Season of the Scout

by Brad Nelson

Nineteen-forty-six was a good year. I was born that year, and that was the year they made the “Scout”. I seemed very much in my prime in 1964, but the Scout seemed very old. I worked for the Toblers part-time during my senior year of high school, and then full time until I left Nampa, Idaho for college, in February of 1965. Sometime during this adventure, Don Tobler bought a 1946 Ford two-ton truck. Son Harmon, for whatever reason, nick-named it “The Scout”. It was either black or very dark blue. It had Henry’s famous flat-head V-8 engine, a 4-speed “grinder box” transmission, and a two-speed rear axle. For those too young to remember the old Fords, the transmissions had no synchronizers at all. It took excellent hand, clutch and throttle coordination to shift the things without grinding the gears.

Soon after the Scout arrived, a small straw stack was purchased at a farm sale. Harmon and I went to bring it home with the Scout. All the way over, I razzed him gently about the difficulty he was having shifting without grinding the gears. My smart mouth got me the driver’s seat on the trip home. Be it dumb luck or whatever, I barely ground a gear all the way back to the Tobler dairy.

The Scout served us well. I got in my fair share of the driving duties, as I rather liked to drive, and could manage the grinder-box. The vacuum windshield wipers were an interesting touch. Step down hard on the throttle, and they would all but stop; then let off, and now we have wipers doing double-time. The engine itself had its moments. It didn’t like hot weather. Should one kill the engine on a hot day, we all got to rest until the Scout got good and ready to start again.

We had a field loader that hooked on the side of the Scout. It was a hay elevator on wheels that brought the bales from the ground up to working height as the truck was slowly driven through the field. The driver was prone to get sleepy and run over badger holes, which kept the person or people on the back in good form. If not air-borne. The driver was also prone to roll up the window to keep the dust and chaff out of the cab. This made communication between the driver and the stackers very difficult. The driver really needed to hear things like, “We’re loaded”, and “Stop! Tom and half of the load just fell off the truck!” I had spent lots of time trying to stay on the back of hay trucks loading with field loaders before coming to work for the Toblers. By the way, this was about the time the harrowbed was being developed and five or ten years before they came into common use. Kind of the end of an era. It was a time when loading hay was the main source of work for high-school kids in the summer. To get a place on a busy hay crew meant steady work all summer, and fairly good money, since the pay was by the bale or by the ton.

Back to the Scout. One hot afternoon, Harmon was at the wheel of the Scout. I was stacking straw bales by myself on the back. After a couple of stops to see if we were not soon loaded, Harmon blocked the dust by rolling up the window. When we were loaded, he could not hear me. So I kept on stacking straw. These were fairly solid straw bales, and not all that heavy. I was soon standing in a precarious position with one foot on the edge of the field loader, and the other on the load. With one hay hook I could reach the bale coming up the loader and pull it up to me, and then throw it on top the load. Loading straw in the field, six layers is usually enough. When I had a rather nice pyramid that was ten layers at the top, I had to give up. I could not reach to put any more straw on the truck.

Just as I was ready to roll a bale over the front of the load onto the cab, Harmon stopped. To his inquiry of us soon being loaded, I replied that we were loaded and half more. Then he asked why I had not said anything when we got a normal load on. He was not pleased with my response that my voice would not carry through a rolled-up window and over his snoring. As the two of us, the Scout, and a load and a half of straw tip-toed out of the field and into the farmstead, Don Tobler was waiting and watching. Don was troubled with a hip replacement that hadn’t worked very well, and stood either on crutches or with a cane. He looked our load over, and asked if we were not afraid of having our language confounded.

Late in the fall of 1964, I hauled wood chips for cattle bedding from a sawmill on the east side of Boise, Idaho. This was a pleasant diversion from the, “Milk ‘em in the morning, feed ‘em; milk ‘em in the evening” blues (I’m not making this up. There really was a Country & Western song of that title!). Then while idling through the loading area at the sawmill, the Scout had the audacity to throw a rod. It was some time after I left for college that Harmon had the flathead V-8 out of a Mercury car put in the Scout. He said it had been a good truck before, but now it was a monster.

I went off to college, and with the name of an individual Harmon had given me to contact, I found suitable work while attending BYU. This first job in the college area led to other employment so that by the time I graduated, now with a lovely wife and our first child, I owed only $2,000 in student loans. After moving to Washington state, my youngest son and his wife saw fit to return to southwest Idaho. At my insistence, he called Harmon and was given a name to call, and had a job the next day.

Don Tobler lived to be, I believe, 92. I never knew the man other than while he was afflicted with his bad hip. But he maintained his sense of humor. We could tell he was in great pain, but he never told us about it. He even took it well when I offered to attach a pair of roller skates to his crutches so he could get around faster. He said he might consider it if I could show him how to control the skates on stairs. In retrospect, the man was a breath of fresh air. Considering all those I have met since, who must go on and on and on about the most trivial inconvenience.

My brother sent me a newspaper clipping the other day; one of Harmon’s daughters was getting married. Harmon and I are now grandfathers many times over. Neither of us is perfect, neither of us claim to be. As for the Scout, I have no idea where it is. I hope it’s lying intact on a ditch bank somewhere. That Scout, now that was a good old truck! PD