“I wasn’t sure whether Mary had got home yet,” a perplexed Leo said, then went on with, “I was down in my basement tinkering with one of my firearms and experienced the ultimate embarrassment of having an accidental discharge. I sat in silence, and when no sounds came from upstairs, I deduced that Mary wasn’t home yet. I looked at the floor joists that made up the ceiling of the basement and tried to guess where the errant bullet would have ended up. I scampered upstairs and looked through the shelves and drawers. If there was a hole in Mary’s favorite pan, it would be better if I found it first.”
Mary’s pans were all okay.
Way back when, in the 1970s the fellow I was kinda trucking with gave me directions to deliver my load of hay. Another fellow who had just started hauling with us was to meet me there, the plan being if we helped each other unload, we wouldn’t need to find a helper willing to throw hay bales inside a hay barn near the Oregon coast. I wasn’t looking for this to be a pleasant experience. Most of the “just started hauling with us” guys of late had been circus-class duds.
Leo climbed out of his red Peterbilt truck and proceeded to change into work boots and an obviously “dirty situation work” T-shirt. He then produced a genuine set of hay hooks, walked to where I was scouting the unloading area and asked how we were going to go about unloading.
By the time we had the 55 tons of hay from both trucks stacked, we were good friends. Leo was pleasant and knew how to work.
A couple of years later, we were moving hay from southern Idaho to northern Nevada. We would haul a few loads back to back then make it home for the weekend. We got permission to use a private scale to weigh the loads, since no public scales were on the route. On the ranch with the scale was a 15-by-30-by-3-feet-deep diversion structure to move irrigation water into any ditch on the ranch. This was naturally hot water. About the second time we used the scale, it was late afternoon. Leo proceeded to park his loaded truck between the hot water and the farmhouse and announced that he was going to take a hot bath. I parked my truck so we had the giant hot tub surrounded, and Leo, our helpers and I made good use of running hot water. We called the place the “Bathtub Ranch.” We scheduled to be there using the scale late afternoons every trip.
One winter, we unloaded in the same stackyard on a hillside north and a little west of Mountain Home, Idaho. We got darked on just as we finished. Leo said he had an air leak he needed to fix before he could leave. He sent his helper to my truck as we both looked through our “goodies box” for the right O-ring to fix it.
Later, I asked Leo’s helper what finally fixed the leak.
“Probably the way Leo yelled at it.”
Leo told of being at a friend’s house. The household dog was seated on a bench across from Leo and was eyeing him carefully. Leo noticed that if he leaned one way, the dog would lean, either direction. Leo kept it up until the dog leaned too far, lost its balance, and fell off the bench. “The dog got up, gave me the stink eye, and walked off,” Leo chuckled.
We were plinking in Leo’s backyard one day when his dad, Jake Ritthaler, drove in. After observing for a few minutes, he groused, “Is this all in the hell you two have got to do?”
This showed me where Leo got his work ethic.
Early one spring, we were dealing with mud. I backed in to pull a stuck Leo and his truck out of a slick spot where he had loaded. As I approached, he was “snorting, bellowing and throwing things” as he dealt with the mud, using a shovel to make it easier to get out. I quipped, “Having fun yet?”
He threw something at me. I dodged it. Kept pestering him. Then…...
He burst into laughter and said, “Dag nabbit, Brad Nelson; you just ruined a perfectly good mad!”
About the first week of July, I got a text and a voicemail from Leo’s daughter Julie. Needed me to contact her about her dad.
Yep. That sinking feeling I got was confirmed when she told me Leo had passed away June 24, 2022. And he was only 78.
True to his wife. Loved and missed by his children, grandchildren and Mary.
And the best friend I’ve ever had. Nothing was ever spoken, but we both knew one of us would never leave the other stranded or in need.
