By Neal Wooten
Growing up on the mountain, that’s exactly where I always wanted to be, and exactly where I never was – in the driver’s seat. It was always the adults who got that privilege, while the rest of us were in the trenches.
Many summers I worked in the hay fields, back when all bales were rectangular in shape and, depending on how green it was or how much it had rained, weighed anywhere from 50 to a million pounds. Being one of the stronger kids meant I never even got to ride on back of the flatbed truck. I had to run alongside and heave the bales up to the smaller guys.
My Uncle Alton, whom everyone called Cotton because he had white hair even as a kid, always planted corn. But did I ever get to be the one to drive his 1972 two-tone green Ford pickup around the field? No! I got to haul the big burlap sacks to the end of each row and dump the ears in the back as he slowly drove by.
When my Uncle Doodle would pull the trailer behind the tractor into the woods to cut firewood, guess who never got to drive the tractor. That’s right; I was the one tossing the cut pieces into the trailer as it came by. It was actually pretty fun when he wasn’t running over me.
If this is starting to sounds like a load of manure, let us move on to that. I spent many a day shoveling caked-up chicken manure through long hot chicken houses and pitching it in another type of trailer. People who owned the chicken houses needed it gone before the next shipment, and Dad loved free fertilizer. But did I get to pull the trailer?
Even when our dad got a riding lawnmower, he was the only one who drove it while the rest of us picked up debris ahead of him. I never worked for the sanitation department, but I’m sure if I did I wouldn’t be the guy driving the garbage truck. No, I’d be the guy riding on the back hanging on for dear life and pretending I was a fireman.
Now I’m old enough to be the one driving the vehicle while younger kids throw stuff on the back. The problem is, most people have central heat, hay bales are large and circular, and most farmers have corn-pickers. Not to mention how hard it would be to get kids off their cellphones.
I guess I just missed out. Story of my life. When I die, just have them drive the hearse real slow and I’ll run alongside and throw the flowers in.