Wednesday, August 27, 2008

We call her Tinklebell

Let's pause in the picture frenzy for a very funny story about my mom.

First, this is my mom:

Here's the background to the story that you need to know to see it as funny: See behind mom in the picture? That's the hopper on the truck and it is dumping into the hopper on the auger. The blue thing is the auger. It runs on hydraulics from the tractor to make the wheat go up into the bin. Get it? Ok, so the auger has a hopper-walker. The hopper-walker is this nifty electronic deal that walks the hopper out. So it works like this:

You pull up next to the auger with your big, big truck and jump out and use the hopper-walker to walk the hopper under your truck's dumpy thingy (technical term, stay with me) and start the auger, well, augging (more on that danger later). Then you "let 'er rip, tater chip." (So, that means you open up the truck hopper and wheat dumps into the auger hopper and gets auggered up into the bin.) Got it?

It's all pretty sweet and will be sweeter when I figure out how to download a cool song to program into the hopper-walker... right now it just goes "beep, beep" while it walks out.


Ok, more background. This story isn't very funny so far, is it? The hopper-walker is operated by a toggle switch (I would say the toggle switch is operated by a dipstick but that would be rude and insulting) and runs off the battery of the tractor (for those of you with a tech or farming background... this means it can operate when the tractor is not running).




So you can use this switch or the keychain remote. Yes. A remote. The idea is you can get in the truck, start it, move it so the box isn't in the way of the hopper's path and move it with the remote so you don't have to get out of the truck again. Sweet, huh?

So mom has a remote. In her pocket. And she has to pee. What? How can I be delicate about that? It happens. It's all the gatorade. Remember, first, that the bins are in the middle of town. Ok, now remember town looks like this:

And that is why you can squat-n-pee in the middle of town. Which is what mom did, one fine summer day. With the remote in her pocket. Do you see where this is going? SHE. ACTIVATED. THE. REMOTE. And walked the auger out from under the truck while it was dumping.

How funny is that?

And, more importantly, how big a pile of wheat can you dump on the ground in the time it takes to tinkle and pull up your Wranglers?

About 10 feet in diameter apparently.

2 comments:

MeesheMama said...

Most of this went over my head. I'm such a city girl and still believe deeply that farming is oh so romantic and natural, but I can definitely picture how this was hilarious.

KGrams said...

Thank you for the farming lesson... do ya have one that's a bit more dumbed down for a city girl? Something like "Farming for City Dummies"? lol

That story is way too funny!