Day One in the Wheat

The truck pulled up and someone leaned on the horn for a solid minute. If they intended to wake up every single soul in the whole town, that would have been the way to do it. Men were hustling around like crazy people, trying to make sure they didn’t leave anything behind and make sure they didn’t get themselves left behind. Apparently, the guy at the co-op had given everyone the same lecture about missing the truck and not getting on the crew.

Charley and the boys piled into the truck and found three of the last seats along the side. Anyone who got on after them would be standing up for the duration of the trip. Charley made a mental note to make sure he got on the truck early every time. He didn’t want to have to be standin’ up in the back of a truck for the Lord only knows how long. That wheat shockin’ was going to be back-breaking work enough.

A short stocky fella jumped up on the back of the truck. He pushed back the canvas dust flap so everyone could see him.

“Listen to me, men! My name is Walt; my dad owns this truck and runs this crew. Hope ya’ll can learn to get along back here, ‘cause then we’ll get more wheat work done and then you all make more money! If ya ain’t strong enough to work hard all day long, get off this truck right now ‘cause we ain’t givin’ no rides back if you change your mind!”

“How much we gonna make a day?” hollered someone from the back.

“If you work all day, dollar and a half a day, Monday through Saturday; but only paid at the end of the week. Not payin’ anyone for part of a week. Any more questions to waste our time or can we roll outta here and shock some wheat?” Walt didn’t wait for any more questions. He just jumped down off the back of the truck. The men heard the tailgate of the truck slam shut and they lurched forward, toward the wheat harvest.

The roads the truck took were smooth at first, but after about thirty minutes, they got a lot rougher and dustier. Charley sure was glad he was sitting down, although there were times when he was lifted off the bench where he sat. There was a cloud of dust hanging in the back of the truck; it got so bad he finally got his handkerchief out of his pocket and put it over his mouth and nose. The boys had their shirts unbuttoned and the shirttails pulled up over their faces. Charley was pretty hungry and hopin’ for a chance to get some more of Lena’s bread out of his duffle. It was too crowded and dusty in the truck, but as soon as they got where they were goin’, he was going to dig in.

They did finally stop, the cab door slammed shut again, and Walt appeared, lifting up the canvas flap at the rear of the truck, hollering, “Everybody out! Head over to the tent and grab a quick cup of coffee and some flapjacks.” He pointed to his left. “When you’re done eating, throw any gear you have on one of the cots in that big tent over there. We’ll be gone all day. Be back in the truck in fifteen minutes. I’ll honk the horn in ten minutes. Don’t be late or I will leave you behind and you can walk back to town.”

Of course, all the men who were standing up in the truck were able to get off first. Charley could tell by the look on the faces of the two brothers that they were hungry and eager to eat their share of the flapjacks.

“There better be some left when we get there, man. I’m starvin’!” said Mel.

There were plenty of flapjacks and piles of bacon to go with them. Charley was astounded at the amount of food on the table in this food tent. There were only two farm gals cooking and serving, but they did the work of eight people. Breakfast was flying off the griddles behind the cook table. Charley and the brothers sat down and ate quickly, not wanting to miss the truck to the fields. They were one of the last ones on the truck, however, and were standing when the truck started up and rolled out again.

It was only about a ten-minute ride to the field. There were wheat fields clear to the horizon, in all directions. It looked like an ocean of wheat. When they got out of the truck the men were divided into teams of four. Charley had already explained to the brothers what had to be done, so all that was left to do was to actually show them how to do it. They motioned over to middle-aged guy, who looked like he was in pretty good shape and was actually wearing overalls like Charley’s, to be on their team. He introduced himself as Al and the four men all went to the front of the truck like they had been told to do.

Walt assigned them to one of the waiting tractors and the new crew told to wait next to it. Turned out Al was a farmer like Charley, but he had already lost his farm.

“I lost my land and my soul, I believe,” Al supposed. “Everything in my life went sour all at once.”

His wife left him for the banker who had foreclosed on their land. Fortunately, Al told them, he didn’t have any children, so he just up and left. He planned to start someplace new when he got a stake saved up. Charley immediately counted his blessing of his strong marriage to Lena. He couldn’t imagine life without her, or without Harley. He vowed to himself, at that moment, to be certain that no amount of financial hardship would ever cause that kind of damage to his family.

An additional bonus of choosing Al was that he knew how to shock wheat, so Henry and Mel would each have a partner to show them what to do. They were lucky and showed their appreciation by just listening and learning while the two farmers swapped stories. They didn’t have but a few minutes, though, before the crew boss hollered at them to start following the tractor with cutting blades down its path in the field.

Shocking was a two-step process. There was a tractor with a large cutting scythe on the back. It would cut an eight-foot wide swath of wheat. The shockers would walk behind in pairs. The front pair would each pick up an armful of wheat off the ground, squeeze it together in the middle, and twist a few stalks of the wheat around it like a piece of twine. Then they would stand it up by the cut end and gather another bundle; over and over again. The second pair would come along, gather up ten of the smaller bundles and stack them up together into a larger shock, one in the middle and nine around the outside. All the smaller shocks had to lean in so the whole stack would remain upright for drying for a couple of weeks. Then they would place two more of the smaller shocks across the top, for a total of twelve. The top two shocks served to help keep all the rest of them dry and held them together on windy days.

The team of four would move as quickly as they could behind the tractor. If they got too far behind, more pairs would come over and help them. It was a lot of bending over and walking. Demanding as it was, Charley could hear men whistling, joking, and swapping stories. The crew bosses said they didn’t care about that, but they better work hard, or “we can take ya back to town and bring back some real men!” They worked until about one o’clock in the afternoon this first day, and then a wagon showed up to bring them lunch.

Charley assumed they would take the ten-minute drive back to camp, but the crew boss said that would use up a good half hour for a round trip, and they weren’t getting paid for lunch, so they should eat quickly. “You make more money that way,” he explained, but since Charley had been told that he would be paid by the day, not the hour, he decided the crew boss must think they were all stupid or something. It didn’t matter, as long as Charley had some water, he never did eat much at lunch. He liked breakfast…Lena’s breakfasts, and he liked Lena’s dinners. This evening, he reminded himself, he’d need to write to Lena.

The chow wagon pulled up with their lunch on it…it was cooked cabbage and ham. The men lined up for a plate of it and everyone dug in. From the looks of them, about half of the men were younger than Charley and about half were older. The younger ones definitely ate the most food. The bread they served with lunch was nearly as tasty as Lena’s, but not quite. Walt told Charley that the bread was baked by a widow, named Mary Lynn, who roomed at their farm and helped cook for her keep. She must have had Lena’s recipe, Charley thought. He felt like he could have skipped the cabbage and meat, and just lunched on that bread!

Al noticed that Charley was pretty quiet and asked him, “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

“My wife’s cookin’. This bread ain’t as good as hers, but it’s close.”

“Well,” Al supposed, “there’s nothin’ like home cookin’. Some nice woman prob’ly worked hard fixin’ all this chow but it weren’t for her family. Maybe if it was she would cook better.”

Charley had a hard time following that line of thinking, because Lena always tried to cook her best for other folks, to impress ‘em. Those women who cooked this lunch might not have been out to impress the wheat crew; that’s what Charley decided. Lunch was short enough, for sure. Walt rang a big bell on the chow wagon and hollered at everyone to bring their plates and cups back, then get back to work. Their tractor started moving again and Charley followed it back to the wheat fields with the brothers from St. Paul and his new farmer friend, Al.

The sun was hot for an early September day, but not any more so than September in Iowa. Charley didn’t mind sweating, until he started wondering about the bathing situation. He sure hoped they had a good place to shower at night. He was a meticulously groomed man for a farmer. Lena loved that about him. She had commented about how she “never could have married a dirty man.” Throughout the whole day, he frequently found himself thinking about his little blond wife. He realized that missing her might be the hardest part of the whole wheat crew experience. His comfort came in knowing that Harley was taking good care of her.

It was peculiar to him when he realized he wasn’t missing his son that much, until he realized that the two brothers were most likely helping with that. They goofed around with each other and made jokes like Harley did with his friends. Maybe if Harley had been a younger boy, Charley would have felt differently about leaving him behind. With Charley’s brother-in-law Lynn having Harley help him with the milk route, his son had a grown-up man there if he needed anything. Charley kept up with the pace of the shocking, comforted by the knowledge that his family was doing fine without him, at least for the ten weeks or so that he expected to be gone. His focus was getting money to rebuild his house. Silently picking up another armful of cut wheat, Charley reaffirmed his commitment to do whatever it took.