On the Moraine Part XXXVII

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

(Continued from last week.)

Over the years, we had some trouble with the truck, too. To remind you, we had a 1953 GMC 1 ½ ton with a 12-foot bed. We had built about 40-inch side walls for the bed, and it would hold approximately 200 bushels.

One evening, after dark, Dad was coming home from combining soybeans at the McNary Farm. He was on the road from Carmel to Cynthiana, coming up the hill from Heads Branch. We got a call at home. The crankshaft had broken in the engine, and he needed me to come with the John Deere and pull him home.  

This I did. It was slow, it was dark, and it was dangerous, but we made it.

Now what to do? In a couple of weeks in the Hillsboro paper, there was an advertisement of an early 1950s Chevrolet pickup for sale for $80. It had one fender caved in, but it ran. We brought it home, swapped out the engine for the broken one in the GMC.  

Later, I stripped down the old pickup. We put the bed on our trailer frame whose bed was rotten. I took the pickup truck frame and made a wagon out of it. For flooring, I went over to the McNary farm and took tongue and groove flooring out of the old kitchen. I think of this experience every time people talk about recycling. For $80, we got a truck engine, pickup bed, and a wagon. Not bad.

Another time, when I was older and driving, John and I were on Cynthiana Road headed for home about midday. Dad happened to be going the other way and started waving at us to stop.  

He had seen something and wanted to check it out. The right rear duels on the truck were wobbling. Upon closer examination, the bolt holes were slotted, and the bolts were stretched. They must have been loose for some time.  

Since the SC Case happened to have the manure bucket on it, we put it behind the truck, lifted the truck up and pushed it about five miles to home. There were eight-wheel studs to be replaced, and they cost $13 each. This was when $13 would buy you a good steak dinner in Cincinnati. More expensive than replacing the engine.

Now, I am not saying these were extraordinary matters, they are just the things that happen on the farm. By illustration, I recall going to church one Sunday morning and having a discussion with Ferris or John Cummings (can’t remember which one). They had just gotten in a bit earlier that morning. Their Dad, Paul, had taken one of their two large trucks to Virginia to buy some feeder cattle. Along about dark, he had broken down in West Virginia.  

He called home, and had one of the twins (again, can’t remember if it was Ferris or John) bring the other truck and they towed home the one loaded with cattle. This was serious – cattle are a little more perishable than a truckload of soybeans.

But there is more. Right before Christmas 1981, I was working at the papermill at Wickliffe, Ky. (this is right where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers join). We were having a pressure vessel fabricated in Richmond, Va., and I was sent to expedite it getting to the mill in time for the Christmas shutdown.  

I followed the semi with our precious cargo out of Richmond starting about 1 p.m. Sunday. I was in a rental car. We got to Wickliffe about daylight Monday morning and had been in an ice storm since Nashville. I had had all night to think about the Cummings cattle and other adventures from the farm days.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.