Some things it looks like you can do, but it doesn't work out that way.
When I was in about the eight grade, I was working for Dr. Lawrence's dairy. Dr. Ben J. Lawrence was a well known doctor in Raleigh and one of the best surgeons I reckon there was at that time in North Carolina. He had the dairy, I think, as more of a hobby than anything else.
Tom Jones was the farm manager. We called him "Uncle Tom." It required putting up a lot of silage and a lot of hay to tend to all the dairy cattle. We had to do that in addition to milking and feeding them.
We were raking hay one day in what they called the "lower farm." It was down below Garner, and the dairy was between Garner and Raleigh. We had mowed down a 15- or 20-acre field of hay. Back then we stacked it instead of bailing it. We had an old mule-drawn hay rake with two wheels. It was about ten feet wide. It had a series of prongs that let down against the ground, and when you started raking hay you'd rake it until those prongs filled up with hay. Then you'd hit a latch on the side of your seat for those prongs to raise up. They'd raise up and dump that roll of hay, and then it would go back down. You'd go on another little ways and it would fill up with hay, and you'd dump it. That's the way you raked the hay up. Then you'd come along and load it on the wagon and carry it to a stack.
On this particular day, it went to clouding up. The terriblest thing that could happen would be for it to rain on freshly mown hay. We hadn't stacked any of it yet. About that time, Dr. Lawrence showed up in his '38 Ford Touring Car. He was sort of fidgety about the clouds. His son Ben Boy had come with him that time. Ben very seldom ever came with him.
We had a colored [Pop's word, not mine! He considered it to be a respectful connotation.] fellow up there raking the hay. It was a slow process. The old mule didn't walk too fast. Dr. Lawrence was just as fidgety as a cat on a hot tin roof. He was just all over the place. He had a walking stick. He didn't need the walking stick to walk with, but he had that stick. That was something special for men of importance back in those days, to have a walking stick whether they needed it or not.
He was walking all around there with that stick and slinging it in the air, carrying on and gesturing. Things just weren't going fast enough to suit the Doc. So he finally told Tom Jones, "Uncle Tom," he says, "unhook that mule from that hay rake and let's hook it to the Doc's car. We'll get this hay raked on up!"
Well, he got the thing hooked to the car. He took the old colored man off the rake, put the rake behind the car, and put his boy Ben up there on back to operate the rake. Well, that boy didn't know a thing about operating a rake, but he was up there anyhow. And of course the Doc was going about ten times faster than that old mule would go. And he was looking backward near about every breath. He took out around that dang field, and he was looking back, and every breath now he says, "Dump, Son! Dump! Dump! Dump, Son!"
Ben couldn't hit that latch fast enough. And some of the times it would gather so much hay up under those prongs that the rear wheels of the rake would climb off the ground. The Doc was running so fast we could hear him all over the field, "Dump, Son, Dump! Dump! Dump! Dump!"
He got around the field and got back up to where the wagon was that we were going to load the hay on. And Ben Boy says, "Daddy, you get up here and let me drive. I can't dump this thing. You get up here."
Ben Boy went to driving the car and Doc got on the rake. He had that walking cane, and he wore that split tail white coat that doctors wear, you know. Ben Boy took off with him around that field - and he went a whole lot faster than the Doc had! That hay rake went to filling up with hay, and Dr. Lawrence couldn't dump it fast enough. He was up there just carrying on.
From about the second or third time he dumped it, from there on around the whole field, the wheels of the rake never touched the ground. He went to hollering, "Stop, Son! Stop! Stop! You're going to kill the old Doctor! Stop!" He was running so fast that that split tail coat was straightened out with the wind behind him. There wasn't anything but a little old biddy iron seat to sit in, and he was holding on to the side of that thing. He'd given up trying to dump it. "Ooooooo, Son! Stop! Stop! You're going to kill the old Doctor! Stop! Stop!"
When they got back around there to the wagon, the Doc said, "U- U- U- Uncle Tom!" He said, "U- u- u- unhook the rake from back of the Doctor's car. I see now it ain't gonna work. Y'all go ahead and rake the hay with the mule. Me and Ben Boy's going to go to Raleigh." And they got in the car and left.
Of course, we did our own thing about raking and stacking the hay.
No comments:
Post a Comment