Thomas, a pseudonymous friend of mine from the military, found himself a job driving a semi-truck full of hay after his enlistment ended. He invited me on a trip to eastern Washington to move a double trailer over Snoqualmie Pass to our neck of the woods near the Puget Sound, a 24-hour trip with a night in the truck cabin. Even though he would only be paying me with dinner, I went along.
I admitted to some reservations before we left. “I’m probably really allergic to hay. I grew up next to a hay field and I was always miserable on days they harvested it.”
“What kind are you allergic to? The first trailer is alfalfa, the second is Timothy.”
Hay fact one: there are different kinds of hay. If you’re allergic, try stacking different kinds in the same day to find out how miserable the right kind can make you.
About nine hours after coffee, we were in a field next to our haystack, waiting for our loader. Thomas doesn’t just drive the truck, he also loads it, usually with just one other person. The air in rural eastern Washington has that agrarian scent to it I usually only experience driving past fields on the freeway. The rich smell is good enough to make up for the smells of cattle shit and diesel exhaust that frequently punctuate it.
Thomas, like many hay-throwing Catholic war veterans, has a conservative bent. “The healthcare system is already too easy to abuse. This stupid reform only makes it worse, more of a burden. There should at least be mandatory co-pays or something to keep the ERs from getting clogged. Everyone needs to be covered for life, limb, or eyesight...but my taxes shouldn’t pay for the whole system. It’s full of people that don’t need medical attention beyond a head-examination.”
“I’d rather everyone get taken care of instead anyone getting overlooked.”
“Me too...unless it collapses the economy.”
Our loader, Ryan, showed up and gave me a quick introduction to throwing hay. “Let the hay do the work for you. When I send a bale to you, just control it while it falls into place.” This is not an exact quote. It is nearly that simple, though. Ryan operated the loader by holding a rope in each hand. With what looked like minimal effort, he could manipulate the rope holding the weight of the hay and the rope controlling the speed of the boom and move a bale within about a foot of where it needed to be.
Hay fact two: hay bales are not perfect rectangular cuboids. Four faces of the bale are held together with twine, two are not; of these two sides, one has been cut by the baling machine and is slightly larger. When stacking bales, the larger “cut” side is faced outward. The edges have to be lined up manually. The bales are laid down in alternating patterns like any good Lego construction, and the whole pile leans in on itself. This is how you can stack hay 10 feet high and hold it down with just four ratchet straps.
“Uh, be careful where you step,” Thomas warned me when I sank up to my knee between two bales. “You can break your leg doing that. Or fall off.” The first trailer of alfalfa practically stacked itself. We left the open field, shirtless and covered in hay dust, for a covered haystack to load the Timothy.
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| Alfalfa |
“You really need to watch where you’re stepping. Those bales near the edge can fall off,” Ryan said from the ground as I sank again near the front of the trailer. I steadied myself and looked down to straighten the bale, then stared at the nauseating 12-foot drop into the coupler connecting the two trailers.
“Yeah, I really don’t want to break my neck, or I’d drown in snot before you got me to the hospital.”
Thomas was stacking the final layer of hay on his side of the truck. “Don’t worry, if you fall, Obama will catch you. Then the taxpayer will cover your clumsy ass.”
“Well, I couldn’t pay for it. Who should? The client? Ryan? The hospital?” We finished and climbed down the hay boom to the ground. Three tired rednecks surrounded by $17 bales, and none of us could pay for a broken neck.
Ryan ignored our ignorant discussion. “Well, you’re not as fast as my 14-year old, but if you’re not careful, you might just get yourself hired.”
“Hope you guys don’t drug test.”
Here is a video of some very fast boom-loaders. I had no idea there were competitions. This is from the “1989 Rural Olympics”. Watch the whole thing, I dare you.
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