June 2013: Bike Trip 2
This is Kansas
In the Johnson City Museum.
I was personally invited to the Museum's open house, featuring
homemade ice cream & homemade pies and cobblers. The fellow
who invited me was one of the fellows who chatted with me in the
library. He is the primary bus driver for the high school and
told me he "loves driving those kids around." He also farms and works on cars.
Perhaps the funniest quip from him was this:
"This country's hard on
windshield wipers. They get all wore out before we ever get to use
them."
He also teased a younger fellow who came in to pick up videos to watch while he plows and sprays. The younger guy works a farm for a veterinarian who inherited it from both sides of his parents' families.
I thought he was just kidding around with the farmer, but when I asked, the farmer said:
"Naw, that's true. I do watch videos while I plow. On my iPad.
Before that I had one of those little players. Everything is automatic
in that thing. I'll bet I have the most sophisticated tractor in the
county. I've got my iPad, my iPod, GPS. The biggest problem is trying to say awake."
Does it stop automatically when you get to the end of a row?
"No. It beeps at you is all. But it keeps going. [One fellow] dozed
off and pulled his sweeper right over the county road and into his
neighbor's millet field. If it hadn't balled all up in the millet
field, he woulda kept going.
I ate my lunch one day . . . and
you know how you get kinda tired after lunch? Well, I folded up the
wheel when I was eating, and then I started to doze off. My head just
touched the wheel and that d released the GPS, and I went off
diagonally.
Took me about four hours of back and forth to straighten that all out.
Of course one time, we used to have a corner up there near the highway.
We always plowed it north-south. And the way you would do it would be
to pick a point a long way off and head for it. Well, I picked
something out and kept my eye fixed on it. I plowed for awhile before I
realized the thing was moving. It was semi. Seven miles away on the
highway! I plowed a big ole curve!"
© Hughes Family 2009-10