Life As A Working Man

     The weather finally turned nice this past week.   Some months ago I had mentioned to the Agronomy Department leaders at Stateline that if they needed help or if they need truck drivers during the spring fertilizer season, I would be available to help.     They took up me up on my offer just like they took up several other "Retired" person's offers.  (I guess it must be a place where all retired SLC employees go to spend their final working days...Hmmm.)   I got the call Sunday night, May 1st,  to show up Monday Morning at 7:30am.    I had not worn any of my Stateline work shirts since I left SLC in January, but Monday morning I was decked out in a work shirt and I was ready to help out.    They pointed to a tandem tender truck and said "that baby is yours for the week".    I jumped in it, pulled into the building and was loaded with my first load of fertilizer.   (I could just feel a new career coming on.)    

   I was pointed to a field on the North side of Ledyard.   It was one mile from the Minnesota border.    The Plant where I loaded the fertilizer was 18 miles away from my destination.    I was told to deliver this load to a fertilizer spreader that was waiting for me in that field.    (Needless to say, I felt the NASCAR urge hit me and I knew I could move fast.   I was their man.)  

   I did not know that driving a semi/truck is a whole lot different then driving a pickup.    First there is the shifting thing.   Nine forward gears and everyone seemed independent of the other.   I soon discovered that there is an art to shifting a truck.     Three times going down the highway, I had to stop and start shifting all over.    I think I ground so many gears on that first trip that those gears have to be made of some kind of strong metal to not have totally fallen apart.      Needlessly, I have to say I was very late delivering my first load.    (Not a good start for my new career feeling.)  

   I had clocked in at 7:30am on Monday and by Saturday evening,  I had spent 90 hours in that truck.    Also, by Saturday evening I had all the intricacies of that 20 year old truck figured out.     It seemed that you had to know how far to push the clutch and at what time to shift and once that was established, everything else came together.    My truck had over 596,000 miles on it.  (Lot of miles and good gears.)   No radio other then the one that communicated you with the spreader operator or fertilizer plant.   Everyone seem to pleasure themselves on bossing me around.   "Park here",  "Don't pull in yet",   "Where are you at?",   "No, you don't have time for coffee!".     I came to realized that as my life moved on, I must of peaked out when I was 55 years old and now I was moving back down towards the bottom end of the organizational chart where I once started.   People that I had hired were now the people that were telling me what to do.     I was no longer in command.    Now I was the one told what to do and when to do it.    (This was scary - Twilight zone.)    

    There was a lot of jumping in and out of the truck.   Rolling the tarp.  Climbing up to see if the bins had emptied out.    Setting the auger up.    Folding the auger back in.    Unrolling the tarp.    And of course,   shifting.   Shifting up as you headed out and shifting down each time you had to stop.   (Grinding gears is hard work.)   Pictured to the left are some of my new friends I have come to know over the past week.   (Of course these products were only applied at home.   One has to keep his "Macho" image up when one is a truck driver.)    I have a renewed respect for the laboring person after this little trek.  

  Now there was a little time spent in the shop, but most of it was basic prep work.    I dug out more of that rough maple lumber that I have been storing for some time.   I sawed off some of the cracked ends, worked arounds some bad knots,  and ran a bunch of it through the planer.   I'm making up my own boards for the next project.    As you can see from the picture to the right, one ends up with a lot of wood shavings when one does this.   This is a task that is done in the garage portion of the shop.   (Kind of messy.)  I end up with several pails of wood shavings.   I pile them around the edge of the timber in my back yard.    It looks like mulch that one may have purchased from Menards - until it rains.   Once wet, the shavings deteriorate quickly.     I finally ended up with several 3/4 inch thick boards along with several 1/2 inch thick boards.    Just what I needed.  

   My trucking career has ended for the Spring of 2011.    Now it is on to gardening.    Already, my fellow gardeners are ahead of me.    I'm just thinking about planting and most gardners already have their plots planted.    (This retired life has a lot of pressure points!!!)