18. maj 2023 "¿Estoy aquí?"

I Am Here?

    Despite it being a terribly windy day, Jackie started south down our driveway on her walk. I was in the yard getting ready to go to the dump when I heard what sounded like a big truck coming. Being on the road, she of course saw it first and started hoofing it back home ahead of it so she wouldn’t get caught in its dust plume because YIKES! It wasn’t a typical delivery van! 

    I walked toward the sound trying to figure out if it was a straight truck or what— and slowly saw this come through all the dust right behind Jackie who was hurrying toward me, waving her arms and making faces.
“Did you order something I should know about??"
 
    Here it was a guy looking for a load of a neighbor’s straw. Smiling greatly he stopped his truck, and left the cab, hurriedly pointing at his cellphone, then with a tip of his head and said, “Here! I am here?”

    “You’re here all right, but not there, ” I said, in my best English. “Are you looking for a load of straw bales?"

     He nodded, agreeably.

    'Well, you turned east a mile too soon," I said. "This is 150th Street, not County Road 122.”

    The driver appeared confused, kindly insisting his GPS told him to turn in here. I could see we had a temporary communication issue, until Jackie said from behind me, “Take him over there. Have him follow you.” (She comes up with some good ideas sometimes.) So I called the neighbor to see where he was supposed to go…

    “Hey!,” I said, knowing Caller ID indicated who it was that was calling him just when he was so busy with spring work and all. (The last time I called him I was stuck in a snowdrift by Solom's shop and needed his help to get out; he had broken a hydraulic line on his way over too, what a mess!)  I've got things to do! When I said, “I got a semi in my yard looking for a load of your straw …”

    “DOG-GONE IT!” Marc bellered (an agricultural term pertaining to a bovine’s vocal expression ) “I gave him the gol-darn address! DOUBLE-TRIPLE QUADRUPLE ARGH!” A recent Wannaska-area Anger-Management graduate, he’s sworn-off swearing at least temporarily, by golly.

    Referencing his family’s three huge hay sheds a half mile south of our road, I gave him time to remember his Patience stone in his coverall pocket, before I asked, “Do you want him to go to the hay sheds?”

I gave him time to remember his PATIENCE stone in his coverall pocket

    “Noooo, he has to go to the dairy farm…” the young neighbor answered, his fervor slowly declining as he thought about the quickest way to get the driver a mile farther south and a quarter mile east.

    “I’ll send him on his way den,” I said in northwestern Minnesota-speak, making it plain to the driver we were going to have to get him turned around and sent back the other way after I moved a few things out of his way, like my tractor for instance, my pickup, and ...  maybe even the snowmobile trailer.

    Fortunately, our yard is 200 yards long by 100-yards wide, where, particularly in this case, a semi-truck could turn around after a couple adjustments in its length and breadth. The main problem has always been getting a semi in here in the first place, primarily because our farm road is pretty narrow for a truck of that size as it follows the twisting contour of Mikinaak Creek, about ten feet below on its east side and towering spruce trees close-in on its west. I’ll bet the driver was regretting ever turning in here, trying to keep both ends of his long truck on it at the same time. 

Our farm road is pretty narrow for a truck of that size.

    “That’s the first semi truck that’s been here in 50 years, or maybe ever, “ I told the wife. “Anything that big I’ve arranged to meet out on the county road and unload there. The house we moved-in, in 1993, came across the field, not up that lane for sure. Years ago, a long-time Wannaska school bus driver retired when she learned she was going to have to drive in here for our daughter. She couldn't imagine driving her bus down here, especially during the winter.

    I got in my car about the time he got things turned around and got ahead of him. We started down the lane when we met a one-ton utility truck at the first curve coming toward us. I didn’t recognize it right away.  “Who the sam-hell is this now??” I yelled (er, ‘bellered’) to no one beside me, having no non-swearing restraints in my barn of foibles until I saw it was Marc and likely his dad, coming to get the semi-driver. Now they had to back up.

    Our north/south farm lane meets the east/west township road on a sweeping curve where a turn-around was created so that other drivers who ignored the Dead End sign, could turn around and head back west rather than come down our road and turn-around in our yard. The neighbor backed up to the turnaround, turned west, and waited for the semi driver as I drove straight into the turnaround to wait for the big truck to pass behind me and begin following them to where he was supposed to go in the first place. Such excitement!

    I know freight-hauling truck drivers of all ages, stripes, and persuasions endure wrong GPS directions and difficult stops across rural America, One Palmville neighbor, a semi truck driver of local renown, told of a stop he had on the east coast someplace where, he learned the very first time he came there, there was no place to turn his rig around -- and had to back-up the whole length of the half mile long driveway onto the busy two-lane highway he had left to get there. Not only that, when he arrived, he had to stop traffic and back up into the driveway to get in. He took it all in stride.

Addendum:

    I've long said I think our quarter in Palmville is among the most photographed places in Roseau County, primarily because I'm prone to capturing its nuances through a camera lens all year around since 1971, the year I purchased it. The irony of which was I couldn't immediately find a suitable image of our road for this story, except the one, as Chairman Joe pointed out in his comment, taken in the fall of the year Please bear with me then as I add these images that capture its essence a wee bit better.

September 1971. I planted the trees seen below, on this side in 1981.

Trees planted in 1981: honey suckle, hybrid cottonwoods, and white spruce. Road leads to yard.

Road leading from yard, similar to image first published with story.

Slow down, as deer are frequently a problem along our road.

Sometimes its hard to determine where the road is and the ditches begin.