Well, this morning started just like every other morning on the farm. Unexpectedly exciting. I’m awoken five minutes before my alarm gets a chance to go off to the voice of my dad saying, “Megan, wake up! Jerome broke down on the interstate and needs a ride.” I look at the clock and it’s 7:00 am. My first thought was “Wow, my brother is up early if he is already on the interstate.” My second thought was, “He can wait five extra minutes while I lay here until my alarm goes off.”
So after a quick brush of teeth and a half attempt to put my hair in a ponytail, I grab some coffee and head out the door, ready to greet the sun with squinting eyes as it rises. My cell phone went off 12 miles later, my brother on the other end asking if I was almost there. He must have assumed I was flying our jet to get him but I told him no I had barely left. I arrived just outside of Cozad around 8:30 to find our old farm truck stranded on the interstate. In my moment of playing Dukes of Hazard I slowed down just enough on the interstate to whip down into the ditch and get to the other side before getting squished like a bug by oncoming traffic. It was a proud moment for me.
Another proud moment was towing my brother down the interstate going 40 mph. Yes; I am a Jill of all trades, that being a sister to Jack. I do it all. We get the pickup safe off the interstate two miles later and into a Burger King parking lot and proceed to head to Kearney. It is then that I am informed we are even going to Kearney.
Let me take a quick timeout here and say, if you are working for a bunch of men on a farm (and happen to be a girl), 90% of the time you have no idea what’s going on, you just do what you’re told. How should I compare the scenario, bottom of the totem pole perhaps? Or the bottom of the food chain works well. (Quite ironic since I do most of the food making.) Anyway, my point is, we are never told of the next step in the plan of the day. I’m assuming this is because of the simple fact that most of the time things on the farm never go according to plan anyway, as was the case today.
So we head off to Kearney to get a grill guard for our semi. Jerome was supposed to be there at 8:00 am but seeing it was now 9:00 this was not going to happen. Things in Kearney were really not that exciting. I played fetch with my brother’s dog while it took them quite some time to get the grill guard secured safely on the bed of the truck. We then went to a gas station outside of town to relieve our stomachs. Mine was growling, his was tied in a knot. So he went to the bathroom and I grabbed a muffin and some more coffee before we hit the road to head home.
We are informed about 30 minutes from home that my dad was stranded with an ill working combine in the bean field and we needed to pick him up on our way by. So we picked up dad and he sent us on a new mission down to Logan, Kansas where some of our farm ground is managed. I ran inside quick to burn a new CD while they were fueling up the pickups. It was around 12:30 pm when we left for mission two, Jerome in the straight truck and me following close behind in his pickup. There in Kansas, Cory, who is helping us farm, was putting together a part he just retrieved some three hours before from a break down that happened just a day ago. Jerome and I, let’s be honest here, Jerome helped Cory get the drill ready while again I played with the dogs like a good clueless farm girl should do.
After they had everything fixed up and running again I helped move farm equipment to a different field before we proceeded to head back to the good life. I was elected to drive on the way home. I looked at Jerome’s sleepy eyes and agreed it was probably best I should be behind the wheel. Quite conveniently for him I had just burned a CD that would be great to fall asleep to, but unlucky for me I had to keep my eyes open as Dallas Green sang us both lullabies driving home on the much deserted Kansas highway. I think I passed more dead raccoons on the road than I did motorized vehicles, which I found strange because in order for those raccoons to die I assumed a motorized vehicle would have to end its life. Either way it is definitely raccoon crossing season.
After an entire day of driving around the country, failing to fix farm equipment faster than it can break down, we finally arrive home around 4:00 pm from what seemed to be a pointless day at a fake attempt to count the yellow lines between the never ending white ones, my brother reaches for the rest of my blueberry muffin on the dash of the truck and makes an effort to put it in his mouth to only then watch as it crumbles down his shirt just millimeters from the desired target. With a long sigh he slowly shoves the three crumbs left between his finger and thumb, smaller than even the tastiest dip of chew, in his mouth and looks at me and says, “Seems like this is how the whole day has went. We get so close, but then everything falls apart.”
It was then I remembered that he told me he held in a number two, if you will, all morning while stranded on the side of the road. When we stopped at the gas station later and he was finally able to relieve himself I never asked him how that all turned out. I expect he wasn’t speaking of that when he said ‘so close but then everything falls apart.’ For his sake I hope that was the one thing in his day that came out smoothly.
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