The day finally arrived for us to begin working the much-ballyhooed Montana Sugar Beet Harvest. Though the Piler Sites where folks like us work are spread out all over northeastern Montana, North Dakota, and into Minnesota, our Piler Site was in Glendive, MT. Glendive is located on the banks of the Yellowstone River, not very far south of the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. So, the area is full of history. Lewis and Clark, Colter, and a host of other trappers and explores plied the region and the river seeking beaver, trading opportunities with the natives, minerals, and ranching opportunities. I don’t think much has changed since those times in the vast majority of this area. It’s open, relatively flat, and unpopulated. It’s bitter cold in the winter and blazing hot and dry in the summer. Glendive itself is perched on the edge of Hell Creek and the Makasheka State Park. These are amazing sandstone hills and small mountains that are, in effect, badlands. Dinosaur bones are pulled from the ground every so often here. Driving into North Dakota about 40 miles you arrive at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, a slightly visited badland monument to the man himself as he ranched here for several years after his wife and mother passed away on the same day in New York. If you need to get away from everything, this is your place.
Our campsite was a somewhat suitable site next to a huge railroad yard and we settled in. Noisy with trains it was. But, after all, it was going to be free to us, so how much complaining could we offer? We bounced around the camp and met all our co-workers, and for the most part, they were great people to work with. Almost all of them were veterans of the beet harvest and they gave us their perspectives, warnings, as well as reassurances on the work itself.
We were scheduled to start work on the 23rd of September, but the weather was not cooperating. Recent storms left the fields too muddy to get the harvesting equipment working. We sat for several days waiting for the ok to start work, when finally it came around the 1st of October. Throughout our stay we had several interruptions to our work schedule due to rain, snow, sleet, or just plain cold weather. The good thing was we were paid four hours on the days we did not work. The pay here is pretty good and it kind of has to be in order to get people to work here. The local townspeople won’t do it. It’s just too cold, muddy, dusty, windy, and at times dangerous. But, we were there to make money and to experience migrant work. I really wanted to experience that. I’d never done it before and I wanted to know just how challenging it was.
The work itself was not overly hard physically. The most difficult part was the long hours...12 hours on your feet followed by an hour and a half of cleaning the piler. You started your day in the dark and ended your day in the dark. Stunning daybreaks and sunsets relieved some of the boredom. The wind was ever-present and was a huge nuisance. When it was dry it blew dust everywhere and you needed to where a bandana to breathe. When it was cold or raining it dropped the effective temperature you felt by 10-15 degrees. The wind never let up, ever. Even using hand warmers in our gloves and on our feet, we never really got them to warm up. Layers of clothes were the order of the day, every day. Peeling them off and adding them back on was a sometimes ritual in itself.
One of the frustrating aspects of this site and this job was the fact that one of the pilers kept breaking down. It must have been held together with duct tape. It was broken more often than it was working. That would force the delivery trucks that usually dumped their beets there to have to get in line at our station. I counted 24 trucks waiting in line at our piler one day. That’s a bad situation for the drivers who get paid by the delivery. It makes for a tense environment. Drivers are irritable if not downright mad. The workers are trying to move the trucks through as quickly as possible without sacrificing safety too much. There’s no break in the action all day, though we got 15 minute breaks every 3 or 4 hours.
My job was running the piler and I enjoyed it. It requires a lot of focus and the ability to react to situations involving very large trucks, tons of beets, and a massive mechanical piler. I’d never operated heavy machinery like this before and it was, for the most part, challenging and a weird sense of exciting...at first. Diane worked on the ground taking samples, raking up fallen beets, taking the temperature of the beets in some of the trucks, and generally working as a laborer. She was hit 5 times by flying beets shooting off the piler. These are not your garden variety little red beets you buy in the stores. These are massive white sugar beets, the pride of industrialized farming, sometimes weighing in at 10 to 15 pounds each. Through it all, Diane was a trooper and worked as hard or harder than a lot of the folks there, younger than us to boot.
The thing that will make or break the Sugar beet harvest, as it will any work group, is the team itself. We had a really good team of folks. They tried to help Diane and me in the beginning when we needed assistance learning the various jobs. The team always jumped in when someone needed help. If there was a beet spill, it was always all hands on deck...no loafers, no goof-offs in the whole lot. Our foreman was a good one, too. He had a good sense of humor but would let you know if you were messing up or getting a little too dangerous in your work by not paying attention to some detail. When you are working on the piler bridge, so to speak, team work was essential. Coordinating the tasks with the trucks was paramount to avoiding chaos and dangerous situations where someone or some equipment could get damaged. I had the best partner in a woman named, Jan, who taught me the entire routine. We worked together like clockwork. She was patient with my mistakes as well. Most of those who’ve been there for several seasons say the same thing,” When the season is over I swear I’ll never come back, but then I get those paychecks and time erases my memory of some of the hardships and I find myself back here in September.” As for myself, I can see doing it again...maybe. As for Diane, trooper as she was through it all, not so much.
Heading out of Montana along the North Dakota border, we pushed south into Rapid City. Diane needed to get her SD driver's license and we wanted to stop for a day or two in the Black Hills. It was on our way to Albuquerque anyway. We've been to the Black Hills a few times before. You really need to spend more than just a couple of days there. However, having been there before we stayed just long enough to see Deadwood and cruise around a bit. Deadwood, like so many places in America that have become famous through movies and TV, has become a caricature of itself. Oh, for sure you can see parts of the original settlement, but 90% of the town is a tourist trap, almost a movie set built to sell tourists things they really don't need.
Soon we were on our way south and after a long day's drive of 400+ miles we pulled into Fort Collins area to see our friend Lesley Freeman. Lesley was a neighbor of ours and our kids grew up together in the old neighborhood. Lesley graciously entertained us at her home and we had dinner together at a very nice restaurant in her neighborhood. Her home has the most gorgeous view of the front range of the Colorado Rockies. Lesley's two children have grown into wonderfully talented and artful people. Maddy, her daughter, performs music mash-ups live in front of huge crowds across the country. She has made quite a name for herself in the music business. Her son, Evan, is quite a talented musician himself and has recently immersed himself in becoming a poet. After reading some of his published work I have to say he is really quite good. I can see a great creative path continuing to unfold for both Maddy and Evan. We have missed Lesley over the many years since we've seen each other. It was so heart-warming to reconnect.
As mentioned earlier, we really don’t have a physical home any more. We live in our motor home wherever we park it or drive it. But, we’re starting to get into a routine of sorts by heading back to Missouri for the holiday season. In 2018 we left Nell in Albuquerque with Myers RV for some much needed maintenance. This year, we again left her there for some TLC and some insurance work since I hung her up in the dirt back in Portland in Karen Breidenbach’s back yard. We migrate between Suni and Dane’s house in Lees Summit and Tom French and Susy Capps’ house in St Louis. They’re all so gracious and generous to let us crash there. Visiting with them is so good for our hearts and souls. Then, there’s my musical buddies and Diane’s girl friends to catch up with. We’re so blessed to have such wonderful friends and family. At times we wonder aloud to each other, “ Maybe we should land back here in Missouri and stay put.” But then that ol’ travelin’ bone starts to itch. Someday we’ll settle down, but not just yet.
I think back to my dad. He was a rover. Oh sure, he was a great family man and father and worked hard to make sure we got fed and had a roof over our heads, but in his deep soul he was a frontiersman. He would have been with Lewis and Clark had he the chance and if he were born 200 years earlier. He went to Alaska in 1939. He lived in the bush, he worked on the railroad during the summer. He ate moose and rabbit. When he’d tell us stories about Alaska I’d see it in his eyes...that look. He’d be looking straight at you but in his mind he was seeing campfires and roaring rivers. He was smelling Brown bears in the tall grass down in the meadow. He was watching the Aurora Borealis play out its skyline curtain call on a cold winter night. He was always going to take us back there. Take us back and show us where he’d been during those early years of his life. He supported missionaries in Alaska. He told me once that when that day came for us to go there with him he would call on them for a place to stay. He had it arranged. But, the day never came, sadly. He got close. He got within hollerin’ distance of retirement when it all could have happened for him...and us. He got up one morning and simply fell over dead from a heart attack. He always said he would go that way. “One day I’ll just drop dead.” he used to say. He didn’t mean to scare us or warn us. He just somehow knew it and stated it as if it were fact.
Diane and I are determined not to let that happen to us. Who knows how we’re going to cross over? We don’t think about that much at all. But, we’re not going to go wishing we had traveled. We’re going to feel the wind in our face from atop a monumental bluff. We’re going to relish in the redwoods. We’re going to stand in the shade of saguaros. We’re going to love our friends and our family for all its worth. We’re going to cross that stream on slippery rocks. Then, and only then, we’ll take that last great adventurous ride.