To Enid and back

We got a call about cutting 700 acres of wheat south east of Enid, OK the other day. We were really excited as our job in Kiowa was coming to an end. So Wednesday we got everything packed up and headed out. Not far down the road a tire blew out on Jon's combine trailer. We made it to a town that could fix it. They asked Jon to drive the combine off the trailer, their jack couldn't jack up that much weight they said. It is not just a 10 second deal to unload the combine, but he did it. they brought the jack over, it was a 20 ton jack! the combine only weighs 30,000 lbs, so it could have easily jacked up the whole thing. oh well. Had them replace another tire that was looking wore. We dinked around there for well over an hour by the time we got it loaded up again. It was hot, 100 degrees or so, and we were on the West side of the building. It is hot everyday though! ugh. When we left that town, we saw more fields burning.


This is a whirlwind in the smoke, it was pretty big, there were a few of them we spotted, kind of crazy.

Anyway, the other 2 semis and pickup had kept traveling when we stopped, so we figured they were there already. We called them, and they were still a ways away from the field......hmmm...we found out that a semi side-swiped the combine Andy was hauling! So they got held up a bit dealing with that, unbelievably there was little damage done to either semi. That guy should not have been passing Andy there I guess. They met up with the land owner and he led them to the field. Those guys still got to the field well before Jon & I, and they said they got that combine unloaded in record time! The land owner was a 97 year old man, he was very nice. But when he stopped his pickup at the field and got out, he didn't quite have it in park, it rolled backwards and bumped into the truck Andy was driving! No damage was done at least. But then an angry farmer pulled up by our guys and he hit that same trailer! Hit #3 in a couple hours....thankfully no damage was done by any of them, but boy if someone would have told me lightning doesn't strike the same place twice today I wouldn't have believed them. Anyway, the farmer was all upset because he had been renting the old gent's land for 25 years and he always lined up the custom cutters, he said he had some coming soon. Well the land owner was sick of waiting and hired us. The farmer said he can't do that and called the sheriff. (all this happened before Jon & I got there, so we pull up shortly after this and here is what we see).....

I didn't get a picture of everything unfortunately. There were these 3 squad cars, then the farmer and his granddaughters vehicles, then our machinery, then another squad car. We find out that because of the contract those guys have, we can't end up cutting the wheat there. The cops were all really cool. So we hauled all that machinery, blew a tire, and dinked around all day for nothing. But we made a good connection with the land owner, and maybe it will work out for us there next year. But he did feel really bad about us wasting fuel and time, so he said he'd reimburse us for that. This old man-driving a ford ranger, wearing what I call Veterinarian's coveralls, and old tennis shoes wore so much his toes were just about sticking out-pulled his wallet out of his pocket. He had a rubber band around it to keep it shut it was so full. I have never seen so much cash, much less $100 bills in my life, he probably had $10,000 in 100's in that wallet, no lie, it was nuts. He counted out 10 of those to pay for our fuel and wasted time - and pizza for supper :) He was sure a nice guy, it was just too bad he was caught up in disagreements with his renters and we couldn't cut for them. So back to Kiowa we headed, had to stop and get a new fuel filter for 1 of the tandem trucks on the way back, but other than that we made it back fine.

Some thunderheads to our northeast on the way back.