Line 'O the day - April 2, 2008

Hopefully on some far off date someone will ask, “And what is it you do Mr. Eckles?”
And my reply is, “Me, I’m a good friend.”

Line 'O the day - March 31, 2008

If it’s crazy, it’s crazy, I don’t know. I do know it ain’t worth feigning sanity and passing this up.

Line 'O the day - March 26, 2008

Hope is on the horizon. I haven’t felt it yet, but I’m sure it’s up ahead.

A hayloft is hot

Hay was a big part of my life when I was growing up, as I've mentioned before. And for anyone that may not fully understand the reason for hay it is very simple. Grass doesn't grow very well in the winter, but cows still need to eat, and that's where hay comes in. It's stored grass, and there are different ways to store it. Massive rows of big round bales, which I've touched on before; suppose silage would be another way, but I'm not getting into explaining silage right now; then you have hay barns. These could be large open air pole barns, long machine shed looking buildings, and then of course your old classic looking barn with a hayloft.

A hayloft is a great use of space and convenience, for feeding out the hay. Not so much when it comes to putting the hay in during the summer. You need specialized equipment, not counting the baler, tractors and wagons to get the goods from the field to the barn. Specifically an elevator to get everything from ground level up into the loft. You need at least two people, one putting on the hay at the bottom of the elevator, and one stacking it in the loft, usually you'll have at least two ol'boys in the barn.

Now then all of that is preamble to a specific story. The first time I damn near had a heat stroke. I was twelve, maybe thirteen and we had a full out crew working. My older brother was out on the ground throwing bales on the elevator, and then dad, my uncle Glen (this is I think his first mention, he gets his own whole post in the coming weeks) and myself up in the loft. We had been at it all afternoon and had been packing this particular barn for a few days. It was just about full and we were stuffing every last corner we could right up to the rafters. With me being small, light and all I was perched way up in the loft with dad and Glen tossing bales up from the elevator to me to stack.

This is in the middle of summer and it is hot, we'll say like 90 or 95 degrees outside. Out in the field, or just anywhere outside working in that heat is easy, but being in the loft changes things. First and foremost I'm way up next to the roof, a metal conduit for heat to just build up. It's a damn oven, doubly so because I'm surrounded by hay bales, acting like an insulation trapping in every bit of heat it can. Add to all that the dust and confinement, and oh yea the fact that I'm thirteen and working my ass off trying to keep up with these two grown men.

So I start to feel a little peaked as we're working and I sorta gave up and sat down. And I remember my uncle's face when he looked up at me a few rows above his head. He grabbed my legs and pulled me down off the stack and just said 'let's get you outside'. Apparently I had the complexion of a ghost. I shut the whole job site down as dad and Glen got me down to the ground and shoved the water jug in my hands. About a minute after I was on the ground I started puking, odd that is what folks do when you get overheated. Fairly quickly after that my day was called and I was taken back to the house.

We had just gotten central air conditioning and it felt pretty good when I got in the house, but quickly that change manifested in another bout of vomiting. So I just went back out on the front porch to cool down. I remember there was a discussion about giving me one of the old man's beers, as it supposedly would help in some way. After a while I started feeling better and the episode passed.

Simply put a hayloft is hot as hell.

Line 'O the day - March 16, 2008

Often times my mind works in ways I’d rather it didn’t. These occasions offer me a chance to challenge myself.