Thursday, May 24, 2012

Summertime

I was driving my girlie to her last day of seventh grade today. That means it's officially summertime.

Summer

Buggy windshield.
Frosty drink.
Sunny days.
They make me think of
Summer.

The wheat harvesters that are gathering in the fields are another clue. I love the wheat harvest.  That wasn't always the case, though.


When I was a kid not much older than my girlie, I drove the grain truck for my dad.  Our day would start early with maintaining the combine, which often included duct tape, bailing wire and harsh words.  Our grain truck didn't look like the one above, either.  It looked more like this one:


I think our truck might have been cursed.  There was a hole in the floorboard on the passenger side.  The passenger side window wouldn't roll up, and the driver's side wouldn't roll down.  It also didn't have good brakes.  Since the elevator was at the bottom of the biggest hill in town, you had to be very strategic trying to get the truck into the driveway.  I missed it the first time and hit the culvert. The truck battery was not screwed down, so it jumped off its little platform and melted to the manifold.  Luckily, my grandfather was there to run interference for me when my dad finally came looking for me in the era of pre-cell phones.  A snake once slithered out of the dashboard while my sister was driving. She jumped out of the moving vehicle.  My dad was still inside.  The truck met an unfortunate end when my parents were transporting an open five gallon bucket of gasoline in it. My dad hit a pothole (not an unusual occurance in a field); the gas sloshed out of the bucket onto something important (and apparently also very hot) just below the hole in the floor board, and caught fire.

It was during those summers, sitting in the truck waiting for my dad to whistle at the top of his lungs (and sometimes, if I were particularly inattentive, he'd also stand on the platform of the combine frantically waving his cap around), that I realized that farm living wasn't really the life for me.

Other fun happenings around the place that have been keeping me busy:

Max

Ruby

A little bit of art.

May the good Lord bless you with a job you love, cute kitties to keep you company and a house full of people you love.  Amen.

<3 Lori