Archive for September, 2010
Odd-Jobs Series: Farmhand (Part 1)
September 30, 2010 11:38 am
One high-school summer break, my buddy Shawn and I worked as farmhands on his Uncle’s farm. He grew tobacco and raised hogs, and we figured all the hard labor would make for good Rocky-style conditioning for the upcoming football season.
Before that summer, I was often guilty of entertaining the occasional romantic notion of doing strong, mean man labor on rustic landscapes under a setting sun. I imagined a tough but fairly painless work environment, where I almost always looked like Tristan (Brad Pitt) in the movie Legend of the Fall. It was typical for me to roam the countryside by horse – a horse that I had broke. Sometimes, I might free an entangled lamb from a thicket, rescue a bawling calf caught in the middle of a rushing stream, or scoop up the earth and smell the fragrance of my toil.
Never did my hands turn into two hunks of bleeding blisters, or my lower back feel as though it’d been struck by lightening after operating the hay escalator for four hours. Nor did I ever imagine myself white-eyeing, which is, I learned, the name of the condition for when the victim’s eyes go goofy from the onset of heat exhaustion. But this was more the reality. Add to this: farm hours start insanely early.
Every predawn for three months, Shawn would pick me up. I’d finish the rest of my previous night’s sleep in the passenger seat on the ride there, while Shawn drove, manned the radio, and got on me about being a poor conversation partner. Once at the farm, I’d stumble out of the car to a low-slung sun poking just over the trees. Then we’d go find Uncle Wes to receive our orders for the day.
For our first assignment, we were banished to the tobacco fields. When we started, the tobacco was already in the ground and blooming nicely. So, the main thing at this point was the vigorous task of weed maintenance. Wes, therefore, introduced us to the gas-powered tiller.
There was just one tiller, so Shawn and I took turns guiding it through the lanes of the tobacco field. The tiller moved about an inch an hour, giving you considerable time to think. I usually just zoned out on one of the churning blades or something and let the muffled roar of the engine carry me away to a distant daydream.
Yes, it was a fairly peaceful process, that is, until your forearms started to heat up from gripping the strong, metal levers that propelled the tiller forward. The pain would typically set in midway through, when Shawn or I, whoever was left behind to kick dirt clods, was just a speck on the horizon. It’d begin with a slight tingle, which deceived you into thinking you could take it. Then, suddenly, the deep, burning hurt would bite down. It was probably equivalent to injecting lava into your arms. Daydreams turned into prayers for strength and deliverance. And any screams were drowned out by the roar of the tiller engine and the heavy sense of isolation.
Sometimes, while letting our forearms cool, we’d try to come up with ways to entertain ourselves. We’d wing dirt clods at a stationary target or swim in the pond with the pigs. Once we got so desperate, we shoved a bright green tobacco leaf into our mouth, to see if it tasted like the store kind. It did not, of course. It tasted like chemicals or a bad salad soaked in insecticide dressing. But we were glad we did it anyway.
When we weren’t in the fields, we were either baling hay or chasing pigs, which I will talk about next time.
Odd-Jobs Series: Professional Weed-eater
September 15, 2010 8:31 pm
College summers, I worked for the county of my hometown. Overall, it was a decent job, but my rookie year there they placed me on the weed-eating crew.
From 6 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, in the white heat of the day, we’d rove the deserted county roads in a dusty white utility van in search of weed-covered guardrails. The van resembled an ice-cream truck stripped of all its fun. It had commercial-airplane passenger seats in back and a good-for-nothing stick shift that’d slip into neutral in mid drive. Our foreman behind the wheel, who I’ll call Gil, would call that stick shift all sorts of names until he wrestled it back into place.
Only a select few made up the weed-eating crew: three college punks — Pat, Lucas and me — and Gil, a retiree who worked summers, wore a purple polka-dot hat with a tiny brim, and suffered daily back spasms. The first few weeks on the job didn’t seem so bad. We got to sport safety face shields that resembled college-campus riot gear and wield gas-powered weed-eaters that roared like chainsaws. On breaks, we’d wrestle each other in the ditch, crack jokes, or listen to Gil under a shade tree go on about the world of antique collecting.
Our job mainly involved Gil pulling up to a guardrail, lighting a Camel No-filter and turning us loose. We’d massacre every weed in sight. Then we’d return to the van, weed guts and bugs plastered to our face shields. We’d climb into our respective airplane seats and doze off while Gil drove us to our next weedy destination, only the wayward stick shift or Gil’s growling through another back attack interrupting our dreams.
After about a week of this, I woke up one morning scratching my forearms to the dermis. My arms pulsated. They were bumpy, red and swollen, like Popeye’s, and had the texture of a gourd. Poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac – I had all the poisons. To combat this, I wore long sleeves to work. Nights, I soaked my body to the neck in Calamine Lotion and wore knee socks over my hands to bed, to keep from scratching in my sleep.
Just as my forearms started returning to normal, what looked like inflamed anthills started dotting my ankles. I scratched the tops off until they bled and scabbed over. Then these tiny anthills started moving north. I found one behind my knee. Then behind my other knee. Then along every square inch of my inseams. Then in places I was too embarrassed to tell the doctor about.
Later I found out that these were chigger bites. Chiggers are these mean grass mites that live in tall grass and burrow into the skin, where they live for about a week before they move on. Although they sound lethal, they are generally harmless and go away, but not before they become your most-hated insect.
At summer’s end, we all desperately wanted off the weed-eating crew. We were so sick of weeds. So sick. The chiggers were relentless. And the blinding August heat just kept getting hotter. The van had no air condition, so we had to settle for whatever hot breath the wind blew through the windows and doors. We wondered why the tires on our ice-cream truck hadn’t yet melted into black pools of rubber and watched in disbelief as Gil lit up one hot cigarette after another.
Naturally, our van became a mobile insane asylum. I grew agitated and constantly swatted at imaginary ticks crawling up my legs. It wasn’t unusual for Pat, before disappearing into the weeds, to raise his weed-eater over his head, give it gas, and laugh like a lunatic. Lucas, rather reserved anyway, grew even more disturbingly quiet. We eyed him cautiously. And poor Gil let our sophomoric antics get to him. This became most apparent on the day he chased Pat around the van.
When it was all finally over, and my post-traumatic-stress-disorder symptoms had subsided, I was able to strike one more thing off my list of possible college majors: weed-eating.
My next article will be about my experience on a tobacco/pig farm.
