Grand Change Read online

  The small, easily financed tractors with attached pulleys came on then, essentially with a trip plow and usually a trailer. As an added convenient conveyance, for those who hung back on getting a car, a two-by-four platform could be spiked together to fit on a tractor’s draw bar. Blower attachments were obtained for threshers to blow straw into lofts from outside the barn so threshing could be done in the fall instead of in the winter. The poles of the horse-drawn implements were shortened and fitted with draw-bar attachments. There were the roars of motors now, mingling with the thwacks of binder kickers and the rattles of cutting bars. With the high, wide, well-graded road, the slough holes, runoffs and quagmires ceased in spring and fall; in winter, the new snowplows came and kept Hook Road open. You could even have your lane plowed to move your produce.

  Stationary engines went then, some for junk, some simply hauled to vacant spots behind the barn or in the woods and left to rust. In their usual, noble obedience, the proud horses began to leave. Usually one was kept for a backup, to haul out manure and wood in the winter—tractors were useless in heavy snow. The rest went for tractor trade-ins, fox meat, leather and glue.

  The winter road through the fences, fields, barnyards and sometimes on the road was gone. The rattles of wagon wheels and clops of horses’ hooves in the little town on Saturday nights, for the most part, died. It became more and more the thing to slip into town on any given day for a roast of beef, or pork or whatever. Pork barrelling, butter churning, canning and cold storage ceased; frozen carcasses no longer hung in winter woodsheds. Potted meat disappeared.

  In cadence with the change sweep, electric light poles came to space along Hook Road. In natural progression, compact pumps came to force water through pipe networks and take away the burdens of hand pumps and the chill of outhouses; washing machines came to take away the drudgery of a washboard, or something pumped or cranked; fridges came to preserve leftovers and keep them from flies and the mustiness of a cellar; new lighting came to brighten a room beyond the shallow glow of a kerosene lamp.

  The conveniences allowed for more leisure time, primarily for TV, that box of marvellous flick that came to grace a corner of most every living room, where people sat out their evenings awestruck, their eyes beholding things they had previously only heard of. Now we could see our hockey heroes up close and personal, the comedy and variety shows, duster serials. Hand in hand with TV, subtly weaving its way through the community spirit, the strange, new sound of rock and roll began to lure the youth toward a song and dance our forefathers could not have dreamed off.

  Along with all these, gas trucks came on regular runs to fill the squat tanks and to drop off cases of oil and grease. And, in ever-growing volume, the neatly typed bill envelopes came to stuff the mailboxes.

  The Last Set on Hook Road

  CHAPTER 7

  The sallowness of first light added to the depression of having to go to work in the potato field on a gloomy, cold morning. Standing between our mailbox and cream-can stand, waiting for Wally Mason to join me for the pickup from one of Fred James’s trucks, my mind began sifting through the changes of the past two years.

  Wally Mason was going to school now, like a lot of other rural scholars, a natural upgrading factor since the town had opened for high school. The rest took what they thought they needed from the village school, or what they could handle as far as education went, and packed it in. I was one of those. I’d begun grade nine, but standing in the schoolyard that September, with most of the old crew gone, and work to do at home, I’d had little heart for study anymore.

  Hiring out at potato digging, once we got our own crop in, was always a necessity for me, for clothes and pocket money and whatever. It was something new for Wally, though. Joe had always handed him whatever he needed and Wally had done what he could around home at his own pace, which wasn’t all that brisk.

  But Wally was staying in town with an aunt now while he went to school, and it was difficult to hit Joe up for money, since Joe, like most everyone else on Hook Road, was finding loose change and low bills more and more hard to come by.

  This was the third fall now since they’d finished upgrading Hook Road. Outside of the things that had converged from that time: the tractors, cars, electricity, and their spinoffs—and the fact that The Boss would have none of them—there were two major happenings that overshadowed the rest. Those pertained for the most part to my personal realm: we had our wagon smashed up by a car and Wally Mason and I finally got our big chance to play.

  The accident happened on our way home from a Saturday-night trip to town two summers previous. Because of the increase in car traffic, it was no longer safe to travel by wagon on the main road; we were on the Able Road that tees off the east end of Jar and meanders with a lot of crooks and turns before connecting with the front road at the outskirts of town. We were about halfway between the town road and Jar, coming into a long sweep with a sudden twist at the end. I was standing on the kick, holding onto the seatback. You could just see a dim outline of the mare. The rattles and engine flubs of an old car broke into the mare’s foot thuds and the clatter of the light wagon with ever-increasing volume until, with a sudden sweep, the car’s lights glared around the turn, half blinding us. Because of the sharpness of the turn, the car was on us before we knew it, and I caught the dark form of the mare shying sideways with the sudden glare.

  Almost immediate with the crunching sound of steel hitting wooden spokes, I felt the bushes of the ditch rustle and poke at me as I thudded in. Then there was the scrape of wagon wheels on the hard roadbed, gnashing with the angry revs of the car’s engine. I wound up on my side, fighting to catch my breath. Through wheel spokes and dust, I could see the car’s light beams halt, reverse, halt again, then shoot ahead until there was the red nub of the car’s rear light disappearing into dust and darkness.

  It took The Old Man some time to settle the mare down. When he called to me, I was barely able to answer. I’d had my wind knocked out pretty bad, but I was all right.

  “Looks like the front wheel is smashed out of shape, and all because some stupid ass wasn’t watching what he was doing,” The Boss said as I made my way out of the ditch.

  “Could have gotten us killed,” Nanny said from the seat. “Will the wheel get us home?”

  “Going to have to, one way or another.”

  We came home that night with the left front wheel wobbling in a series of scrapes, drags and thumps.

  It was to be our last Saturday-night trip to town by light wagon. Wally Mason and I took to hitchhiking rides to town. The Boss and Nanny would go to the city with Joe and Mabel in their car, a trip that changed to Friday nights with the new shopping hours that came in a little over a year ago.

  The big chance for Fiddling Wally Mason and Picking Jake Jackson ended up in much the same shape as our light wagon. We had been practising faithfully under the inspiration from meeting the fiddle champion, waiting for our big break.

  We’d decided not to go in the Christmas concert. I guess that’s self-explanatory. Then, the previous summer, Enzer Reeves and Holly Macdonald had gotten married and they’d held the tyme in the hall. Jim Mackie had gotten his bow-arm bunged up when he’d got it caught in his tractor’s power takeoff, and him and Alban Gallant had decided to hand things over to us.

  The whole shebang was a disaster, really. Right from the start there was a strangeness hanging around, with nobody knowing what to do. It seemed that people had lost touch from not talking enough and spending too much time watching TV. When they finally warmed up, the things that needed saying, having built up for quite a spell, began bursting out in a conglomeration of volleys and kept getting louder until you couldn’t hear yourself think.

  When it came time to start the proceedings, Caleb Johnston, the one heading things up, couldn’t get everyone to shut up. After coming to the point of yelling at them, with no let-up, he stiffened his neck into a bo
w, stomped down to the basement and came back with the galvanized washtub they used for dish washing and a dipper. I guess he must have banged the tub for a good five minutes, hollering as well, until the buzz gradually began to break, with the odd person ducking toward somebody for a last word then sitting up straight like they just stole something. Caleb managed to get the gifts presented and the address read, between cautions, then called for the dance, introducing Fiddling Wally Mason and Picking Jake Jackson.

  We started off, but those who had not lapsed into conversation sat mummified, shooting vacant glances at one another.

  “Come on,” Caleb roared. “That’s good music. Grab your partner.”

  A few stood up as if hanging on the edge, waiting for a lead.

  “That’s it,” Caleb said. “Get up here! That’s good music.” At times Caleb would turn to us. “Keep going,” he’d say. “Once we get them moving, they’ll go.”

  They finally did, a few; but it was more half-hearted flounder than anything else. Those old enough to know how it was done hadn’t much heart for it, for whatever reason (could be the music had something to do with it); those younger, the ones that bothered, didn’t have it down that good and didn’t have much heart for it, either. They got mixed up at the grand chain, flat-footed at the swing, their feet moving in a stiff, reluctant shuffle. It all petered out before the set was over, and Wally and I quit playing and sat wondering what to do.

  Then Jerry Jacobs took the floor with his guitar and started singing and banging the strings, dipping the guitar neck, rocking and wiggling while he sang, his tongue flapping around his big buck teeth at certain words, his big blue eyes staring. Then some of the teens got up and began dipping and twirling in that pull-hand scuffle. Soon more were into it, while Wally and I sat with our instruments on our laps like two whipped dogs.

  The older people, and the married young, began to drift outside into a medium-cool evening—to stand talking of things of yesterday, change, tomorrow. Those caught in between young and old, the singles, after wondering what to do for a while, wandered outside, too—the men to talk in their group of car makes, wild rides and lemons; the ladies in their group to talk about who was going with who, hairdos and gossip, with the odd glance being exchanged between groups, some suggestive of a ride home.

  That was it for Wally.

  He put his fiddle and bow, potato sack and all, into the attic. I kept picking the guitar some; tried singing a few times, country songs and whatnot. But you may as well say that the musical dreams of Fiddling Wally Mason and Picking Jake Jackson went up in smoke from the fire of Rocking Jerry Jacobs and his guitar.

  Wally’s foot shuffles, coming dry and vacant from Joe Mason’s lane, brought me back to the present. His skinny frame loomed through the gloom. He was hunched over, with a lunch box under his arm. He shuffled to a halt beside me. “Cold,” he said at my greeting, driving his hands into his pockets and hunching all the more.

  From the village way, the rattles and roar of a truck broke in and grew louder until we could see the weaves and jiggles of the twin lights topping the rise at the hollow.

  “Here they come,” Wally said, somewhat gloomily.

  The lights bore down on us and came to a stop; the idle of the motor muted in that hic and chug. Arms reached from the high tail end of the truck and hauled us up.

  Wally forgot about the lunch can under his arm when he was pulled up and we could hear it clatter on the road. “Go ahead,” someone yelled. The truck roared and lurched ahead and we grabbed for its racks. “Hold her, he dropped his lunch can,” came another voice and there were thumps on the cab until the motor fell, the brakes screeched and Wally and I went barrelling into a group of bodies huddled against the cab.

  One of the warehouse men dropped over the tailgate, then vaulted back up on his hands and groped toward Wally. “Here,” he said. “Put this thing in your ear.”

  “Let ’er rip,” came another yell.

  With the chill breeze sucking in at us, we roared down to Jar and, after a pulling swerve, we headed down to its end, tucked into the short lane and halted by the warehouse. In the greying light, regular hands—in their shapes, sizes, ages and colours of dress—from our truck or the truck from the other direction, walked stiffly either to the warehouse or to the tractors with attached trailers, sitting half hidden in gloom in the yard. The truck moved on slowly, rocking and bumping with the engine subdued, until one it made one final rock with a bump and the engine cut. We piled off the tail end, our feet driving into the soft clay of the potato field, and headed for a huge pile of baskets nearby.

  We huddled then, murmuring in clipped tones through chattering teeth, and got our baskets while the straw boss got our names. Up the field, stepping off the distance with measured strides, his mouth mutely working with his count, the foreman was making his way toward us. There were close to fifty of us, mostly women or school kids let out for the harvest break. We followed the foreman back down like a gaggle of geese, with him poking down the section stakes at intervals, and us dropping off in pairs at our sections. Along the verge of the un-dug rows, a loader-man kneeled on the tail of a trailer, hauled by a sleek green tractor, and threw off empty bags in a ragged line. A ways over, in the rows still crowned with dead sprigs, came the carrump of a tractor-hauled topper with a low, humped back as it beat its way up the rows. From the headland came the sudden barks of an ancient tractor, its makeup of steel, cleated rear wheels, disc-like front wheels, sparse engine, hay-mower–style seat and vertical steering wheel, looking like it had escaped from a junkyard more than once.

  After the barks stuttered a bit, in a rutt, rutt, rutt, the creaks and rattles of the connected two-row digger broke in and the combination began its creep up the rows. The noise of the barks, rattles and creaks was deafening as it passed our section stake, with the mix of tops, stones, potatoes, clay and clods spewing over the digger’s tail; the digger-man on his seat poking with a rod to keep the flow running on the chain beneath him; the tractor driver glancing behind and down at times to check the run of the power takeoff.

  It took Wally a while to get shook out. The field was over a mile long; the sections were seventy yards or more. It was daunting to look down to the other stake, which Wally did. He wound up standing bewildered for a while, fooling around with his gloves. I had to help him get picked up on the first couple of passes.

  “You’re going to have to bear down, Wally,” I said. “Once you get behind, you’ll never get caught up.”

  “I don’t feel so good,” Wally said. “I think I got the flu.”

  Then Linda Robins, who just happened to get the next section up from ours with Janet Fuller, began to crow: “Wally’s getting behind, Wally’s getting behind. Poor old slow poke Wally; have to go and get his Mommy to help him.”

  Johnny Ray sang out from the trailer he was loading on. “Come on, Wally, don’t let them laugh at you like that. Pull out the blue rag.”

  When I glanced back at Wally again, he had a mean look in his eye; his jaw was jutting and his hands were milling in tune with the waggle of his backside. It wasn’t long before I heard him scratching and snuffing and closing in on me. “Get out of me road,” he said, hedging past. “I’ll show you how to pick the doggone potatoes.”

  By mid-morning, we had broken into the work rhythm. Before noon, we were able to gain enough rest between sets to sit and watch the men load the trailers or get a drink from the cream can of water they carried.

  The sudden cease of the old tractor’s barks, signalling the noon break, brought things to an eerie quiet. The wind was low, cuffing up just a hint of dirt. We sat behind a shelter of filled bags we’d set up and opened our lunch cans. I was just getting into a sandwich when Wally let out a curse. When I looked, he was staring, head bent, at a broken bottle and some milk-soaked sandwiches in his lunch can. When he finally stopped cursing, he held up a sandwich, paused for the drip to sto
p, then—with his head back and his mouth open—he lowered down a corner and bit in. The milk oozed around his lips and dribbled off his chin. I almost choked.

  “Go ahead and laugh; go ahead and laugh,” he said, his words gagging. “What a man has to go through in this world.”

  We settled down to rest leeward behind the bags when we got lunch out of the way. There was just enough chill in the breeze to make the sun a comfort; we lay back feeling the after-lunch laziness setting in with its stiffness. The girls lay on their set with their feet pointing up and toward us, their slanting faces half shadowed by their bandana peaks. We could hear their low melodic murmurs mingling with the cries of a flock of curlews skimming into a nearby pasture field.

  “We should visit the girls,” I said.

  Wally pried an eye open and glanced their way. “Go ahead. If you don’t come back, write.”

  We fell into a drowsy silence for a while.

  “You know there’s got to be a better way of doing this,” Wally broke in.

  “Here we go.”

  “No, but there’s got to be a better way.”

  “Mechanical pickers.”

  “Nah, they’re no good, too slow. Can’t grade out all the tops and rocks at any decent speed; more stopping and starting than you can shake a stick at; half the time the man at the end can’t keep the bags from running over. Kept me busy cleaning up after the old man’s. No good for Fred James, that’s for sure. He’d need a dozen or more with the five hundred acres he’s got.”

  Wally paused, sifting clay with his fingers. When he spoke, his voice took on a far-off idle tone. “Way I see it you could take a big funnel and drag it behind the digger ’til it gets full, then hang it up and dump it into dump trucks from the small end.”