Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [76]
Then, for no particular reason that I could discern, a young man approached me. He was clean cut and wore khakis and a shiny new belt. I was standing off to the side, minding my own business, when he loudly asked me what kind of music I liked. The room fell silent as his friends paused from their conversations and strained to hear my answer. After stuttering a bit, not used to such a question, I stammered that I liked Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” a popular, then-current, completely rollicking but generally senseless rock song.
Shocked silence ensued. Gasps were hastily stifled. Several lovely young Mennonite ladies paled and cast startled glances at each other, struggling to cover their dismay. You could have cut the disdain with a knife. The young man smiled patronizingly. And that was the end of the conversation, since I obviously had nothing edifying to contribute. To this day, I’m still not sure whether he was trying to trap me or embarrass me or was just having a benevolent conversation with an obvious misfit.
Then everyone recovered and smiled again. A healthy glow returned to the wan faces of the shocked young ladies. I hunched down, chastised. Just leave me alone. Later, I overheard the clean-cut young man comment that he would like to see Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, a very “in” movie among Hollywood’s cultural elites. His friends somberly nodded that they would like to see it too. I said nothing, but I thought to myself that I probably would not want to see that particular movie, just because it impressed them so much. And I never did.
Dean and I headed out again early Monday morning, driving northwest. Destination: Montana. I’d never been through this area of the country before. It was vast, open, and breathtaking. Dean and I took turns driving and pushed on through until we arrived.
He was an old hand at this. He’d worked the wheat harvest several times before and had all the necessary contacts. He was confident he could land me a job, even though I had no experience with motorized field equipment. Eventually, we arrived in Great Falls, Montana, and left the interstate for the dusty roads that led into the country, surrounded on all sides by tens of thousands of acres of golden, rolling wheat fields.
And then we arrived at the Rossmiller family farm, a cluster of buildings dwarfed by the open countryside. There, Ben Walters and his harvesting crew awaited us. Ben, a tall, dark-haired man with a no-nonsense gaze, and his wife, Donna, were from Magrath, Alberta. They traveled south into the States every year with a huge convoy of equipment and machines and worked their way back north toward home, harvesting wheat for grain farmers. Eventually they ended up back in Canada, where Ben and his brother farmed around ten thousand acres.
Dean and Ben greeted each other like old friends who had worked together many times through the years. Then Dean introduced me. Ben looked me up and down and seemed a trifle grim. I was the perfect picture of a wild Amish guy—twenty-four years old, with curly black hair that fell down to my shoulders. I shook Ben’s hand and looked him in the eye. He launched a few curt questions: “Where are you from?” Fresh off an Amish farm in Iowa. “Have you ever driven a combine?” Nope. Never driven much of anything with an engine, except a car. But I can learn. I can ride with Dean for a day or two. I’m capable.
None of the questions were personal in nature. My problems were of no concern to him. Only one thing mattered. Could I perform the work if he hired me?
And for some reason, probably because he trusted Dean, or maybe because he desperately needed help, Ben Walters hired me on the spot. Five bucks an hour. Flat rate, no overtime pay. And room and board. I was hugely relieved.
On the wheat harvest, there is little opportunity to spend money. All you do is work, sleep, and eat, day after day. This meant my wages would sit idle and accumulate until the harvest was over.
Ben had four harvesting machines, combines, they called them. Massive hulks of fabricated steel on