Love Lost, Tractor Skills Gained

—03.01.2000—

Some photos arrived yesterday from my friend Sylvie’s wedding. They took their time getting here having left Los Angeles last October. I believe they took the scenic route, stopping first in San Francisco before making the trip across the Atlantic. The shots themselves are gorgeous, beautifully clear. Sylvie looks like a film star wrapped in a thin shawl, tied in front in a loose knot, the excess of which drapes and flows away to grand effect. She looks stunning, as if from another time, vaguely sixties, not retro, just timeless. Her new husband, Alain, stands beside her, the dapper groom. They both smile broadly.  

The two photos of Beth and I grip me even more. We’re standing at the edge of the Northern California coast. The sea below and the sun behind create a glowing, horizonless background that forms dual halos behind our heads. She’s beaming as wide as her smile will go, engaging the viewer. I’m holding her hand and looking elsewhere.

In the second shot her wide-collared shirt billows out in the breeze behind her, transparent as a veil, showing the strappy top she wears underneath. Her arm emerges from its sleeve. Her hand gently rests in mine. She’s leaning up to kiss me, arching her head back, neck long, her hair up and held in place with two wooden cocktail sticks. One stray lock curls itself behind her ear. Her eyes are closed and there’s a thin, sly, expectant smile on her face. Her body speaks of poise, pleasure, and grace. I stand there facing her like a two-by-four, head canted to one side, face neutral and looking at the camera out of the corner of my eye. South America’s rough outline is momentarily caught in the sky between us, our lips separated by the Panama Canal.

That was last August.

Seeing those photos, taken six months ago, now for the first time on this little island startles me. I’m ashamed at the way I appear: so unengaged, so distant, so teflon. I can see the love in her eyes and the averted ambiguity in mine. Awful. I led her by the hand for a solid year.

After a while our relationship fell through (or I broke it), though we still kept communication lines (and later, bedroom doors) open. Now she just passes through while I sleep. I’m not sure why. Maybe because, even as I wasn’t fully present with her, she meant a great deal to me. Maybe because, even though I didn’t have a full awareness of my needs, which presented in me as ambiguity, I loved her. Maybe it’s because she represents the closest I’ve come to a lasting relationship.

——

The life I left back in San Francisco has been dropping in over the last few days. Both of my smitten roommates may be moving in with their respective flames, which leaves me with some decisions to make about the flat.

A client called as well with a web design project for some software association. I should be happy for the work but as he spoke I could feel the life oozing out of me through my socks. By the end of the conversation my head felt thick and heavy. It just occurred to me that I’m more unenthused about my work life than I ever was about my romantic one. I really must make some changes. I’ve been considering staying here for awhile but I think it’s important that I get on with doing something that I love as soon as possible. For now I think that’s going to happen in the city.

Having said that, working on the gig shed has been really satisfying as a temporary respite from the design-meets-marketing world. For one, the sense of permanence is amazing. The stuff I did for a major athletic shoe manufacturer’s website lasted three months. The gig shed will surely be around another hundred years. Another perk is the lack of any client asking us half way through to please build it out of sandstone instead of granite because that will be more in line with their brand message. Nor is anyone going to ask us to start working around the clock because their V.P. wants to present the gig shed at a Las Vegas trade show at the end of the month.

I suppose every job comes with some sticky bits though. In this case Jon has to navigate English Heritage, the Duchy, and a few grant forms, in order to get planning approval and raise some cash. Me though, I just slop through muddy trenches, lift stones, drive the tractor, and dig, as always. I have to say that I’ve been doing so much digging that it’s turned into a meditative act: the repetitive sound of the spade hitting the soil, the weight of the earth in my hands, the weight of it leaving them.

I went without it for a few days and found myself really craving a good dig. The same thing goes for breaking rocks. There’s something so satisfying about swinging a sledgehammer with all of your might. So therapeutic.

I’m finding tractor driving to be an amazing new skill. Jon has been kind enough to give me lessons on their old Massey-Ferguson, a tractor they’ve owned for decades. Looking through the old Ross family album reveals a faded black-and-white photo showing the family standing next to the shiny new machine when it first arrived at the farm in the late 1950s. Today I can only describe it as well worn—it’s been in continuous service since the day it got here.

During some of my tractor driving lessons I noticed Hans looking on with concern from the kitchen window. I guess I can’t blame him. I can imagine that the thought of me potentially riding rough with the old mule would be cause for consternation. Not that I would. I certainly wouldn’t want to injure a faithful family friend, much less one that they depend on every day.

The old tractor has grown frail with age. Just a couple of weeks ago one of the rear wheels, suffering for years with a relentless case of rust, and straining under the weight of a full pallet of granite blocks, gave up and collapsed. So, as it happened, I got an additional lesson in rusty tractor lug nut removal (required tools: WD-40, cold chisel, mallet, blow torch).

One of Jon’s first words of warning about tractor piloting was navigation. “You’ve got to be careful of where you’re going because, if you hit a stone wall, you won’t just stall like you would in a car. In a tractor you’ve got so much torque you’ll just go through.”

After a few somber nods and a several practice runs, I started getting the hang of things. Today was my first solo mission. The plan was simple: take the tractor up to the spot where we’d been digging ram*, fill a bin full, and bring it down to the gig shed building site. This involved lots of driving through fields, temporarily pulling down electric fences, reversing through hedges and over flowers. I think all of that is in the test later on, if you want to get the “T Class” stamp on your license.

After I’d finished, I got back on the tractor, lowered the forks, backed them under the bin and lifted it up. There was quite a bit of weight hanging off the back end now and the front wheels tracked lightly and absent mindedly, gently skipping in long, shallow arcs over the grass. The brake pedal on these tractors is divided into two parts so that you can brake with either the left rear wheel, right rear, or both. Front brakes aren’t even part of the package. Coming back through the hedge I steered left but found that the front wheels, blissfully unaware of their role in the steering process, slid happily onwards. To compensate I gently stepped on the left brake and the huge wheel began to drag as we chug-chugged through the turn and back up the field.

Another interesting tractor fact: you can run through all three gears in low-range or in high. I was in low-range toting this bin. Speed-wise that meant funeral pace, slower than walking. A 96-year-old man with a cane and slippers would have been faster than I was going. I decided to shift up a gear but as a consequence of the hill, and the weight, I just ended up doing the world’s slowest wheelie and almost losing my load. Quickly I shifted back down into granny gear for the slow trudge up the slope. And so I went, a one-vehicle construction procession, all the way down to the gig shed.

The other big test involved stacking some pallets onto the back of the tractor, loading them with a massive granite block, and me squeezing the tractor back into the gig shed, right along the newly-completed wall, and lifting the block into position so that Jon and Hans could roll it into place. It went like this:

“Ok! Back! Back! (chugga-chugga-chugga) Little more! No!! Whoa!!! Whoa!!! Too far!!!  Pull it out and come back in again but further away from the wall, then turn!”

“You want me further away from the wall!?” (chugga-ch-chugga-ch-chugga)

“Yeah, come back in a bit further away and then swing the tail around!!” (chugga-chugga) And then some comments I couldn’t hear, followed by smiles.

I started to sweat a bit, throttled up the tractor (chuga-chug-chug-chug) and tried again.

“Ok! Back! Good! Good! Little more! Little more! (chug-chug-chug) Can you come back any more?!”

“The wheel’s stuck on a rock!” And my leg was cramping up from the strain of balancing the heavy clutch.

“Alright! Swing it around with the turning brake and raise the palette a little more!! (chug-chugga-chugga) All right!! Right there!! Whoa!!!”

I put it in neutral, set the brake and hopped off, slightly relieved but happy to be given such intensive tractor driving duties so early in my career. I felt just like the little kid in the Genesis community story who was peeling potatoes, “I’m working, right guys?”

*Ram is decomposed granite. Its consistency is similar to clay.