Part two

One rather coolish day, I was out mixing a load of feed.  Ole Kate had been serving us faithfully. 

I was soon to see how heroically. 

She had developed an oil leak that mainly showed up when the weather turned cold.  I determined it to be where the oil filter mated to the oil filter base.  Often, a quick slither under and a twist to tighten the filter fixed it. 

I noticed, on this particular day, a small puddle of oil under her and told myself I would need to tighten her filter soon. 

I finished filling in the roughage while she was running, mixing it all together.  I jumped out of the tractor and stood nearby, waiting for the feed to mix. 

It was then I heard it. 

It was the unmistakable pitch change in motor tone that went from well-oiled to not oiled. 

It was a horrible, hollow sound. 

Kate was gasping her last.   

I flew on terrified feet towards her and quickly shut her down.  She was so faithful she was draining her heart out completely for me and would have self-destructed in the next instant without my intervention. 

I looked underneath to see a massive oil spill. 

I prayed.   

We had a couple hundred calves in the lot, wanting to be fed, and no backup if Kate was a gonner.

For some reason, only Jan and I were home that weekend.

I trudged despondently the 300 yards to the house to get Jan to help me pull her over to a shed at my folks where there were tools and a concrete slab to work on. 

I put Jan in the tractor, and we got hooked up with a heavy tow rope.  Next, I carefully instructed Jan on how to tow me.  I explained that because I didn’t have brakes, I wouldn’t be able to help slow down at the corners.  I told her she would need to go really slow, start slowing down long before the corner, and not to let the rope drag between us.  She acted like she understood so we took off. 

Slowly.

We made it to the end of our drive and turned easily onto the half mile stretch towards folks. 

And then, we started reviewing the math lesson we both had taken years ago on compound interest.

For the problem was, and which I had failed to factor in, is the road slopes gently downhill all the way to the corner.

I began gaining on Jan.

Jan began speeding up.

I soon caught up to her.

I could see she was begging the tractor for more speed, but it could give no more.

Thankfully, Jan is a sharp thinking woman and pulled over to one side of the road and kept her speed maxed out.  

I slowly caught up to the limp tow rope between us and ran entirely over it. 

Soon we were driving along side by side.  Me, silently and with no control except steering, the tow rope in a twisted tangled tagalong in between us.  Side by side down a long, long aisle.

Gradually, oh so gradually, friction started to tell on my side, and I began to fall behind. 

We gained the corner and rounded it, albeit at a record speed and finally managed to get the poor crippled girl into the shed.

I rolled under her and saw we had more than a tighten-up-the-filter problem.  The base was a pressed together manufacture, and the part that was pressed into the housing had separated somewhat. 

Not a problem, I said to myself.  I’ll grab the welder and run a bead around the circumference of that.  We’ll have those hungry calves fed before night catches us.

Now I know I can be rather scatterbrained.  But this time I did factor in the fire hazard I was about to encounter by trying to weld in a fresh oil leak area.  I figured the oil was minimal, the temperature cool and thus the flash point quite low. (Hey, I was a firefighter once upon a time.)

And all went quite well at the start.  The oil dripping by flared up in small spits of flame occasionally, but it always went out just as quickly.  I had done jobs like this before and the fires never got too badly out of control.

But I failed to factor in something else.  There was a thick oil sludge all along the side of the engine close to where I was welding. 

The flash point of that sludge seemed have reached a point that didn’t respect what was happening nearby.

I also realized, once the whole front end of the poor girl was engulphed in flames, and I couldn’t see the cab at all, that the hose hooked onto the faucet outside was exactly 17 feet too short.

My brave wife, face set with determination, distress, and fear all at once, asked what to do.  There was a bucket nearby, so I quickly told her to begin filling it while I looked for another.  The only other bucket I could find held 2 quarts max of water. 

I threw the first bucket of water on the flames whilst she filled two quarts for me.  The first bucket hardly dented that orange wall. 

Neither did the two quarts. 

But we kept at it, and in a few minutes, although it seemed much longer, we had that orange wall reduced to a small flickering campfire, and then finally out.

I was convinced our faithful girl was with us no longer.  But after a careful inspection, it appeared all the fire had fed on was many years’ worth accumulation of caked on oil sludge and dirt.  After careful fire retardation processes were set in place, I resumed welding.  It took quite a while, but I finally had a weld that held in spite of all the oil that wanted to continue dripping down.

I filled her up with oil.  She was completely out. 

With anxious heart, and reference made to the previous prayer, I cranked her over. 

She sang to life with nary a second’s hesitation!

And the faithful girl has run ever since. Excepting, of course, a few maintenance issues now and then.