Come gather ‘round the pickup, boys, And have a jug of spit. We’ll talk of all the toughest hands Who’ve come and gone and quit And stretched the wire o’er rock and tree And metal painted post, And peeled the hide off many broncs. To them, we raise a toast. ‘Cause bucking flies in the heat of day Is mucho better, yet Than slappin’ skeeters, bailin’ hay, Or trying just to get The bluegrass out of combine bowels, Or yanking on a wrench. I’d rather chase a cow to Mars With parch’ed throat to quench. I’d say that excerpt from one of my poems pretty much gets across how I feel about the farming part of any cowboy job. Truthfully, I envy those guys who work on the last bastion of buckaroo outfits. Those guys don’t have to build fence. They don’t have to farm. They don’t have to do anything but get on and ride. Lucky dogs. In the real world, however, cowboys have to farm. They don’t necessarily have to drive wheat combines, rodweed, or cultivate a row crop full of onions. They may not even have to change a sprinkler pipe (if they flood irrigate). But most of them have to farm. They have to cut and bale hay. Bummer. I will say, though, that I don’t mind driving a swather. I hate combines, tractors, bailers, and rakes, but I don’t mind a swather. A couple of things make driving a swather different from operating other pieces of equipment. One thing I like is that there aren’t too many moving parts in a swather, as compared to a combine. Another thing I like is that swathing is many times done at night, or in the wee hours of the morning, especially if you’re cutting grass seed. I remember fondly my days of swathing grass seed. I’d run cows, build fence, and siphon irrigate corn during the day; then I’d take a short nap and climb in the swather about ten at night. I’d turn that baby on, fire up the air conditioner, blast the radio and proceed to drive in a circle until I hit the pivot. Then, I’d turn and go the other way. One night, I was getting a little sleepy. Aerosmith and Natalie Imbruglia were having a hard time keeping my eyelids open, and it was that time of night when pink elephants would thunder across the windrows once in a while. I was straddling a circle track on one lap, and I began to nod off. All of a sudden, I was startled awake by one of the spookiest sights I’d seen: skeletons, and lots of them! The circle track was deep enough that my boss had thrown the calves he’d lost over the winter into it to try and fill it up. As I spooked to a halt, I stared at those skeletons through the rotating beaters on the swather header. Talk about a wake-up call. Worse yet, I realized that had I turned a little one way, or a little another, I’d have drug a hind wheel through the track and probably gotten stuck. I was spooked all the way around. Add to that that I could only see what was being illuminated by my lights. The rest of the world appeared to be pitch black. It was me, a swather, and a bunch of dead calves. I was feeling a little bit alone. It’s weird how when we feel all alone, we feel scared. I mean, there was nothing to be scared of. Heck, I used to play with dead calves as a boy. But when they jumped out of a circle track in the pitch black night, a little bit of fear began to creep in. In actuality, though, it was loneliness, not fear. They both feel pretty similar, though. Ask yourself what the difference is between the two feelings. When you’re alone, how is that different from fear. It’s the same thing with grief. C.S. Lewis said, “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.” I agree. That’s why loneliness is so saddening, which then causes us to feel fear. That’s also why it’s so important that we have fellowship. When the devil can get us to feeling alone, he will convince us we’re scared. That’s a good weapon to use against us. When we’re scared, our judgement goes away. Kind of like when you run past an alley to avoid the robbers in it. We don’t have to be scared, though. We don’t have to be lonely. Ecclesiastes 4 says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!” If we are lonely, there’s no one to lift us up. If we fellowship with other believers, there’s always someone there to lend that hand, that shoulder, that tug we may need. Nobody likes to be alone. That’s not how God made us. He made us to be with each other, not out in the dark with a bunch of bones.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 05:08:19 +0000
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