We had no idea when we sold one of our wheel lines that several half gallons of Reed’s Dairy ice cream would be thrown in as part of the deal, not to mention the jalapeno cheese curds and creamy chocolate milk. This shouldn’t have surprised me, as I’ve noticed even the suggestion of moving wheel lines evokes varying emotions in people. You can be talking over the fence or sitting on a tailgate shooting the breeze, and if the subject of wheel lines comes up, there can be, depending on the person, everything from minor vexation to deep nostalgia in their voice. I even know of a dog that has a fondness for them.
When we pass Joel Anderson on the road doing irrigation rounds in his pickup, his big German shepherd is always sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat. I don’t think that dog ever misses a ride when the sprinklers are running, and from his unswerving attention out the windshield, it appears he can’t wait to arrive at the next field.
Once Derek was talking to Joel on the phone about the new rotating drum screens for the pipeline coming off the Moore Canal when there was a cacophony of barking in the background. “Be quiet!” yelled Joel. “My crazy dog,” he told Derek. “Soon as you unhook the hose from the end of the wheel line, he goes nuts. It can be really annoying ya’ know. I’m out just enjoying being alive, thinking about what needs to be done for the day. I bend down to unhook the hose, and the morning solace is broken by loud barking right in my ear. He loves wheel lines. Been that way since a puppy.”
I’ve spent a good portion of the last six irrigating seasons attempting to start wheel-line motors and move them in the right direction. I had the fine fortune to obtain the title of chief wheel-line executive on our farm without a voting process or due diligence. For that matter, I cannot recall any process by which this job description was bestowed upon me other than my husband pulling some strings to get me to yank on pull cords. Although, there is a dim and buried recollection in my mind trying to make its way out into broad daylight that somewhere in the mayhem of my life I perhaps offered to help irrigate.
I began observing other farmers’ wheel lines – easily a quarter-mile long and as straight as an arrow day in and day out. I scrutinized ours with a critical eye. “How do they do it?” I asked Derek.
“Ours are like an arrow, too,” he consoled me. “A crooked arrow. They say to just tweak the ends a little and it’ll pull straight.”
My sense of accomplishment was probably out of proportion to the job at hand when two or three weeks would go by and I didn’t flood a motor or have to call Derek because I couldn’t get a sprinkler to rotate. And the day I replaced both a sprinkler and a drain on my own, having everything I needed in the little blue toolbox rubber snubbed to the four-wheeler rack, I was ready to take on the world.
I did have one nemesis. The wheel line in the back corner across the creek rebuffed all ingenuity. I would give myself a pep talk as I headed over to it, “It’s just a piece of equipment. It’s not out to get you. Remember to tweak it a little. Stay patient, and don’t break the pull cord again.” I’d follow my own instructions to the letter, only to have the motor refuse to go into gear or choose to randomly cough, sputter and die when all it needed was one more turn to line up with the riser. Not being mechanically minded, I had my own method of cajoling it – not with soothing words and comforting touch but by ignoring it completely until I was good and ready to go back to yanking on the pull cord.
Last fall, my husband ordered a new pivot for the 18 acres across the creek. The wheel lines were rolled to the edge of the field, and I assumed they would sit there for many years as a testimony to my long-suffering and perseverance with them. To my amazement, the owners of Reed’s Dairy in Idaho Falls bought one. The day they broke the wheel line down and loaded part of it on a gooseneck trailer, Derek received a message from them. “We left a cooler of ice cream behind the sagebrush by the corner of the fence for you. We’ll come Thursday to get the rest of the wheel line.”
Thursday, they left another, bigger cooler packed to the brim with more ice cream, cheese curds and bottles of chocolate milk. We took the cooler to the house and scooped out bowls of ice cream. As I sat and savored my huckleberry swirl, I was glad for good people who understand the simple pleasures in life, such as ice cream and wheel-line sprinklers turning in the evening summer light.
