Column by Hal Walter
Rural Life – April 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
IT IS BUT A VAGUE SUPERSTITION that life tomorrow will be anything like it is today. If you don’t think this is true, go read the book, or see the movie, Grapes of Wrath. It is perhaps the best documentary metaphor for our current times.
Consider our modern TV news and other “media” as the “handbills” of our times, produced and distributed by the ruling plutocracy. Instead of migrant camps, we have suburbs. The company store has been renamed and supersized. Everyone gets a card, but not everyone can pay off the balance. It’s all been sanitized but is it really any different?
Rather than loaded-down farm trucks moving slowly cross-country, we merely pilot SUVs at high speed, back and forth, repetitively. And who goes anywhere without their most essential belongings in their vehicle? Instead of spare clothing and cookware we carry mostly electronics — laptops, cell phones and other largely worthless gadgets. Though they may have heated seats and GPS location devices, the fuel economy of these vehicles isn’t much better than the Joads’ truck. And these days the monthly odometer mileage for most people is easily what the Joads viewed as an epic journey to pick grapes.
Today, most commuters go it alone, rather than with nine people onboard, stopping only for espresso, rather than to buy a loaf of bread with their last few cents. At least the Joads showed courage and drove to their next job with their family and spirits at least partially intact. How does that compare to most families today?
The phone rang late one evening following a day-long ground blizzard. It was my wife. She was stuck. Where? About 50 yards from our gate. She was calling — not exactly long distance — from her cell phone.
Since we moved to the Wet Mountains over a decade ago, Mary has commuted to Pueblo where she works as a nurse. It’s a long drive, about 100 miles round trip. She makes the commute four times weekly. We’ve figured her driving time amounts to a week’s vacation every five weeks.
That’s a lot of time. Not only does she not get to cash the commuting time in for days off, there’s also the grim reality of whom she’s really supporting in all of those hours she spends driving — those who make our vehicles and provide fuel for them.
Although my work commute is a short one, involving mostly one dozen stairs and a telephone line, I still do my share of driving. It’s no mean feat to keep an ample supply of fresh groceries and other supplies, to conduct official business, and also to ward off feelings of solitary confinement when you live an hour from anything resembling what passes for civilization these days. I try to be judicious when I do drive, lining up at least three stops or errands whenever I start up my truck.
I DRESSED FOR THE COLD and grabbed my trusty Ames Grain Hog shovel and started trudging up the driveway. When it comes to shoveling snow and manure I have done the research, and the Ames Grain Hog with the plastic scoop is the only way to go. I’ve gone through several of these shovels in the 18 years I’ve lived in Custer County.
It was actually quite a treacherous short walk, with drifts that either did or didn’t support my weight separating fields of thick slippery ice where the snow had blown onto bare ground, melted and refroze. I found Mary clawing at the snow behind the wheels of the Subaru, which was mired to the hubs in a cement-like snowbank — high ground-clearance, all-wheel drive, snowtires and all. There was the smell of burned clutch on the cold air. I started to dig away at the drift, which broke off in chunks weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of cinder blocks.
When my mom first saw this place she said: “You’re going to need a tractor.” I immediately dismissed the notion, but lately I’ve been struggling with the idea of getting one. My wife pointed out that I would probably drive it more often than my pickup which only moves two or three times weekly.
I began the exciting research. There were the American-made tractors with Japanese motors, the Japanese tractors built for the American market, and “gray-market” Japanese tractors. There were South Korean tractors and Chinese tractors. Everyone has a different opinion on these machines. I first decided that I’d shop for a used machine, and located a 20-year-old Kubota in our finest regional newspaper, the Thrifty Nickel.
AS I DROVE up to the Kubota I could see it was everything I wanted in a tractor, smaller with faded paint. However, a closer look revealed many things that were not functioning. For example, instead of a key, a person used a screwdriver to start the thing. The hour meter and headlights did not work. In short I would be paying a lot for an old machine that wasn’t in great shape.
I began to look at new tractors, quickly finding the best deal to be the Kioti, made in South Korea. Kioti would finance at a very low interest rate over a period amounting to more than 10 percent of my entire life. All I had to do was sign my name and the days of unmovable snowdrifts and manure glaciers would be over.
But something kept me from signing up. As I broke the huge chunks of snow away from my wife’s Subaru late that evening I thought about the tractor. I could have been in bed right then if I had only bought this machine. And if everything does go to hell we could climb aboard the tractor and drive it to California to pick grapes.
Recently an owl has been hooting from over in the pines, its voice echoing off the rocks and hillsides. And oddly, a bald eagle has been hanging around for the past few days. Omens for sure. I haven’t completely ruled out the tractor, but for now I think I’ll just buy another Ames Grain Hog. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.
Hal Walter writes from the Wet Mountains when he’s not shoveling.