Old stories, new things to be thankful for, and The First Rule of Farming
Back in ‘96, my cousin and I drove across the country on the cheap. On the second day we stopped at a KOA to make camp after a long day of driving over the Rocky Mountains. We were having some trouble figuring out how to pay for a campsite at the abandoned kiosk when along comes a young girl on a bicycle. She was very shy and reluctant to speak, probably due to being in her “awkward teeth” phase, but managed to instruct us on how to pay through a series of hand gestures and head nods. After paying and thanking the girl, we walked away in the direction of our campsite.
The girl wasn’t done though. Jumping from her bike and pursuing us with some urgency, we could see by her face that what she needed to convey was too complex for hand gestures alone. With a few simple words she managed to inform us that another man camped here about a week ago, then looked to the horizon — big, purplie-black storm clouds were closing fast and looking for a fight. Then she looked back at us, pointed her Michelangela finger straight up towards Heaven and proclaimed:
“Zzzt-Zzzt.”
Wait, what? “Zzzt-Zzzt?”
She nodded and repeated “Zzzzt-Zzzzt!”
Did that just happen? Somebody was struck by lightening here? We tried to get more info, but her job was done. She looked up one more time, shrugged, and pedaled away. That night was not too bad, but the next (in Nebraska) we slept in a two-pound tent under a sky filled with purple lightning for hours on end, thinking it would be nice to reach morning without getting zapped.
Until recently, this was my closest encounter with sky-trocution, one I’ve not thought about for a long time. But thanks to #farmlife, I now have another Zzzt-Zzzt story.
Purplie sunrise over Boistfort Valley.
It was my third day of freelance farm labor and I was helping to gather up irrigation pipe. Winter was coming and this seasonal infrastructure needed to be trailered and stored away so as to not get covered in verdant pasture, hit by eager tractors, clogged by critters, or whatever else would be no fun come spring. It was a tiring day of squats, dead-lifts, and the use of muscles I didn’t even know I had. By late afternoon there was just one more random pipe in a weird spot that needed collecting. It was pointing 180 degrees in the wrong direction for trailering and being so tired, I opted not to pick up its full weight and spin it like the hands of a clock, but instead to stand it on end and drop it in the other direction. Did I mention I was really tired? Did I mention my shoulders weighed a thousand pounds and my hamstrings were screaming “why are you doing this? I HATE YOU!” Right as the pipe went vertical, I heard and felt a firm crack and saw a bit of blue flame and smoke on the ground, right were the pipe was resting in the WET grass and clay. Did someone just shoot at me? What was that? “CRACK!” No Mister, you done just got shocked.
It would be fun to boast how cool and collected I was in what I did next, maybe uttering a witty response to the juice that sought to crispify me, but I was no Mark Twain. I shrieked an F-bomb, shoved the pipe away from me and ran in the opposite direction, thinking that I must have hit a ground wire of some sort and was standing in a field of Odin fire. As if I could outrun Odin fire. My boss jumped from the truck, quick but calm and asked if I got stung (yellow jackets people, I’m telling you...) “I got shocked!” I said, somewhat surprised at the audacity of electricity. “Oh, the power lines” he said.
That’s right, I stood up a 20 foot metal pipe right under the power lines crossing the pasture and made contact, twice. The first one was kind of like a “hey, don’t do that” but the second one was what I imagine happens to flies in Valhalla when they land on Thor’s mead horn. It was very concussive, like feeling the sound barrier crack right under my nose. After a quick interview with my boss and an inventory of my body, I decided I wasn’t hurt. In fact, I felt great — the pains I was feeling before the Ben Franklin reenactment were gone — no sore shoulders, no screaming legs.
We finished (very carefully) and 15 minutes later I was home. By now, the adrenaline was wearing off and I realized why I felt great a short time earlier, as now the pains of the day were rapidly returning. It was even worse now as the anxiety of what had happened sank in. What if I’m hurt and I just don’t know it yet? Naturally, I Googled it... BAD IDEA! Stop stop stop! There is no worse way to increase health-related anxiety than to run an internet search on your symptoms.
Really, the only thing that felt off was that the skin on the palm side of my hands and fingers felt a little heat sore, like I had grabbed a hot pot for a few seconds and burned myself ever so slightly. The next day I had a teensy tiny blister the size of a pinhead on my left index finger. It could have been from any of the previous day’s labor. It could have been much, much worse.
So why am I still here? I have two theories:
Something or someone much higher up on the order of things in this universe has a task for me that I’ve yet to complete.
I was wearing rubber boots and gloves with rubber palms.
Could be both. Just to be safe, I’m adding both rubber and divine intervention to my list of things I’m thankful for come next week’s turkey day. I’m also thankful for learning two contenders for “The First Rule of Farming”. One of them is “Never stand up irrigation pipe in the field”. Not sure why I didn’t know this before, but it makes a ton of sense. There are always clouds in the sky here, always something brewing up above, whether weather or the grid. The other one I learned is “Never go outside without wearing a full rubber body suit, no matter how many proposals you must decline”. Rubber saves lives.
The next day after my Ben Franklin, I went right back to work and was endearingly appointed a new nickname (Sparky, of course). The last thing Farley said to me that morning as I tipped out the door? “DO NOT kill yourself, Mister.”
I promised I would not and spent the whole day looking up. Farming is not gardening. It can be seriously dangerous stuff. I wonder how many more “First Rules of Farming” are lurking like Loki out there. If you have any of your own, please share them in the comments, and let’s all remember to try and make sure each day’s lessons lead to funny ‘back in the day’ stories that we’re still around to tell many, many years from now.