My cell phone rang early last Sunday morning. As I answered it, a panic-stricken voice on the other end exclaimed, “Thank God someone finally answered their phone!”
My caller ID had shown that the call was from one of my neighbors, Scott, and the urgency in his voice suggested that something was badly wrong. “Calm down,” I pleaded. “What’s the problem?”
“I’ve been trying for 20 minutes to get in touch with my wife or daughter and neither of them will answer their dang phone. I need help. I got the tractor stuck. Can you come down here and pull me out?”
We had just received our first measurable snowfall of the winter the night before, the temperature was in the teens, and the wind was howling between 30-40 MPH, so my first concern was to see if he was stuck in a tractor that had a cab. He assured me that he was, but the heater didn’t work. “Do you think I can pull you out with the truck?” I asked.
Scott stated that he was REALLY stuck and it would probably take my big tractor to free him, but considering the temperature and the fact that my big tractor was at another farm where there was no electricity, I doubted that it would start. “Let me come down in the truck first and we’ll see if it will do the trick,” I stated.
I proceeded to load a round bale on the back of my truck in order to give it a little more weight and traction and headed the three miles south to where Scott was stuck. As I entered the gate to Scott’s farm, I was shocked to see only the top half of the tractor sitting in the pond and even more shocked that it was six feet from the shore. Scott’s face was as red as a Hereford’s hind end, but I surmised it was not from the cold wind as he jumped from the top step of the tractor to – within six inches of the pond bank.
Now, before I continue the story, you must realize that this is the same Scott that incessantly made fun of me for weeks, in front of the coffee-shop crowd when I dragged off the dead cow in the ice storm only to have the cow beat me to the bottom of the hill. He is also the same guy that wouldn’t let anyone in the community forget that I caught my baler on fire and burned it up completely (even though he graciously baled my hay for me that summer).
Surveying the situation from the outside of my truck, I took out my cell phone and started taking pictures of his tractor a few feet from shore. “What are you doing?” he yelled. I just smiled.
“Explain to me exactly how you got in this predicament!” I said.
Scott took a deep breath, sighed and began, “Well, after I unrolled a bale of hay for the cows, I decided I would break the ice on the pond with the forks on my front-end loader.” Another sigh, and, “I guess the brakes were froze up because when I came to the edge of the pond and tried to stop, nothing happened until the front wheels rolled off the edge and broke through the ice. I tell you, I was staring straight down into the icy pond from the seat that I was barely hangin’ on to.” Yet, another sigh, “I tried and tried, but I couldn’t back out since the front wheels were covered with ice, water and mud. After trying that for about 10 minutes, I finally decided that… just maybe… I could give her hell and shoot it on through this little arm of the pond and drive it out the other side where the bank is a little more sloping.”
“And how’d that work out for you?” I asked. Scott didn’t even give a hint of a smile.
We hooked a heavy chain from the rear of Scott’s tractor to the rear of my truck. Even with the tractor wheels turning in reverse and my truck locked in 4-wheel drive, the tractor didn’t budge a single inch.
Later that morning, I was able to get my big tractor started and returned to the pond. Again, all our attempts from three different directions were nothing more than acts of futility.
A few hours and a couple of hundred dollars later, the largest wrecker in the area winched the tractor to solid ground.
“You’re not going to write about this in one of your stories, are you?” Scott pleaded.
I reminded him of all the grief he had given me about the dead cow and the burned-out baler and replied, “If I do, Scott, I won’t use your name.”
Jerry Crownover farms in Lawrence County. He is a former professor of Agriculture Education at Missouri State University, and is an author and professional speaker. To contact Jerry, go to www.ozarksfn.com and click on ‘Contact Us.’
