A couple of days from now I’ll be sharing a little info about my life of total leisure. But, first, I’d like to share a short blurb on the exciting, and hard-working conveyor belt. And not just any old clunky piece of machinery. This one’s from over the rainbow.
You don’t need a conveyor belt to get over the rainbow.
At least, not if you already live in Kansas. And I did. Live in Kansas, that is. Well, I lived there each summer for several years. My parents split up when I was very young. And I spent school days in a city in Texas and summers in a very small town in Kansas.
And for several summers I was cast into hot, dusty child labor camps. OK, it wasn’t exactly like that. There weren’t any camps. But it WAS hot. And it WAS dusty out there on the windy Kansas hay fields.
Side note (literally): that reminds me of the John Denver song, Matthew. Check it out if and when you get the chance.
The chorus said this:
Yes, and joy was just a thing that he was raised on,
Love was just a way to live and die.
Gold was just a windy Kansas wheat field,
Blue was just the Kansas summer sky.
OK. Back to the conveyor belt.
I spent a lot of time in those windy Kansas wheat fields and hay fields. Corn fields. And other vegetables, too. But the hay fields were the scene for the conveyor story. The hay fields and the hay barns. Yeah, I saw the inside and out of countless barns.
Because I bucked countless bales of hay. Up to 18 hours a day. Six days a week. And I did it for the massive money. Yep. Two cents a bale. That was my “commission.” And before you think that doesn’t sound like much money, you’re right. It’s not much money. So, obviously, the goal was big numbers.
I said countless. But you can figure somewhere around 1200 bales a day? Six days a week. And that included bucking them up on the truck. Then, throwing them off the truck, into the barn, and stacking them up in the barns. And sometimes that’s where the conveyor belt came in. Because many of the barns had plenty of vertical space. And when you stack hay up high enough, you can’t physically throw those bales up high enough.
So, you hook up a conveyor belt to a tractor, fire it up, and send those bales up the belt into an open door on the second floor of the barn. Then, those bales fly off the belt and drop into the barn where you continue stacking.
All this took place under that blue, HOT Kansas summer sky.
For a whopping $120-$144 a week.
Good news about those tiny paychecks. I earned ’em back when gasoline was still 30 cents a gallon. And I could buy a tank of gas, and take a date out for dinner and a movie for about twenty bucks. Maybe even less if we caught a quick burger at a drive through.
And I’ve always remembered those days in the hay fields, as well as even hotter and muggier days as a finish carpenter in Houston, whenever someone thinks I don’t know what real work is. I’ll tell you, in another email, why I bring that up.
And, speaking of something being conveyed, here’s some food for thought from a very famous author.
“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”
That’s the joy that Matthew (from John Denver’s song) was raised on. So was I. And I hope you were, too. If not, it’s still yours for the asking. Why not get conveyed today. It’s easier than bucking bales.
Stay tuned,
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