It was time to feed the cattle that were fenced in the pasture behind the barn. It was winter, almost Christmas; the ground was frozen and covered in snow so the herd could not graze to feed themselves. As a boy of eight I was proud to “help” my father work the farm. We bundled up against the frigid winter morning and set out to fill the wagon with feed for the cattle. The snow crunched loudly in the morning quiet with every step we took and soon the cold began making itself felt even through our winter coats.
The old Case tractor was reluctant to start in the frigid winter weather as usual but finally came to life with a staccato roar and a cloud of blue/black smoke belching from the single exhaust stack that stuck up into the air from the right side of the engine. We hooked up the flat bed wagon with its rickety old wooden sideboards and headed off to load it with feed. My father parked the wagon underneath the chute of the big concrete silo, and we climbed up inside to fill the wagon with silage. The silo was more than three-quarters full, this being early in the winter, so it was long climb upwards inside the metal tube that ran up the outside of the structure covering and protecting a row of removable hatches with steps built into each one. Light filtered through the two pie-wedge shaped translucent panels built into the rounded top of the sixty-foot-tall vertical concrete cylinder. As my father forked the silage through the open step-hatch, I was careful to stay out of the way of his twelve-tined silage fork.
My father worked diligently sending feed through the hatch, down the chute and into the waiting wagon below and, after a time, he noticed that the open step-hatch appeared abnormally dark and leaned out to check things. The usually open bottom end of the loading chute where the wagon would normally be seen was completely blocked by the feed he had forked into it. Normally the feed tumbled down and spread out into the wagon, but apparently not this time! Dad mumbled some words I had been cautioned not to say, then climbed down to clear the clog but found it blocked tightly. Having been up in the silo many times before, I knew that the chute was the only way we had of getting out of the silo. There was a hatch in the rounded top, but it was far out of our reach. There was no one else on the farm that day and no one was expected until my mother arrived home from her job as a waitress late that night, the cold would get to us long before that, so if we were to get out, we would have to do it ourselves. I tried desperately to keep up a brave front to show my father that I was being a man and was not afraid, but despite my best efforts, some tears found their way onto my cold, red cheeks and down past my trembling lower lip anyway. The curving grey concrete walls seemed colder and more intimidating than they ever had.
I could hear my father working at the bottom of the loading chute, and finally he climbed back through the open hatch unsuccessfully trying to disguise the worry on his tanned, leathery face. Dad had managed to move some of the feed that blocked our exit from the silo, but he could not move enough to allow him room to crawl through as there was no place to put it and no way to get it back up the chute. He had propped the silage fork across the chute and moved as much of the blockage as he could and piled it onto the fork. It was not enough; he had a small opening but could not fit through it. Dad squatted down putting his arms on my shoulders and explaining the situation. It was up to me to squeeze through the small opening he had made and dislodge the obstruction so he could get out. I climbed down the chute, my fear of heights adding to a terror I was trying hard not to show but was nearly paralyzing me. I squeezed past the silage fork that dad had wedged against the walls to keep the feed he had moved from falling back down and came to the small opening he had made. The opening was indeed small, and I was not sure that I would fit through even if I held my breath. After removing my coat, and with considerable wriggling, I was at last able to squeeze my stout body out past the sharp steel edge of the bottom of the loading chute and into the cold, clear morning air. I dug through the accumulated silage, the cold quickly numbing my unprotected arms, hands and ears, and found that part of the wagon’s old home-made wooden sideboard had fallen over and was keeping the feed from falling all the way down into the wagon. I tugged on it, not really helping fix the sideboard but managing to allow the silage blocking the chute to fall away, clearing the way for my Dad. Finally, my father came down to fix the wagon and gave me my coat and a clap on the back for doing a good job. I could not have asked for a greater reward! But there was no time to stop and enjoy the moment; we still had work to do. Dad temporarily fixed the sideboard then headed back up the loading chute into the silo to finish loading the wagon, but this time I stayed below to make sure we didn’t have a repeat of the same problem. I huddled down next to the warm engine of the tractor to try to keep from freezing, and so I had a clear view of the wagon as the silage Dad continued to send down began to once again pile up. This time I climbed up into the wagon and made sure the bottom of the chute stayed clear by raking the mounting volume of silage out of the way. At long last the seemingly endless rain of feed stopped and shortly afterwards Dad’s high-top leather shoes appeared from the bottom of the chute as he climbed down into the wagon.
We climbed up onto the tractor, Dad in the single seat and me in my usual spot on the left-hand fender over the big rear tire. Dad started engine. It was very slow to start as it had been facing into the winter wind, but when it finally did the sound of the motor seemed unusually loud in the still winter air. Just before easing the clutch out and heading off with the feed Dad looked at me with a smile on his tanned, leathery face and the characteristic twinkle in the eye and said, “Ready son? The men of this family still have work do to!” With that comment still ringing in my ears we set off across the frozen ground to continue with our chores. It had already been a busy morning, and we still hadn’t put the feed out for the cattle.