#31 Communication....

Women will never understand.

The bond between a man and a machine. My Cowboy was one of those men who loved machines, or more particularly two machines, his old pickup truck and his tractor. The were the great loves of his life and sadly... not me.

He fussed over both with a love and attention seldom shown anywhere else. Both were taken apart and those parts carefully cleaned and then replaced. Sometimes he cursed both machines, as if the words he used would change them. Sometimes he cooed to them using soft and loving words.  It was in essence a marriage, that of a man and a machine. A relationship which I envied.

One summer afternoon, My Cowboy's love was tested.

It was early July and 107 degrees in the shade. The rains had yet to come and the very air was heavy with dust. My Cowboy, oblivious to the heat, decided to drag corrals. Horses were removed and he attached a dragging device behind the tractor. A three foot metal triangle made of bars with five inch spikes beneath was to be dragged behind the tractor to churn up the corral earth. 

The churned earth exposed wet spots to dry and broke apart clumps of manure exposing any fly larvae for hungry birds to eat. My Cowboy had on his baseball cap, so old that the team it represented was undecipherable, working only in jean cut-offs and boots. Sweat poured from My Cowboy's exposed shirtless back, the sun deepening his already darkly tanned skin.

Dust hung suspended, the air too hot to let it rise.

Back and forth he went, surrounded by dust, never seeming to escape it. Back and forth he went for almost an hour.

Finally he stopped the tractor in the middle of the corral and turned it's engine off to cool. He walked to a nearby tree where a cool jug of water waited. He gulped a long mouthful and then poured some over his head. Leaning against the tree, he rested for a moment.

Even on the still air he smelled it. The heavy acrid scent of something burning.

He turned to look back at the corral and discovered a fire. The ground beneath the super heated tractor caught fire and was smoking furiously.

Shouting as he ran, he called for help but the only help available was from a new hire. From Mexico, the man was with us to learn English and we in turn would learn Spanish from him.

My Cowboy shouted orders in his best Spanish and ran to move his beloved tractor from danger.

The hired hand hesitated and My Cowboy shouted angrily at him.

The fire was capable of great damage. The corral earth was a mix of compressed hay bits and manure creating a peat, and... was combustible. The fire could easily go underground. Once there it could travel hundreds of feet or even miles, burning the roots of trees and then popping above ground again. It was a dangerous beast that needed stopping.

Still the hired man hesitated and again he was reprimanded sharply. Finally he threw the two buckets of water he was carrying.

He threw them on the tractor.

My Cowboys limited Spanish had told him to pour water only on the tractor.

A few minutes later the fire was put out correctly and no real harm was done. The tractor was wet but fine. All was well. The only casualty of the day it seemed, was the art... of communication.