As I was traveling from Alliance to Hemingford this past Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t help but notice that the hay harvest season is well underway.
Most notable was the fact that the harvested hay bales all looked the same.
They were large and round and unable to be moved except by machinery.
Allow me to clock back the calendar to the 1970s, when I was working on the farm my dad managed for Norden Laboratories of Lincoln. The bales were not large and round. They were rectangular and measured 15 by 18 x 36 inches and weighed between 40 and 60 pounds, depending on the crop. Alfalfa, Brome, and prairie grass was harvested from early June to mid-September. All of it was dryland. If we were graced with favorable rainfall, the alfalfa might produce three cuttings.
A Farmall 560 diesel tractor and sickle mower were used to cut the hay. The 560 was then used to rake the mowed hay into windrows and a Farmall 544 gasoline hydrostatic drive was used to pull a New Holland baler. Usually a hay wagon was hitched to the baler and three or four of us would stack the hay. It would be transported to the barn and each bale would ride an elevator affixed at a 45 to 55-degree angle to the hayloft. Each bale would be stacked by hand.
In the heat of the summer, the barn’s loft, covered with a tin roof, could reach 120 degrees.
Four to seven other farmhands would join me in stacking the hay.
It was hot, dirty, exhausting and rewarding work as my pay was anywhere from $1.71 to $2.25 an hour.
Whenever I see a Facebook post stating: You have never worked hard until you have spent a summer baling hay,” I usually click the “like” or “love” button.
Because it’s true.
Technology has made hay harvest much less labor intensive. One man or woman can do it all. From mowing to transporting the bales to a storage corral to winter feeding.
Gone are the memories of four, five, six or seven young men (no girls allowed on our farm in the 1970s) building up our muscles for the upcoming high school football season by tossing hay bales around for three months.
The camaraderie.
The sharing of stories and lies of self-importance.
The teasing.
The singing along with songs that played on the radio.
Tossing bales in 100-degree heat with a hangover from the before night’s too much play.
The drama of falling off a hay wagon when it hit a hole created by a badger and the impending laughs and chastisement.
The lectures of Dad warning us to stand clear of the power take-off (PTO) shaft while we unloaded the hay onto the elevator.
All workers sharing swigs of essential drinking water from the same jug.
All gone.
I’m sure new memories are made with modern equipment. This column certainly is not to downplay the importance of today’s hay harvesters. I have great memories of helping local farmers during the hay harvests of 1994 and 1996. But truth be told, it was relatively easy work.
My favorite childhood hay harvest memory is that of working with a man who grew up with my dad.
Alex Mons.
Dad hired the 37-year-old Alex in 1968 because he needed a job and Dad needed someone dependable. Alex was told his job would only be a temporary one until some much-needed catch-up work was accomplished on the farm.
Alex Mons’s temporary job would last 30 years until his retirement in 1998.
Alex grew up in the North Bottoms of Lincoln and lived at 1022 New Hampshire, just a few blocks from Dad. He and Dad graduated from Lincoln High in 1948. Alex entered the U.S. Army during the Korean War. An ulcer forced him to be discharged after six months of military service. Alex, who smoked Chesterfield cigarettes and drank Dr. Pepper by the gallon, had a charismatic personality. His interactions with his fellow man were usually enthusiastic. He had a contagious laugh and appeared to like everyone in which he came in contact. Alex loved to sing aloud tunes from the 1940s and 1950s. It took him several days, but he managed to teach me the lyrics to the 1958 song “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” made famous by Johnny Cash. Alex often shared with me stories of his childhood, which he referred to as “The Brown Shoe Days.”
Alex never drove any of the farm equipment. He was content to stack hay, build fence, and paint, paint, and paint some more.
Like my own father, Alex was quite the teaser and often told me the fallacy that his body was falling apart because he suffered from diphtheria as a child, which was untrue. In addition to his colorful personality, Alex often offered sound advice. Whenever I would complain about the trials of childhood and tell him I wished I were an adult, Alex would reply, “Don’t wish your life away, kiddo. It’ll go by fast enough.”
I marveled at some of the reminiscing he and Dad shared about their childhoods, and I’m sure some of their juicier stories were never told within earshot of me.
Alex lived four blocks north of Memorial Stadium and wasn’t shy about making a few bucks on football Saturdays by charging people to park their cars in his back yard.
I loved listening to his 1950s recollections of Memorial Stadium, a time when the facility only had seating on the east and west sides of the field. Alex often told me the story of the 1959 NU upset of Oklahoma and how the fans tore the steel goal posts down and paraded them around downtown Lincoln. Alex and Dad were the first people to inform me that those goal posts were cut into small pieces and sold as souvenirs. Nebraska football history books have documented the two men’s 1959 recollection to be precise.
Since his sister lived in Iowa, Alex proclaimed the Iowa State Cyclones as NU’s chief rival. He often would sing “Go Big Red, Go – Beat Iowa State” to the tune of “Hail Varsity.”
When I attended Nebraska football games while I was in high school, I would usually stop and pay Alex a visit before I drove home. He often would take me out to eat at Denny’s restaurant, located just southwest of Memorial Stadium, and we would talk about the day’s game.
During the summer of 1977, I had a date with one of my high school classmates named Cindy. Cindy and I viewed the movie Rocky, and then paid Alex a visit. Cindy was a very pretty girl and I wanted to “show her off” to Alex.” Shortly after I introduced Alex to Cindy, Alex retrieved a shoebox filled with cards and letters he had saved over the years. One of the cards was a homemade birthday card I had sent Alex for his 40th birthday in 1971. I wrote in the card that I believed Alex would live a long and happy life if he continued to stay away from women. This ornery, yet lovable, bachelor made me squirm from one side of my chair to the other, but Cindy got a charge out of Alex’s sense of humor, as I figured she would.
Alex died on February 9, 2007, in Lincoln. He was 76 years old. Alex is buried in Lincoln’s Wyuka Cemetery. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen Alex since 1978, when I was a student at the University of Nebraska. But he remains forever embedded in my mind as one of the more positive influences in my life.
Every child should be as fortunate as I was to grow up with an Alex Mons hanging around the farm.
Or, at the very least, have an Alex who will toss hay bales with you.