It was the kind of day during harvest season that farmers hate. Dawn had brought with it a gray sky, chilly temperatures and precipitation. You couldn’t really call it rain, it was more of a heavy, steady mist. Just enough moisture to make you use your windshield wipers and wear a coat. It was cold, wet and miserable.
To add to the misery, it was late fall, when farmers scramble to harvest their corn and soybeans. And Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating. That day was yet another soggy day in a long string of soggy days that had become weeks. Harvest was at a near standstill. It seemed every farmer in Mitchell county was sleep-deprived and on edge. Nerves were shot. The corn and soybean fields had swelled into mud pits.
While many farmers were wisely waiting it out, some, pushed by economic necessity, or anxiety, stretched themselves and their machinery to the limit trying to harvest any fields that were even marginally dry enough to support the weight of their giant combines.
In 1981, the combine of choice in our neck of the woods was the John Deere model 6620. In those days there was nothing bigger. It stood more than 14 feet tall, 12 feet wide and 26 feet long, without the grain head. With a six-row grain head attached it weighed just short of 20,000 pounds – 10 tons. Fully loaded it could hold 166 bushels of grain, adding another 9,000 pounds.
Combines, with their large drive wheels in front and tiny steering wheels in the rear, always reminded me of gorillas – all the power, size and weight up front tapering severely to a relatively scrawny back end.
The call came into O’Connor’s Standard Service at 1 p.m. A farmer five miles east and four miles south of town had a fully loaded 6620 stuck in a field. He needed us to get it out. Dad and I checked over the big wrecker to ensure we had all our heavy-duty supplies and hit the road.
We knew we were in for a tough time even before we reached the farm. The gravel country roads were abnormally mushy. I could feel the wrecker sink into the road bed. If the gravel roads were mushy I knew the farm fields would be 10 times worse.
As we pulled into the farmyard we were met by the farmer’s wife who pointed at the horizon and our destination. We could just barely see the combine on the far side of a tree-lined barbed-wire fence in a field at least a quarter mile from the farmhouse. We’d have to follow a mud path next to the fence to get to the mired combine.
The odds of us getting our very large tow truck stuck before we even reached the combine were high. As we started down the path I could tell my dad was getting uptight. He began to mutter under his breath. Each time the wrecker began to bog down, he’d downshift and I’d hear him utter a “geez uuus” under his breath. His voice had gone up an octave and he was speaking in spurts. Sure signs he was getting’ “nerved up” as he called it.
The stress only increased as we got closer. What we now saw that we couldn’t see from the farmstead was the crowd. On the far side of the combine, hidden from view, were about 10 neighbors who apparently had been working all morning to free the combine. As we made our way through a gap in the fence, we were confronted by an assortment of mud-covered trucks and tractors and dozens of deep ruts in the mud.
The ruts told the story. The farmer had finished combining the field and was making his way along the dirt path by the fence when the machine bogged down in the mud. Hours of subsequent spinning of the combine’s massive drive tires while tractors and trucks pulled with chains had done nothing but bury the fully loaded machine deeper and deeper into the muck.
The 6620 looked like a giant mechanical elephant stuck up to its belly in mud. To make matters worse, the mud prevented the farmer from bringing a tractor and wagon alongside to offload the corn and lighten the load.
By the look on the farmer’s face I could see there was conflict on the ground. On one hand, he was pleased to see us because he assumed we could free his mechanical beast from the mud pit. But on the other hand, he was unhappy because he and his friends had failed to get the combine out. He’d lost hours of productivity and now he’d have to write a check for a bill he didn’t want to pay. But the fact of the matter was, he had to get that combine out, and we were his last, best hope.
There were conflicted emotions inside the wrecker cab as well. Three things about Ed O’Connor. 1) He never backed down from a challenge. But, 2) He didn’t like working in front of an audience, which he now had; and 3) He hated to fail – and this time, defeat was a very real possibility.
The combine was facing away from us. It was truly buried. It’s tiny rear wheels were just visible above the mud. Only the right-hand side of the rear axle was still exposed. As we walked up to survey the situation we could feel the crowd’s eyes upon us. As much as they wanted the combine out, I knew a cynical few wanted to see us fail, thus validating their morning’s efforts.
While our big wrecker with its Holmes 600 towing winch had the capacity for the task, it wouldn’t be simple or easy. Pulling out a fully loaded combine buried in mud is an engineering challenge to say the least. It would strain the limits of our machinery and my dad would have to call upon his decades of experience, and a little Irish luck, to pull it off.
Step one was to carefully back the wrecker as close as possible to the rear of the combine while staying on solid ground. We ended up about 30 feet away.
Step two, we placed two massive 50-pound steel wedges under both outside rear tires. Dad slowly backed the wrecker onto the wedges and set the air breaks. This would help increase our leverage.
Step three, we released the driver-side cable, allowing me to pull off enough cable to reach the combine’s rear axle.
Step four, Dad retrieved an industrial-sized snatch-block (pulley) from the utility cabinet and attached it to a D-ring welded to the wrecker’s body, directly above the driver-side wedge. We then ran the cable through the snatch block. This too would help increase leverage and pulling power. Ideally, we would have used both winch cables, but the left side of the axle was completely buried. There was no way to get to it.
Now came step five. Some poor, unlucky soul was going to have to wade through knee-deep mud up to the combine, then they’d have to get down and belly crawl the last few feet into the tiny, dark space between the machine’s belly and the mud to reach the rear axle -- all the while carrying a 20-pound J-hook in one hand and pulling the half-inch winch cable with the other.
One thing was certain, that poor slob wasn’t going to be Ed O’Connor, so I got the job. Ed’s nerves were up. As I started wading toward the combine he admonished me not to “screw around under there – get in and get out.” He knew full well he was sending me into a dicey situation, but he’d also trained me well. I knew what to do.
As I slogged through the muck out of the corner of my eye, I noticed sparrows and cardinals flitting from branch to branch in the nearby trees. I could even hear them chirping above all the engine noise. I wondered if they were aware of the human drama playing out just few yards away.
I reached the combine and dropped to my knees. After a few feet I had to belly crawl. It was slow work. I felt the cold mud begin to seep into my blue Amoco coveralls. I crawled as far under the beast as possible and reached forward with the J-hook, straining to find the axle in the dark. Because I had to work by feel, it took me three attempts to reach what I thought was axle.
I attached the cable to the J-hook, slid out and gave Dad the signal to start the winch. He used the auxiliary throttle control to rev the massive Chevy engine and pulled the handle to take up the cable. I heard a distinct “clink” from under the combine as the cable and J-hook came sliding out. My heart sank. I hadn’t kept enough pressure on the cable to keep it taught while Dad took up the slack. His response was a predictable, “geez-us kur-ist!” He let go of the lever and moved to the front of the winch to again release the cable.
I heard “Hold it tight this time!” as I again swam under the combine. It only took me two tries to find the axle this time, and this time I wasn’t going to let that J-hook slip! I kept pressure on the cable with my left hand as I started to wiggle backwards into the gray light of day.
Just as my feet cleared the machine I heard a sound I’d previously only heard in the movies, and then it was limited to scenes inside mines just as the roof was about to cave in. It was a deep, loud moaning sound that drowned out all the engine noises above and around me.
Dad heard the noise too. I don’t know how he did it, but he covered the distance between the two machines in nothing flat. He grabbed my boots and pulled as hard as he could. We both went flying backwards. We landed side-by-side, sitting in the mud, hands on our knees, facing the combine.
I looked up just in time to see the giant machine crash into the mud, burying the winch cable. We sat there for a moment, frozen in place. The reality of the situation sank in. The crowd too was stunned. No one said a word. I again heard the birds chirping.
Then Dad broke the silence as he stared straight ahead and said, “Geez-us kur-ist, just don’t tell your mother!”
And I never did.
###
Epilogue:
By some miracle, the cable stayed attached to the J-hook and we succeeded in extricating the combine.
And we did finally break our silence and tell my mom this story -- in 2015. Dad was in a nursing home. On his good days he liked me to tell him stories from the station and wrecker. Mom was there the day he asked me to tell this one. I was 51 years old. Hopefully the statute of limitations had expired.
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