A Soft Rumble Harvest
I heard the soft rumble of trucks last Friday night as we went to bed. The harvest of sugar beets used to be such a foreign idea to me when I was a kid, but now it seems pretty familiar-almost like it was always here. Much of the land planted to sugar beets lies in the Red River Valley. The valley has productive but very heavy land. Valley farmers discovered the land east of them was lighter and drained more easily and was a good hedge in case fall rain prevented harvest on the heavier land. Most people around Thief River Falls don’t see too much of the harvest as the truckloads of beets head west as soon as they leave the field instead of driving to a local grain elevator, as happens with other crops. Harvest equipment with powerful lights in the field are about the only indication of beet harvest.
I have written yearly about my experience with the sugar beet harvest. I joined the harvest for 26 campaigns over as many years before I finally cleaned my shoes for the last time. I worked for R and R Farms as a truck driver. I started out in a C65 Chevrolet tandem axle then progressed through several trucks until I ended up in a tractor trailer, all of which ended about 8 years ago.
The rumble of those trucks was soothing to me. When your harvest runs 24 hours a day, workers experience all sorts of odd schedules. For much of my time, I worked from 3 am until 3 pm. Those first few hours were quiet because most of the harvest workers were at the end of their shift, so they were tired. That low truck rumble could really lull you into sleepiness if you let it, so I normally drank coffee and occasionally kept a window open. I also talked on the two-way radio a lot. Most people believe that I had retired from radio broadcasting from 1989-2019. I think those who had to listen to me on the two-way radios during the sugar beet harvest, would beg to differ.
The technology of the harvest changed so quickly over the years. I think the greatest change was the automatic transmission. Precision agriculture was probably a greater change to farming itself, but the automatic transmission was such a cultural change. Years ago, lots of people could drive a truck as they had grown up on a farm. About 20 years ago, we started seeing more people without a farm background and shifting a 9 speed was the largest stumbling block for them to join the harvest. (I can’t imagine what they would have done with a 24-gear brownie.) Driving an automatic transmission was almost seen as cheating until a driver tried it and then they loved it. The automatic transmission opened up trucking jobs to everyone with a driver’s license, at least for the first haul.
Towards the end of my time as a hauler, I wanted to be one of the people in the houses. I would drive in the dark and see light in the windows of homes adjacent to the field in which we worked. I thought that it would be nice to be one of those people in bed or getting drowsy in front of their television. I am now one of those people, warm and drowsy. But the low, throaty sound of the truck passing by makes me want to get out to the field and run that semi, talk on the radio, drink coffee from a huge thermos and make my own soft rumble in the dark of the night while the rest of the world sleeps.thought that it would be nice to be one of those people in bed or getting drowsy in front of their television. I am now one of those people, warm and drowsy. But the low, throaty sound of the truck passing by makes me want to get out to the field and run that semi, talk on the radio, drink coffee from a huge thermos and make my own soft rumble in the dark of the night while the rest of the world sleeps.south Tindolph, for ice cream. It was Uncle Jack’s way of telling us that our visit was special and that he liked us. I still appreciate small acts today.
All of those little things you do cause ripples over time. The longer the time, the more profound the effect. You get these opportunities to perform tiny gestures fairly often, but they don’t seem worthwhile because of their size. However, with time they can gain a much longer shadow and ripple out beyond any actions seemingly important today but without the required age to show their true consequence.
