Mechanical frills on the ranch: Out of order

TOWNER, N.D. - I don't think I could name a single thing with wheels on our hay field that is in perfect working order.

Sometimes it's just a little thing that doesn't function, but, just the same, it's not in tip-top showroom shape.

Most of the tractors run without working headlights. That gets me home for supper a little earlier. I think my wife may have just unhooked the wires going to the headlights.

Only one has a fuel gauge that works. The rest get checked with an improvised diesel dipstick that looks a lot like a piece of rusty barbed wire.

No temperature gauges. If it's boiling over, it's hot. If the antifreeze is down, you top it off. No ammeters. If the batteries go dead you just get out the jumper cables.

Getting along

There are a lot of little features on mechanical contraptions that I can get along fine without. Headlights and gauges and such would be nice to have, but it's no deal breaker for anything I own with wheels.

When I got modern with my baling tractor (it's only 25 years old), I jumped into the generation of tight cabs and air conditioning.

I thought I could treat the air conditioning as a frivolous option, like the fuel gauges and headlights on my other machines. I was wrong.

I started the year baling and sweating, hot but not miserable. Then the sun really started to shine.

It hit 103 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. I opened up the windows trying to find a cooling cross breeze for the tractor cab. The windows on this cab, however, are specially designed to allow only the dust and chaff into the cab from the hay baler and leave any cool air outside.

I brought a thermometer in the cab with me. It registered 122 degrees in no time, with the windows open. It might have gotten hotter but the thermometer only went up to 122.

I baled a half a day instead of a whole day in my little green cab greenhouse, broke down and called the dealer to do another couple hundred dollars worth of magic on the A.C. It's clearly extortion, but we pay it and enjoy the coolness.

Ranch reputationAfter years of running older-than-average equipment in semi-working order, we've established a bit of a reputation. We even hold our field vehicles to the same low standard.

Old pickups just a rattle or two away from complete disintegration and old four-door cars that might not make it to town but still can make it to the meadow are our motor vehicles of choice for field service.

I remember one time a friend of our family who'd retired from the telephone company was mowing hay for us. It started to rain, so he jumped off the tractor, got in the old four-door field car and headed the several miles back to the ranch.

When he got home, my mother noticed that his head and shoulders were soaking wet.

"What happened to you?" she asked.

He replied that he stuck his head out the car window most of the way home in the rain so he could see the road.

"Why didn't you just turn on the windshield wipers?" she asked.

You could see the surprise and disgust on his face when he said, "Ohhhhh no! You mean they work?"

Sometimes our no-frills reputation precedes us.