Jon Gets It Done

We have one big old tractor that Ellen used to call the Old Lady or Big Red.  The tires are as tall as I am, and to get on it I have to put my foot on the step that is higher than my knee, grab the handles and haul myself up two more steps.  It's an International 766, it's the tractor that weighs 11,000 pounds and it's about 55 years old.  In the last few years it has had some major maintenance done, and last summer it was like driving a new tractor with all the dials working and a brand new seat and a feeling of total reliability.

Except that something went wrong toward the middle/end of the season, of course, and there was hydraulic fluid spraying all over my feet when a line popped and the steering went out. I abandoned that tractor in the middle of the field on multiple occasions, and Jon kept fabricating pieces that would get her going again for another little while before she blew out again.  We didn't really want to go  back to the same mechanic for the third time since it seemed like we needed a new person to look at it. We asked our mechanic/farmer friend for his best recommendation and he said there was a guy north of Harrisburg that he trusts.

This guy had a backlog of work for months. He said he didn't have room for the tractor until January. Well, we went on vacation in January, forgetting to figure out how to get the tractor up there. When we got home we realized we had squandered a whole month of repair time. I started to get very antsy, pestering Jon constantly about figuring out how to move the tractor.

First we thought we could find a trailer to borrow, so it took a couple of weeks to move through all those possibilities and find nothing. Then we thought we would have to pay someone but when we finally found someone who said yes, he said it would be $700 one way. Jon just couldn't accept that price. But then the guy who made that offer said he would sell us the trailer for $4000, he didn't really want it anyway.  So, if you think about it one way, if we had to pay $1400 round trip for that one trip, the trailer was only costing us $2600.  Sort of.  Jon bought it, brought it home for our mechanic to look at, they discovered it needed a whole new set of brakes. The calendar pages were flipping past. And this winter has been so warm the ground hasn't frozen so the calendar is going faster than usual, by more than three weeks.

It took another week to get the brakes fixed and Jon had the tractor loaded as soon as the trailer was ready.  He let the rig sit overnight so he could leave early in the morning. But of course there was a flat tire on the trailer by morning. Good to know.  Unloaded the tractor again, found a place that could do the work on a Saturday morning, got two tires fixed, loaded the tractor up once more and headed north.

Phew. He made it.  And when he got there, he had a comprehensive tour of this guy's shop full of tractors. He said there were piles to the ceiling and tractors broken into pieces all over the place. But Jon left there feeling confident that our tractor will be fixed soon and we will be able to start the season on time.

Go, Jon, go. This project took about a month and so far all that happened is that a tractor got moved 125 miles.  I did get the paperwork from the DMV finally, after another two more trips back there and another four hours of time.  They never did say how someone took our title away, but at least they got it back.

Farming is so romantic.

Life in The Slow Line

After too many hours standing on my feet in a room full of people who had not quite abandoned hope, I will tell the story of my afternoon at the House of Humility, the Queue of No Hierarchy, the Division of Powerlessness. I suppose Trump has never been through that but almost all Americans who are on the roads have had the humbling experience of being in the sea of humanity, waiting for a number to come up on the screen.

I went straight from my piano lesson, thinking that early afternoon must be better than the lunch hour.  When I got there, the whole line was inside the door, so that was a plus. But it was a line that wove back and forth between the ropes and inched along. No one spoke. Almost everyone just kept their eyes on their phone.  My legs were tired after a half an hour as there was nothing to lean on.

I clambered over the top of the salmon ladder and threw myself into the first lock.  The lock keeper listened to my hopes and dreams, looked through my documents, and told me I had what it took to get to the end. Swim on! He handed me my number:  D83.

And then I began to regret my lack of planning. I had no pen, no paper, no book, no knitting. I had a phone but that rarely feels like a good use of time.  I watched the numbers A32, F129, B50, I239, C122.  For a long time I never saw anything with a D. I wondered if this was a cruel joke. Finally after about 20 minutes I saw D78 on the screen so I there was hope after all. I began to pay attention to how long it took to get from one D to the next.  Ugh. D79 was at the window for a full hour. I wondered whether the D people were the most complicated. The I’s were just whizzing by. The lady sitting next to me watched the numbers climb from 1239 to 1251 and she went to the window. I rescued her newspaper.

As always, the seats were filled with families with small children and babies.  There were Spanish speakers, lots of Asian folks, mothers with teenagers, people of all colors, and plenty of elderly men and women.  We were all in the same helpless state. In front of us was a bank of 15 clerks: Spanish speakers, Asian men and women, people of all colors. They were doggedly doing their work, heads down, determined to make no mistakes. 

After 100 minutes it was suddenly my turn!  I gathered myself and went to Window #4. A young African American woman in purple greeted me courteously and I presented my needs.  Two new trailers to register and a pickup truck that needed a higher gross vehicle weight.  After about 75 minutes of patiently leaning on the counter, watching her go through her moves very carefully, I learned that she was unable to do anything about the truck because I had sold it in July of 2017.  Except I hadn’t.  We have the truck, and we want to legally hitch it up to these new trailers and I need to make sure the paperwork allows for that. She asked me to write a detailed affidavit with all the identifying information, swearing that I had not sold the truck. I did that, compliant and with a feeling of doom. Finally, she sent me down to Window 14 to speak to the manager.

He started out with confidence but after another 20 minutes of distracted work (he was the manager and people needed to ask him questions constantly) he said we didn’t own the truck anymore, it was sold to someone in Louisiana and they are unable to make changes to the information now that it is out of state. “I own the truck. I have it. I did not sell it. All I want to do is hook it up to a heavy trailer and have the right gross vehicle weight.”

“That is the least of your worries.  If you get pulled over, you are driving a stolen vehicle.”

Oh good grief.  We started the process of documenting an investigation. At 5:00 when I walked out of the door – with no paperwork to show that we could tow a trailer full of an 11,000 pound tractor – there were still over 40 people sitting in their chairs, waiting their turn.  The office closes at 5:00 but those clerks will dutifully process all of those people’s papers before they go home.

At the Department of Motor Vehicles, we are all equals. We wait our turn with decorum, we are given full attention, and if we bring the right documents, our needs are met. Mostly. I got two trailer tags and a new Real ID (easy) but when Jon tows that tractor to Pennsylvania, he will be taking his chances with the law.