Enjoying Summer, Sun Burns and Blisters
I spend my summers sweating out on the Diamond Tail Ranch working for my uncle and grandparents. It’s a modest job, but it pays well and leaves the worker with a great sense of accomplishment. I have both fond and not so good memories, but none I regret. It’s the simplest memories I cherish and recall the most vividly.
The sun beats down on my now soaked back as sweat slides down my temple. Catching the gentle curve of my cheek, the salty drop leaves a shining damp trail all the way to the tip of my nose where it falls into the hole I am digging. On occasion, I pause, and search for a breath in the humid air. The horses are at a stand still in the dusty road behind me resting their tales because the insects can stand the heat no better and have searched out shady leaves under which to hide. In between holes I walk to the old silver truck my uncle owns. Weather ridden and showing signs of rugged use, the truck’s open cab contains an inviting dusty seat and an insulated water bottle. Sometimes the horses walk over and smell the bed, looking for the remnants of oats left behind by torn burlap bags. Steve Miller is barley recognizable through the blown door speakers and would barely be receivable regardless of the truck’s current speaker conditions, but I listen anyways. Something about the music is nearly motivational to the working boy, perhaps because we saw our fathers outside working on the porch listening to the same tunes and feel manly and grown up when it is finally the soundtrack to our own day. I pull the water bottle over and turn the nozzle, tipping it up I drink until my stomach can hold no more. In the time it takes me to walk back to my hole, it seems as if I never even had touched the water.
Each post hole is different than the last. Some will have a barrier of dirt, packed and hoof trodden, as if challenging its spade in hand aggressor. At first the hole is hard and slow, but as the barrier is slowly churned into a pile next to the hole, the soil softens. Occasionally nature throws a contemptuous rock in the way of my blade and requires me to reach a hand into the hole and pry it out. For the first few holes I wipe my hands in the grass to free them of the hole’s grime, but before my digging is done I accept the dirt as part of my day and enjoy the feeling it brings me when I wash it from my hands revealing a hard days earning of blisters.
Usually sometime around 5, 6 or 7:00, I slide into the pickups dusty seat by myself and other times with the other hired hand Louise. If Louise is along, he drives and I watch the posts freshly planted in the earth roll by my window. We make a run to the local fill station for the usual six pack of Miller Light, which Louise says has a more pleasing flavor and does not induce the headaches that other beers give him. Handing me one of the cool bottles, he gets in the truck complaining about the twenty-five cent increase in the product and how the fridge temperature is never cold enough in the fill station. I usually sip along slowly on one or two of the brews, sloshing the bubbly chilled beverage around my pallet, letting my tongue search out the bitterness of the hops and the smooth grainy flavor of the barley. The beer is not a means of getting drunk or a juvenile stunt, but a symbol for the end of a hard day’s work.
After Louise and I finish our ritual, we bump along back down the rain ruined roads to the barn. I then jump in the battered old Jeep Comanche that stands under the barn overhang and head on up to the grandparents house for dinner. More often than not this summer, my grandparents were gone when I arrived home. They spent much of their time in the bighorn mountains relaxing and escaping the stress of the valley life. I'd steal another beer from my grandfathers fridge and head for the basement.