had been up late the night before talking to his girlfriend on the telephone, making plans for the next day off. His eyelids drooped as he waited for the next combine machine to show up.

The problem was that he had parked too far from the edge of the standing wheat for the combine to dump without stopping the header, pulling out of the wheat and roll- ing ponderously over to the truck to empty newly harvested wheat into the truck. The combine man, after trying all manner of signals, hollering, waving, etc. was finally forced to execute said maneuver.

But this time, he gently pulled up near the truck, levelled the machine over so that the end of the unloading spout was just outside of the open truck cab window and threw the unloading auger into gear. Wheat poured swiftly from the end of the spout into the window next to the sleeping driver, rapidly filling the entire cab with wheat. The now thoroughly sur- prised driver, his eyes as big as dinner plates, was covered with wheat up to his waist in the cab before he realized what was happening.

Of course, there were four results from this. First, the truck driver was forced to scoop all of the wheat from the cab back into the truck bin, a tedious task. Second, he never fell asleep again waiting for the next machine. Third, the combine driver went on his way feeling refreshed and amused, instead of frustrated. And fourth, the story was told again and again at the harvest crew dinner, breakfast and lunch tables, affording an object lesson for other crew mem- bers. Oh yeah, harvest was more like a party than work, oh yeah!