Cut to the Chase for April 28th, 2010

BEHIND CLOSED TRACTOR CAB DOORS

By Blake Hurst

It was our first tractor with a cab, and I was driving – our first tractor with a radio, and I had it tuned to clear channel KWMT, blaring out country hits. Charlie Rich was my hero, and I was belting out “Behind Closed Doors" in a tuneless holler when I noticed a noise, sort of a clicking sound, followed by a wet thud.

Then, just as I got to the really neat part of the song, and had taken a deep breath so I could really belt out the part about closed doors, it occurred to me that the tractor was slowing down. Nope, it had plain stopped. Maybe I ought to push in the clutch. Well, there seems to be a little mud – I may be almost stuck. I'll put the power shift transmission in reverse, rev up my 135 horses and try it backwards. Whoops, maybe I should have lifted up the disk. Whoa, it doesn't lift up very well. I'll try going forward; and again. Backwards will surely work this time; almost had it. Why is Dad driving across the field so fast, waving his hat?

Well, it seems he wants to talk to me, "talk" being used in only the most general sense. Talk implies reasonable conversation, at a reasonable level, with reasoned discourse between two people. He talks, I talk. That was not what happened. I'm always willing, no eager, to tell my side of the story. This is sometimes a fault, as I soon learned, not the only lesson I would learn that day and the next.

He pointed out I was in the middle of a wet spot, one he had told me about. He went on to talk about life, and the futility of endeavoring to reverse an irreversible situation, of fighting unbeatable odds, of attempting to climb an unclimbable mountain, of trying again and again to reach a goal that can't be reached. A philosopher, my dad. I've left out some of the words he used, some I'd never heard him use before. I didn't even know he knew those words. I filed them away for further experimentation, preferably when my mother wasn't around.

We got another tractor and a chain. It had been a wet spring, and Dad had pulled out several stuck tractors, so many that the log chain was stiff and straight. We broke the chain. Then Dad said, "Get in the pickup, I'm taking you home." It was a very silent trip. I was not unpleased by this turn of events. I had school the next day, and by the time I got home, the tractor would surely be out of the mud, and maybe KWMT would play that song about Delta Dawn.

Who knew people could go to work before the sun came up? Who knew you couldn't hear KWMT at 5:15 a.m.? Who knew you could dig out a stuck tractor with a spade? The tractor was buried to its axle, and I had to dig a trench in front of all four wheels. My friends were in bed. My brothers were in bed. My dad went back to the house for breakfast. No sounds except the birds, the suck of the spade, and the water running back into the hole I was digging.

Dad eventually came back, surveyed my work and told me to keep digging. Grandpa came to work, but not before stopping by the scene of what surely must have been cruelty to his oldest grandchild. No sympathy there. In fact, I'm not sure, but he may have been smiling as he left. Dad came back again, and I asked if we could hook the tractor on and try to pull it out. Nope, that wouldn't be possible. The hired hand showed up. I know he was smiling. Well, laughing, actually.

I've been stuck since then, but never so badly. Dad has philosophized since then, but never so loudly. Grandpa is gone, and I'd dig another tractor out of the mud if he could stop by just once more, even if it was to laugh at me. Family farms are businesses and homes, made up of land and tractors and sheds and animals, but to me, the most important part is the memories. I've avoided that wet spot for nearly 40 years, and I can still sing “Behind Closed Doors,” although you wouldn't want to hear it.

(Blake Hurst, of Westboro, Mo., is vice-president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.)