The Little Ford That Pulled the Excavator Out

That creek comes up three feet in a good rain, and three feet would put water over the engine deck and into the cab.

It would also put diesel and hydraulic oil into my creek, which runs into the Vermillion River, which a whole lot of people downstream fish in and water cattle out of.

Brent knew what a spill like that meant for a man in his business.

And my twelve pairs were on the far side of a crossing that didn’t exist anymore.

I’d been feeding them by carrying square bales across a plank at the narrow spot upstream, two at a time, and that plank was going under Sunday night too.

So waiting for Monday wasn’t really waiting. It was just losing slower.

I stood there with my hands in my chore coat and looked at the machine, and at the bank, and at the high ground above it.

I’d been looking at it since the night before, if I’m honest. I’d lain awake doing it.

“Brent,” I said. “I think we can get it out today.”

He didn’t laugh this time. He just looked tired. “With what, Harold?”

“With your machine,” I said. “And my tractor. And my dad’s snatch blocks.”

He looked at me for a long second. I could see him wanting to say the lawn ornament thing again, and I could see him deciding not to, and I gave him credit for that.

“That tractor can’t pull thirty tons,” he said.

“No, it can’t,” I said. “But your machine can pull most of itself, if something keeps it from sliding back every time it gains a foot. That’s all the 8N has to do. Hold what Shane gains, and add a little.”

Shane had come up behind him. He didn’t say anything, but he nodded once, slow, like a man who’d been thinking the same thing.

“And a big tractor would sink like the wrecker,” I said. “Mine weighs about as much as your pickup. It’ll stay on top of that stubble where anything heavier goes through.”

Brent rubbed his face with both hands. Then he said, “Show me.”

So I showed him.

In the back of my machine shed, behind the grain drill, I’ve got two old eight ton snatch blocks my father bought at a farm sale in 1961.

He used them to pull hedge trees and to drag cars out of the ditch on our road back when it was still dirt.

I’ve got 150 feet of half inch wire rope on a wooden spool, oiled every fall whether I need it or not, and twenty feet of logging chain with a grab hook on one end.

I’ve got a pair of leather gloves I don’t let anybody else wear.

I loaded it all onto a hay wagon and pulled the wagon down with the 8N. Brent watched me come down the hill in first gear.

He had his hands on his hips and his crew on either side of him, and I knew exactly what he was thinking, because I’d been his age once.