5
My teenaged sister raised me during my first three years of life.
After the trauma of my birth, my mother would not only have nothing
to do with me but, as she later told me, her vocal cords had been
paralyzed by the anesthesia and she couldn't talk to anyone for the
following six to nine months as a result. My father followed the
distant father figure role of so many World War II vets thus my
biological parents ended-up being just older people who lived in the
same house as I, almost like live-in grandparents, except without the
doting. I have to say that I was very fortunate to have my sister
raise me during those early years and credit much of what is good in
me to her love and care. But then she reached the end of High School
and College years came and she was gone.
I was three and I remember spending hours in my sister's empty room
as she lived elsewhere in the state at a college dormitory. I guess
I thought that if I stayed in her room long enough she would show
back up by the end of the day. But she didn't. My mother made the
drive to pick her up during holiday breaks and bring her home, then
take her back after the breaks. By being a part of these rides in
the sky blue Volkswagen 'Bug,' I knew I would have more time with my
sister but also by joining these trips, it really became the first
significant lengths of time I spent with my mother alone. Before the
age of common place car radios, these drives with just my mother were
largely silent journeys where I would watch the landscape go by out
the window.
By the following Spring I knew that the college year would be over
and my sister would be back full-time... Except she wasn't.
She was working as a waitress at the local fancy restaurant so I
would see her in the late morning then often be to bed before she got
home at night. With this, I combined my habits of hanging out in
her room when she was gone, and anticipating to see her again
by looking out at the landscape, into being in her bedroom and
watching the hayfield outside her window. Truly watching grass grow,
I got to see it shine on sunny days, sit there getting wet on rainy
days, and more excitingly sway in the wind on breezy days.
Then one day late in the Summer a monster came and ate it.
Well, actually, it was a tractor with a grey housing and a red belly
that systematically drove up and down the hayfield cutting the stalks
with a side mounted shearing attachment into fallen sheets, almost
like combing unruly hair straight and flat. And there it lay like
that for days and days. I once ventured out to the rock wall that
delineated my family's home property from the hayfield and snuck over
the side just to reach out and touch a few of the fallen stalks. I
found how they had smooth shafts and strange leaves that were smooth
as you moved your fingers one way and rough when you moved your
fingers the other way. Back at the window of my sister's room I
watched as the hay turned more yellow day after day until it reached
a touch of amber.
Then the monster was back, this time with a swirling attachment that
whipped around and left the hay in clump-like rows back and forth
across the field. I watched it as it raked near my sister's bedroom
window, and strained to keep watching it as it moved away. This lead
to a break in routine as I left my sister's bedroom and went to my
eldest brother's bedroom for a better view out. Then the hay lay as
the walls to a maze swirling toward some imagined central room in the
portion of the hayfield that was out of sight.
Then I could hear the monster in the distance for the next day or
two, but didn't see it. A day later it finally came into sight.
This time the attachment was huge, seemingly as big as the tractor
itself, and I realized this attachment was the true monster. With
its sweeping teeth, it gobbled up the endless row of clumped hay and
it wriggled and churned and then dropped a rectangle of bailed hay
from its hind quarters. So exciting was this monster that I broke
from protocol again and squirreled myself on my home's side of the
rock wall and spied over the edge for a close look at the machine's
work as it reached the hay rows near my house. As the tractor had to
drive much more slowly to allow the bailing attachment time to digest
the hay and turn it into bails, I had plenty of time to watch it and
found that I even had a better vantage point from the rock wall to
see more of the hay field.
Then it was done. And a weekend later the bails had disappeared. I
didn't know how, they were just gone. But not my excitement!
The following Summer I was again back in my sister's room while she
was away waitressing, but this time it was to watch out the window
for the cutter which would usher in the haying cycle. Once seen from
the window, I would then take my spy point on the rock wall to watch
the cutting and raking of the hay and would follow along the length
of the wall to watch the bailer as the field was bailed over the
course of a few days given the slower pace. And as the bailer worked
the far reaches of the hayfield, I ventured out into the already
bailed portions of field to watch, first from behind a bail, but then
when it was clear the driver knew I was there, I openly followed it
from a distance as the machine chewed-up the hay row and dropped the
bails. I got to marvel at rows of bails and the two thin strips of
string that held each one together. Then on one day I followed the
tractor with the bailing machine all the way to its home. Once
there, the driver told me I could sweep-out the barn.
'Marcus Giacomo' and his family was the first wing of the Giacomo
family that I came to know. And each subsequent Summer I had a
'job.' No longer did I have to wait at my sister's bedroom window to
see the tractor at work, I had come to realize the grumble in the
distance meant the tractor would soon be to our side of the field
where I could watch the machinery work. When bailing time came I
would follow the bailer to inspect the resulting hay bails to make
sure they were securely bound. From time to time the bailing twine
would run out from one of the several big spools attached to the back
of the bailing machine and produce bails that would spill apart on
one side. I would run up on the side opposite of the bailer and let
Marcus know. He would stop the tractor and bailer and get out to
hook up the next roll of twine and I would move the spilt squares of
partially bailed hay to the front of the idled bailer and tear them
apart into loose chunks so when Marcus started the tractor again, it
would re-eat the hay and turn it into a proper bail.
While I did occasionally sweep the barn, most of the time I spent
once the haying day was over was to visit with his family at his
home. I met an elder son and a younger sister, though she was still
a few years older than me. There was also an older sister that I
heard of, though in all my years I never met her. At the end of
haying Marcus would wash-up and I would hang around visiting with his
wife and kids while their dinner was being prepared. They had an
electric organ which they showed me and I would sometimes use the
keys of the organ as accompaniment as I told a scarey story. Then
when they set the table, it was my cue to go home and join my own
family's dinner.
Now I knew where the bails went to as I learned the final
tractor attachment was a flatbed trailer which they would drive to a
portion of the field, then Marcus and his son would load the
surrounding bails, then move the tractor to the next part and load
those bails, and so on. By the Summer I was eight, I decided to try
to help load the bails onto the flatbed and picked one up, that
was probably as big as me, and hefted & hefted it to the
side of the flatbed where I tipped one end onto the edge, and lifted
the other end into the air and pushed until the bail was fully on the
trailer bed. Marcus and his son were amazed that I had done it, then
worried that I might hurt myself doing it again and instead put me in
charge of driving the tractor.
With me, rather than moving the tractor, stopping to load, and moving
the tractor again, they came up with a different technique. The
throttle was on the steering column and set to keep the tractor at a
slow crawl and I would keep it going straight as Marcus and his son
would collect the bails and slide them onto the flat bed. Then they
would have me step on the clutch to stop the movement of the tractor
once they had enough bails to stack at the front of the trailer.
Once stacked, I would release the clutch and the tractor would again
crawl forward. The first time I released the clutch, my little leg
wasn't strong enough to ease it up slowly and the tractor lurched
forward causing some of the stacked bails to tumble off. Marcus
explained that I needed to release the clutch more slowly and so I
thought about it as the tractor crawled forward and the next time I
was to step on the clutch I did so with both feet, then when it was
time to go forward again I would push down on the steering wheel with
my hands which would lift my body slowly from the clutch and gently
get the tractor moving forward again.
It was this year's haying cycle that I was invited to join them on
delivery runs where they would load a pickup truck with bails, and
when we reached the farm needing them, I my job would be to push the
bails to the edge of the pickup's bed where Marcus and his son would
pull them off and stack them at the buyer's home. On smaller loads
it would just be me and his son making the delivery. At the end of
that haying year I was thrilled that I had worked my way up to
driving the tractor and helping on deliveries. I wondered if they
would let me drive the tractor the following year for part of the
cutting or raking work...
Instead I never got to help out again. My mother had other plans
for me.
help me break even: Shop
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