Black powder, ‘taters, food stamps and rubber chickens

by Brad Nelson

My friend Leo wears the same size shirt that I do. But when we stood side-by-side, his 12-inch hay hooks were the same distance from the ground as were my 18-inch set. He once mused that there must have been something that his mother failed to feed him, because his legs quit growing way too soon. Leo is one of that rare breed who is an honest-to-goodness straight shooter.

In addition to that, he does right well on the shooting range, too. His current passion is black powder cartridge silhouette shooting. Among the reasons he’s heavily into this particular discipline is that it’s almost impossible to hit half the targets, let alone get a perfect score. The day my son Dan outshot me in a sanctioned match, I threatened to make him walk home. Leo told Dan not to worry, he would not only take him home, but stop on the way and buy him ice cream as well.

Leo’s dad, Jake, was a good part of the reason Leo was a straight shooter. Jake, it seemed, saw to it that Leo knew at an early age how to work.

One fall afternoon as Leo and I were plinking away in Leo’s back yard, Jake drove in. We stopped shooting as Leo’s father approached. When he had joined the group, he asked, “Is this all in the hell you two have got to do?” I forget Leo’s reply.

Leo told me that a few months back his dad had been madder than a wet hen. It seems that some “busy-body do-gooders” had knocked on his door, and with government papers to prove he had not enough to provide for his family, they were insisting on helping him sign up for food stamps. Seems he taught them a few new words as he ran them off. Food stamps indeed. Seems he had managed to feed himself and his family some way without the government helping, and as long as he breathed, by golly, he’d get by just fine the same way for a good many more years. (Expletives deleted.)

Leo had two different sets of nephews who came to him with the proposition of, “I’ll throw hay bales for you if you will teach me to drive the big trucks.” Since willing help was at a premium, he took them up on it.

Leo’s truck was not new, but it was well maintained. It was a red Peterbilt cab-over with one of the early 350 Cummins engines that did not have an aftercooler. It had a 15-speed overdrive transmission and would do anything Leo ever asked of it. However, the nephews had “new” on the brain, and after a few weeks, felt put upon to have to ride in or drive the old relic.

Leo wished that the nephews could spend some time learning in what he had learned in. Namely, an F-800 Ford, with a 391 gas engine, a tag axle and a 40-foot potato bed grossing 80,000 pounds.

Leaving Ontario, Oregon, with a load of ‘taters, and heading for Burley, Idaho, (a trip that took about three hours in a car) would take six or seven in the F-800. The irritating part of it was that at about Caldwell, the first diesel rig that had loaded after you would pass, and the next before Mountain Home. By the time you reached Burley, four or five had passed you. And by the time you got unloaded and to the bunkhouse, the drivers of these rigs were already shaved, showered, shampooed and snoring.

I had an interesting first commercial hay truck experience with a 50-series Chevrolet. It had a 16- or 18-foot bed, plus an overshot. The overshot was a flat platform that sat above the cab and extended forward, supported by the frame at the junction of the front bumper. Powered by a six-cylinder engine, with a 4-speed transmission and 2-speed rear axle, the truck’s suspension was not well suited to a high load. With this and a field loader, we picked hay out of the field. With practice, we could load three out of four loads without dumping part of it off in the field due to a badger hole or other depression.

The road from Kuna, Idaho, to Meridian, Idaho, was also an adventure in the late 60s. It seems that level pavement was an unknown item in road builders’ vocabulary back then. I recall coming down a hill, about 40 miles per hour, and in what I felt was perfect control, all things considered. Coming the other way uphill was a driver education car. The student was doing her best to take the car out of harm’s way, and the instructor was doing his best to keep it on the road. The truck was going perfectly straight down the road. It was just doing a “Rock-a-bye” side to side as it did.

The most exotic happening with this wonderful machine, however, was on Bogus Basin road. We were hauling a few loads to a small ranch (hobby farm, actually), and my helper, who usually insisted in driving half of the time, refused to drive at all on this road. It was fairly level, except for the ups and downs. And fairly straight, except for the switchbacks.

On the third or fourth trip in, topping one of the “ups” and ready for one of the “downs,” which required a lower gear than did the “up,” in the process of shifting from third to second, the gear shift lever came straight up out of the transmission. I commented something to the effect of, “That’s real nice,” and my partner stuttered something that sounded like “Pppputtttt ddddddda ddddddammmmm ththththinnnngggg bbbbaacccckkkkk on dddeerrrree!”

Being to the point of stopped anyway, I jammed on the brakes and put the truck back together before we did anything else.

Learning with a truck that sways wildly gives one an understanding of how to take a corner in a good, stable truck. And the kids look at me like I’m from Mars when I tell of the time that a kid riding in a truck would always bring a gunny sack. When the truck got started up any kind of a grade, the kid would hop out, with the sack, and walk up the hill, picking up pop bottles and the other kind that would fetch a deposit; then sit down at the top of the hill and wait for the truck. It’s a a far cry from having a truck that loaded to 98,000 pounds and had enough speed that a Suzuki Samurai couldn’t pass on the up-grades pulling out of Fairfield, Idaho.

Leo had the good fortune to have a grouchy old man as his driving partner when he made the jump to diesel trucks. He claims that the old man could grumble at him from the sleeper when he made a mistake, without waking up. And when the old man quit grumbling as he drove, he was promoted to “equal” and then to “senior” driver.

For those of you who remember C.W. McCall; Leo ran the Wolf Creek Pass in Colorado for quite a while. He says it’s not all that bad if you pay attention to what you’re doing.

Going uphill in the winter, Leo would sit at the bottom and drink coffee until the Safeway truck went by. They ran sanders. He would then jump right out there, and if the road was icy, it would be nicely sanded, thanks to Safeway.

By the way, there is a town at the base of the hill named Pagosa Springs. And it does have a feed store. And when C.W. McCall’s “Wolf Creek Pass” song came out, there appeared upon the roof of the feed store about two dozen rubber chickens. PD