Papa's Place

For Susie who was asking for special memories we had of Dad and for Shel who asked me a couple years ago to post more stories from my past.

Here's one that I had written a few months back but had not posted.

My First Pheasant:

I don’t remember all the details but I am pretty sure that the Dad on the corn picker was probably the Dog.  I would have been standing at the end of the field waiting for a bird to come out.  This was more than likely the scenario as this was pretty much the routine when harvest time took precedence over hunting.  I also don’t remember why we didn’t field dress the pheasant I shot right away.  That was a common practice Dad taught me to assure the quality of the meat he would always try to field dress anything that he shot almost as soon as it hit the ground.  Maybe Dad wanted to let me take it home and show it off a bit before we dressed it.  Maybe we were in a hurry to get out of the field before the elevator closed, or as would happen a lot of times Dad would relieve Uncle Wayne at the station and he would take the truck loaded with grain home to park in the protection of the crib, and Uncle Wayne would take it to the elevator in the morning before coming to work at the station.  Whatever the reason Dad threw my pheasant up into the front corner of the truck on top of the corn.

What I do specifically remember about this day is that on the way out of the field Dad was driving the truck loaded with corn out of the field when we started across the bridge across the ditch.  I remember no one liking to cross this bridge because the way it was designed you would come up to it on a narrow field road and have to make a 90 degree right hand turn and up the approach which rose at a fairly steep angle up to the wooden deck of the bridge.  It was just a field bridge so of course there were no guardrails or anything to prevent you from walking or driving off the edge and falling to the ditch which was about 12-15 feet below.  After crossing you would go down the approach on the other side again at a pretty steep angle and make another 90 degree turn to follow the roadway back alongside the ditch.

When crossing the front end of the truck would naturally rise up as you climbed the approach and block your view out the windshield of the bridge so it was kind of a line it up and just go type of crossing.  This day was no different than any of the hundreds of times Dad had crossed it except that just as the truck was starting to level out on the deck of the bridge Dad heard wood starting to pop, he knew exactly what was happening, he yelled we’re going down, hang on and then tried to accelerate to get off the bridge but instead the front end started rising again as the rear drivers side of the truck starting breaking thru the decking of the bridge. 

When everything had settled down and we realized that we were not going all the way down into the ditch we climbed out of the truck to find that fortunately the rear wheel only fell thru far enough to the point where the rear axle was resting on one of the steel I-Beams that was crossing the ditch and supporting the whole bridge.  The opposite front wheel was about a foot off the ground.  I can still see Dad snickering as he told me how big my eyes were as the truck started tilting towards the water.

Well the truck was tilted at such an angle that about a quarter of the load of grain spilled out the rear corner and into the ditch and along with this went my first pheasant.  He was now lying on top of the pile of grain in the bottom of the ditch.  Of course my first concern was to retrieve him so I could still take him home to show him off, but the news of this accomplishment was over shadowed by the other story we had to tell when we got home.

Thinking back on it now I am still not sure how we got home.  I remember it was quite an ordeal to get the truck raised and blocked up to get it off the bridge.  We were at least a mile from any other houses with no cell phones or any way of calling for help.  If we would have had any other vehicles in the field they would have been on the wrong side of the bridge and thus worthless to use for transportation.  Hmm, how easy we have it today with our cell phones.