Riding With Sundance and Blackbart

(upbeat music) Hi again everybody, welcome back to the MilesPath cast, the flagship podcast of Harvest. It's back, it started, my brother's going, dad's going, everyone's going, like there's, I was driving between Garfield and Spokane the other day, and there's already several fields that were cut. Like we're there, like everything is gold, it's beautiful, the lentils aren't quite ready yet, but the wheat's there, and it's bittersweet for me, 'cause I love Harvest, but I'm not there, and I would love to be their driving truck, and to be doing the whole thing, to be a part of that, it's just not in the cards right now, but it's still cool knowing it's going on, and seeing the pictures kind of live and buy a carry sleigh through that, it's something I've always loved, and this whole podcast is actually gonna be kind of dedicated to Harvest, it's all got the Harvest spin to it. So to kind of redo, I just said, the flagship podcast of CBNames, or call names on the radio. During Harvest, like everyone's got the little radios, the little handheld radios in there, their trucks and their combines, and it's always tuned to station 19, if you're in a truck driving on the highway, 'cause that's where all the trucks are at, it's tuned to 37, channel 37, if you're in the field, and all of the older guys all have call names, like they're kind of like Twitter handles from decades and decades ago. None of the younger kids ever got 'em, none of my generation ever got the names, but all the generation up did. Like dads always been Sundance, which is funny 'cause that's a name that's really followed me, because back at the very, very early days of the internet, he made a hot mail account called, it was Sundance P56 at hotmail.com, I kind of just took that over, and that's always, now it still follows me and I log into different things. So dads of Sundance, grandpa was always black part, and then there was also T.P. Creeper, Old Man from the Mountain, Country Boy, Foghorn, I.Dott, there's Jeronimo and Coachies and Ghost Rider, all of these names are like the names that people would go by and still go by. Like if you're out in the field and you've got a radio and two into 37, you're gonna hear these names, and it's awesome. I don't know why the younger kids never got it, but it's just all of these, the original Twitter handles, say the least. And there's also like the ones, all like the kind of the homesteads would have 'em, so like it's the mobile one, mobile two, and back in the day when there was no cell phones, and especially when you're out in the field, and you might need something or God forbid, there's a fire, like you've got to be able to get ahold of people. So like Graham always had to run in her house and all the others did as well, and it was cool. It was an old network and it's in the network that still exists and is still incredibly important. Like if you're driving truck and you're going up a dirt road like to get to the field, it is so important that you've got a system down to everybody else that, like they know like on the dirt road, head into the field or on the dirt road, heading out, because if you meet a truck at a hill, it's disaster on a single lane dirt road, it's so important to have those things, and especially where there might not be a whole lot of cell service to be able to communicate with people, absolutely critical. All right, today on the show, more harvest stuff. Tell me something good. I got my two kind of all-encompassing harvest memories I got to talk about. I owe you one. It's for everyone. Everyone who has helped me. And man, there's a lot of people through harvest, and then Sean's, what are you into? Like a grab bag of all my favorite things about harvest, or tons of different things about harvest anyways. So tell me something good. This is like kind of two full-blown, like patronus level memories that just, that sum it all up. So right now, and as of the last, I don't know, probably 10 years at least, somewhere in there, we're at the point where like there's, the combine's just so big that it makes more sense, and we've got enough trailers that like when you're driving a truck, you've got a truck and you've got your trailer, you get filled up by the combine, you drive all the way down to the point like where you're essentially gonna sell it or slash store it. And this might be down at the river, it might be down in dusty, going through Kulfak's, down to dusty and you're dumping there. And it's cool. It's a lot more highway time, and the trips are a lot longer. So whereas before you might have got, I don't know, maybe like 15 loads a day, now you're only getting like four or five. But again, it's longer trips, you're more on the highway. It's got sprozen scones. And I think a lot of people prefer that, especially the guys that would otherwise have to haul these all this week later from the graham bins down to the river in November, December when it's snowing. That was never my thing. So I always loved way back when my first started driving truck. This would have been like 2006 through, I don't know, probably the early 2010s. I love just hauling straight to the graham bins. So these are just like, I don't know, so people call them silos. It might be an elevator, depending on where you're at, if you're at paringers or farming tin or fannings. But these are just graham bins, they're just kind of spread throughout the different farms and the, the combines with harbors the wheat. You dump in the truck, there's no trailer, you're sure truck and then you drive to the graham bins, you back up against like a railroad tie, you raise your hoist, dump the wheat into like this, this auger that's run by a tractor, it puts it in the graham bin, and you drive back. And you do this over and over and over again. Loads were like every 10 to 15 minutes, there was three trucks, you're getting a load more or less once every 45 minutes to an hour. And I love that. I loved just being able to like, you're driving a lot more dirt roads, you're driving to these little graham bins, you're more on your own, you're always getting, there's always other people like when you go to the graham bins and the elevators of, you know, when you're selling the wheat directly down to the river. But I loved just, maybe the wrong word for it, but like the solitude of just driving to a graham bin, you back up against it, you dump your wheat and you head on back. That was always my favorite. And like the memories that really kind of summed this all up. I mean, imagine it's like, let's say 2007, 2008, it's late August, probably around 6 p.m., several miles north of Colfax. There's this place that we call Linshrum's. And there's a couple of graham bins there. And I can just picture it so clearly, back and up to these on against the road tie. You drive over this dirt so much, it just becomes powder. So you kind of jump out of the truck into the dust, you go raise your hoist, you open it with the back, and you're just kind of standing there as the wheat goes out. You're hoping the elevator isn't plug, or the algorithm plug for who knows why. You're making sure you're not dumb and too fast, too slow. But just standing there as a sun starting to go down, it smells of chaff and dust. And there's like the sunlight that's kind of sinking over the hill. It's like it's going through like the graham bins and like just shafts of golden light. It's getting a little bit cooler. You got a flannel in the truck, but you might not need it quite yet. You can hear like the Mariners game going in the truck. It's I can picture these moments so clearly, whether it's at Lindstroms or Sotterbergs or at the Rock Pit, I love these times. Again, sun starting to go down, it's late harvest, you just you dump in your truck, it's just you there. And it just it, I know I wish I could explain it better, because it sounds like such a chore. Like, oh, your job is just to go drive truck, you go, we're gonna go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And you're just gonna sit there. And it sounds so boring, but man, it's so special. And especially like way back when just going to the, just going to the graham bins. It's just like such an old fashioned, farming American type thing. Probably one of the same reasons why I love picking up a, it's just like that classic farming thing. And I love just being able to go out and drive truck. There's a rascal flat song called Take Me There. And there's a line where it's something like, tell me about your summer nights where you spent without a care. Like for me when I think of that, when I hear that song, it was me standing there at the truck that's backed up, dumping wheat, it's warm, it's dusty, that he's almost done, I love those times. I loved it. And you know, he doesn't happen anymore, 'cause we're going down to the river. And that's, it's still fun to drive on the trucks and the highways. I'll talk about that more in a minute, but going to the graham bins, it just was cool. I loved it. And then like the other like big, big memory for me is going even further back. What kind of started it all? Riding the combines. We always ride with grandpa, ride with dad. It seemed like by default, I would always go with grandpa and get it with dad more often than not. But I can still just like picture sitting there in that little, that little co-pilot seat. Like it's, it's just this little tiny square section in the old 2388s. And again, you're sitting there. Grandpa, he tended to listen to like more like classic country. So it's like, he used like Johnny Cash. But every now and then he'd be on it and he'd flip over to the Mariners game when it got late enough. I was always kind of jealous of Garrett, it was with dad. And like they were listening to Mariners games and it's just, oh, we're still listening to Johnny Cash. But just sitting there and that, sitting there is like again, the sun's going down. Everything is just gold because there's dust in the air. It just looks beautiful. And you know, grandpa's just driving around. I'd give anything to go out for like one more load of that. Just, again, it's all we do is we just sit in the combine. And we might have a book, maybe you have your game boy, but I don't feel like I had that more. I just remember sitting there and just enjoying riding the combine. Who wouldn't? Like those things look so cool. And they've come in really long ways. But just sitting there with grandpa and I remember every now and then he has lunch box. Like this old fashioned, just black lunch box. With the most classic lunch box, you can picture in your head. And in one half of it, it's just giant thermos full of tea that he drink all day. And the other half is the lunch that grandma would make him. And every now and then grandma would like add cookies. 'Cause if she knew that Garrett and I were gonna watch ride, like she'd throw in some cookies and I was more like sitting there and he looked down his lunch box and said, "I got a cookie in there for you." Or there's something in there for you. And it was just the best. 'Cause then you get the cookies. And if you're really lucky, maybe you eat them both and Garrett would never know about it. But I just riding out there, it was the best. And we'd switch. Like sometimes we'd dump and I'd go right to dad and get Garrett would ride with grandpa. But I don't know, I just picture. Like you're all in up doing that every single year. We look forward to every harvest. 'Cause it's so special every year. It's like you're looking forward to it. Is that fifth season of the year? Summer's over. Like right now, it's July 30th. Is that record this? To me, like summer is over. Like the late days are really more or less It's done. Now it's the, what, third season of the year between summer and fall, it's harvest. And that's kind of where we're at. You spend it in the fields and the dust and the dirt and the heat, and man, it's special. And it still is. I'm hoping to get down there this weekend. That's what I think about. The old days of driving the truck, going to the elevator back and forth, we would always keep track of our dumps like on the old Nokia phones. Because again, this is way before smartphones. Way before you'd any ability to even touch the screen of your phone. It was like one of those old-fashioned Nokia's like we would just like track our dumps and see how many each year we would get, whether it'd be like 200 to 300 dumps. And we just track them on those old things. And, oh man, those are the days. Those are the days we're just driving around, driving truck. 'Cause it is as fun as it looks. Like driving those giant semis, it's fun driving to the trailer, even more so without. You just going around the dirt roads, ah, those are the days. All right, the IO you want. (upbeat music) ♪ You know who you are ♪ ♪ Yeah, who you want ♪ Everdee's helped me during harvest. Because lower nose, especially in the early days, and more or less probably the entire time. Guess what, I made my fair share of mistakes. Like one of the most prominent ones that I remember. And the IO you want is for all the people that helped me and build me out of these situations or helped me like every now and then, like you've got your AC in your truck, we were very lucky. 'Cause I've heard of their stories. We had radios in our trucks, like actual like AMFM radios, we had air conditioning. But every now and then that air conditioning would quit. And one of the guys, whether it was Logan, Ryan, Darin, Josh, all those guys helped me out so many times. But like charging the AC at night, or adding more free onto whatever it may be, you wouldn't sit and just sheen it on sheen it on sheen of sweat. Because man, when you're on dirt roads and you gotta roll those windows up, it gets hot. Believe it or not. But one of the earliest ones I remember is again, you back up to these railroad ties to then you erase your hoist and dump the wheat like into this little, this hopper essentially that this algorithm then hauled, like pull the wheat up and jump it in the grain bin. And I remember I was going too fast or I wasn't aware and jumped straight over that railroad tie. The back of the truck went straight into this chute that the auger's in and dented it at the point where the auger couldn't spin anymore 'cause there's, oh, guess what, a dent there. And Logan, Ryan came out and they welded around it and took that chunk out and put in a flat piece or hammered it flat, whatever it may have been back in the day and fixed it. Or the times that the elevator would plug or the auger would plug is the worst. Like all of a sudden the thing slows to a stopance because you were going and you're dumping too much wheat in it or there was one time where it wasn't my fault. And like some, something had broke up in it and they were out there with the welder and fixing it and I mean those guys could fix anything but there was on a truck or a auger or it bailing me out of different situations. Like every now and then you'd get you get your truck filled in the field with wheat and you might have the trailer you might not and you got to pull yourself out of like a giant hole, like going up the hill and there were times where the ground was a little bit softer especially in the spring wheat and the truck spinning out and you can't turn, you're going to jackknife it, you might roll it and you're sweating bullets and shaking because holy smokes, what are you going to do? Throw the parking brake on, one of those guys would come out and somehow get the truck up the hill or turn and get out of it and then go a different direction. But I just think of all this times and man oh man. I like I said, I made my fair share of mistakes and they were always there to bail me out and yeah, but there was many, many of those times that would happen. What else? What else? I think I mentioned everything. I just, it's harvest. Like you're out there for 30 days. There's a lot of stuff that's going to happen in that period of time whether it's something happening with the truck or the auger or the combine or at one point there was a fire that could have gone so much worse. I talked about that in a podcast really early on. Hang on. Episode 12. Nope, episode 16. I talked about there's a giant fire that could have got, could have got away as like up by Farmington and I just was looking at the pictures and the videos of that. Like when a fire starts in one of those deals, it's scary as heck. But like that kind of thing happens. I remember a time in harvest where I still have nightmares about it. The, I was driving on a corner and there was a motorcycle that just stopped dead in the road. You're going down a hill, trucks full of wheat. You weigh a ton and there's combines coming. And I, I had to like weave in between this motorcycle who was just stopped, still can't figure out why. And these combines and I thought I'd, I thought I'd killed the guy for the longest time. Like, it's just scary, scary thoughts to go through your head. I saved a life once, saved a life, Garrett, Garrett helped with that, jumped into a moving vehicle, slammed on the brakes in time to get him out of the way. Just, it's crazy. It's so much stuff will happen in that period of time and it's, man, it's fun though. Love, love harvest. Last but not least, Sean's what are you into? - All right, listeners, it's time for hidden passions, wild hobbies and that one thing they didn't know miles was obsessed with. Buckle up, it's time for Sean's, what are you into? - I, I alluded to it before. Like this is gonna be a whole bunch of like little things and the first thing is just, just riding those combines. Like you, you see them, they're the big red things or maybe it's green or yellow, but just riding in those, it's still fun. And it's still fun to take the girls down to that and, and driving the trucks as well. It's, they're, everybody's fun as they look to drive. They're all manual transmissions, which makes it so much more fun. We were taught very early on how to drive without using a clutch and especially, like every truck got its own like little pattern, its own little signature of like how it shifts into different gears, like a different RPM thresholds. And I just, I remember getting so used and so comfortable to the fact that we knew exactly how to shift that truck straight into gear. Wouldn't rattle anything, you know, just slide stride in like, straight in like butter, especially with my, my favorite truck, the great truck with the green stripe, which is grandpa's truck, which the one year that I didn't drive it, like there's a year I didn't drive and somebody else rolled it, which is super sad. And then driving the green truck or the yellow truck or the great truck, he's get so used to it and it just becomes awesome. And it's so much fun to drive those things. Like I said, most fun to drive it down to the grain bins, but also fun to drive it on the highways, down to the river. And it's just, it's awesome, loved that. Also, the beer breaks, especially like this is even like way back even before we were at drinking age. But like riding in the combines with grandpa and dad and like seeing Elmer and Cleve, two older guys that weren't driving, combined anymore, like drive over the hill, they're bringing out the cooler. It was also filled with like with pop and they'd have like pickled pickles and pickled beans and pickled eggs and chips. And it was just fun, like everyone would stop at five o'clock. They still do it. Everyone stops at five o'clock for half an hour and it's beer break, that final break before the end of the push to the end of the day. Ah, still, right? It's just one of those classic traditions that will live on forever. There was an interview once where I was, right after I graduated with my degree in finance, I was interviewing for banks and I realized I didn't want to do that anymore, just kind of wasted the whole education of it and they asked me about a mistake I made on a job. Like again, this is like a fancy bank you're all dressed up and I told them about how I forgot the cooler for beer break. I think that was the end of that interview 'cause I was throwing it at that point, didn't want it. Anyways, spare time in all the fields, like I got through all the Game of Thrones books during one harvest when I wasn't gonna drive it for lentils because it's a lot slower when you're doing lentils and just being a little sit out there and you might go an hour without getting a load and just I'm just plowing through all those books and loving it. The show's great, but the book's so much better. Always moving from field to field was one of my favorites as a kid. Like again, right with Grandpa and Dad, if you were there, like when they were gonna move on the road, it was awesome. Not nearly as much fun as when we were driving truck late later on, like you always try to avoid that load because it's take forever and it was a little slow, but man as a kid, those were so special. Driving the dirt roads, love driving the dirt roads. I talked about that. My favorite one is a stern road that goes from Sauna Burg's down to Elpertin. I also love the one from Dry Creek out to Peringer Road. I mean, just driving those things, it's great. Except for when they get very, very rudded, there is a threshold where it's no longer as fun. As it usually is, but I love dirt roads. At the end of the day, if we were at SDKs, out of grandma's, we'd always stop for salty dogs at, and grandma would be there and she'd make them and everyone would stop and go into her house and have salty dogs, which is a drink made with, oh, man, I should have known. Vodka and grapefruit juice, I think. I don't know, whatever it was, I remember it being really, really good, loving that, especially like even, but you know, we did that so many years. Even before we could drink, it was fun just like going out there and being with everybody is that what's happening. Early on, when Garfield still had a grocery store, sometimes somebody would stop and bring out donuts in the morning, maple bars, as good as it got, the views of being out there in the fields. Like it is so, so freaking pretty. And maybe that's just a me thing, maybe other people would think, oh, it's just feels like that's boring, but especially being up at Farmington, when you can look over the whole county or at the Curtis place, when you can see the Albertan draw, or anywhere you can see a septo butte and you're kind of high up, it's just, it's beautiful out there with the whole county just kind of turning gold and you see the combines and the dust, it's so pretty. I was always feeling people could come up to ride, I think of several times like where Dakota would come up to ride or Carly and Travis or Sean came out once and those were always fun because like it's, again, I'm struggling like to convey why it was so awesome and why it is so awesome, why it's so special and that was kind of our chance to share it with people, like just the whole idea of what harvest was and how great it was and I don't know, there's just something about it. Listening to the radio, like those back in the day, again, this is really before smartphones, you'd hear every song so often, you'd be the king of name that tune and you'd always have it programmed to all the different stations, you could flip through really quick and find the song that you wanna hear, listen to the Mariners games, I remember hearing Felix's perfect game, I remember exactly where I was at in the truck, out at the rock pit, I just finished dumping, through his perfect game, several, many, many years ago, you just, you fallen up with the radio and that's probably why I love it quite frankly so much, we would just spend so much time, so much time listening. 'Cause the hour's out there, I mean, you're out there from 6 a.m. to sometimes like 8 p.m., like 12, 14. I think my record is like 15 and a half hours of just being out there. And again, you're out there every day. Like there's no weekends in lesser rains, which is pretty rare, but I mean, you get 40 hour, you're 40 hour a week by Tuesday noon and you're still going, you're only a third of the way through the week. But you love that. Like that sounds exhausting, but I remember loving that as well. The guys all had like their own social network out there. Even before social media was even a thing. Like if something happened to one farmer and somewhere in Whitman County or even in Adams County or anywhere like in Eastern Washington more or less, you'd give it a day and every single person knows about it. 'Cause they've got nothing out there to do, but talk and it just spreads so quickly. Like you'd hear the stories of the truck that rolled over or a combine that rolled over or somebody who had their axle broke on the road and there's weed everywhere, just things like that would happen and you can bet every single person knows about that. Immediately, it's a very well-connected network of all the farmers down there. I mean, I don't know, at harvest it was just, and I just keep saying it was because I live like in my memories of those things, but it is, it's so special. We look forward to it all year. It's like that final time where you've worked so hard, you've grown on all the crops and you're reaping them, you're harvesting them and it's like a team effort. Like everyone's out there. There's a whole bunch of guys out there driving the trucks and the combines and sometimes the bank out wagons. Ah, it's cool. I remember just loving those times and cherishing them and especially like in college, like dreading when WSU was starting in the early August 'cause then you're all sudden having to drive back and forth but harvest is great, whether it's riding the combine with grandpa and dad or driving truck or driving truck down to the river. Great, great time. And I can't wait to get the girls down there. I can't wait just to go and ride. It's so simple but so special. Anyways, thank you all for listening to that. My trip down memory lane, back to normal podcasts next week but I had to do one on harvest just to kind of capture everything and try and vein to portray how great and how much I love it and still do to this day. And hopefully some, at some point I'll be able to take a decent amount of time off probably not this year but just go back and drive truck. I think it all days. But thank you all for listening. Gabby's sound bite on the way out and we'll talk to y'all on the flip side. Talk to you all next time. Bye. What is it, Gams? - KJR pick up. - My pick up? - Yeah. - Yeah, that's right. It's a pick up, huh? - We're gonna. - Back at your side, your pick up. - Is that my pick up outside? - Yeah.