I did something bad.
Everyone was in such a good mood at work on Friday. Even Cocksy . He’s the grumpy, tough-man-act tractor driver with a million bleeding tattoos - Keep sakes from a previous life when perhaps he wasn’t slow, round and fifty something.
Kath, Sam, Neil and even Graeme joked around loudly at smoko break.
Then we got Cocksy talking about his new tractor. He’d been speeding around all morning in this nifty bright blue thing with an enclosed cab, radio blaring, air conditioning on full throttle, power steering impossibly easy. This top of the line ‘Rolls Royce of tractors’ could spin on a dime!
The suspension was the best apparently. Made you
“Feel like you were floating, not driving”
“Man, I’d love a go in that thing”
“Have you driven a tractor before?”
“Yes”. No you haven’t! You stupid girl!
"Oh OK"
"But not one like that!". That might just save me!
"Alright you can have a go after lunch"
"Really!?" Why are you getting excited! You can't drive a bloody tractor!
"Yeah"
"Remember what I told you about getting my ute stuck and hitting them poplars though".
"You'll be alright. this ones got power steering. Come on and hop in. I'll show you the gears".
I'll tell you what. that seat was nice! The gears were easy as pie and the air conditioning... On a hot summers day in a orchard it's something you don't dare dream of.
so off I went down track. Cocksy met me at the end.
"Good. Now this time start off in 3rd gear... put some revs into it girl! Don't stall!"
Then I stalled.
"Now deliver these crates to the yard, get a empty one and bring back two ladders and me and Kath's picking bins. hurry up girl we can't do anything till you get back OK".
So off I went. 3rd gear, into 4th, 50ks an hour down the track. I had to go through the tree rows to get Cocksy's bin.
That's when it happened. It had to didn't it? It really had to happen. We'd just spent the day talking about how expensive it was. It wasn't just a crash.
I get disorientated when I reverse. My heads the wrong way round to my body so when I head towards something I shouldn't, instead of turning away from it... I turn towards it.
I turned off my straight line between the trees and headed in slow motion it seemed towards the line of trees a couple of feet to my right. Really I was going 60. My head was on backwards so I couldn't think where the brakes were! And I braced my legs for the impact and in doing that accelerated! There was a lot of swearing. A LOT of noise. I turned at the last millisecond away from the trunk of the tree but there was no avoiding the main, fruit laden branches sticking out. They started to slam against the windows, snapping right at the base. Big sickening crunches over the screaming roar of the tractor. Every time I tried to turn away the front of the tractor slammed into the trunks! It went like this for maybe ten trees before I remembered I had brakes.
Cocksy's beautiful tractor was making a very sick noise. I turned it off. Scrambled out, shaking like a STUPID leaf. There were broken branches hanging off the back, stuck in the wheels and on the forklift bit. Decent sized branches, about the size of my arms.
Like a woman possessed i ripped those branches away from the tractor and stowed them under a still intact tree.
there were (well, used to be) big mud flaps/fluoro sticker panels hanging off the back behind the big back wheels. One of these had been ripped completely off and the piece of steel it used to be attached to was bent right back and sticking into the wheel... Hopefully that's all the sick noise was! Adrenalin can make you strong when you need to be. I've never bent a hunk of steel before but i did it! the forklift was crooked... but only a little bit. I hoped desperately that they just wouldn't notice. In my rush I didn't check the paint work on the side.
I started to think of ways I could cover all this up.
The tractor started OK and sounded OK as far as I could remember. I delivered the things I had to, picked up the new crate, bags and bins and headed back very sloooowly.
The story I told Cocksy - and everyone else at work - is that
"I bounced over a tree root and it set the tractor off course. Then I over corrected and bumped a branch. the indicator lights broken. I'm so sorry!"
If they didn't look closely that's all they'd see. And it worked!
The trees I demolished aren't due for picking for a few more weeks. My guess is that in that no one will find them before that time. But what then?
They've already nicknamed me Crash. Hopefully its not upgraded to 'Fired'!
Everyone was in such a good mood at work on Friday. Even Cocksy . He’s the grumpy, tough-man-act tractor driver with a million bleeding tattoos - Keep sakes from a previous life when perhaps he wasn’t slow, round and fifty something.
Kath, Sam, Neil and even Graeme joked around loudly at smoko break.
Then we got Cocksy talking about his new tractor. He’d been speeding around all morning in this nifty bright blue thing with an enclosed cab, radio blaring, air conditioning on full throttle, power steering impossibly easy. This top of the line ‘Rolls Royce of tractors’ could spin on a dime!
The suspension was the best apparently. Made you
“Feel like you were floating, not driving”
“Man, I’d love a go in that thing”
“Have you driven a tractor before?”
“Yes”. No you haven’t! You stupid girl!
"Oh OK"
"But not one like that!". That might just save me!
"Alright you can have a go after lunch"
"Really!?" Why are you getting excited! You can't drive a bloody tractor!
"Yeah"
"Remember what I told you about getting my ute stuck and hitting them poplars though".
"You'll be alright. this ones got power steering. Come on and hop in. I'll show you the gears".
I'll tell you what. that seat was nice! The gears were easy as pie and the air conditioning... On a hot summers day in a orchard it's something you don't dare dream of.
so off I went down track. Cocksy met me at the end.
"Good. Now this time start off in 3rd gear... put some revs into it girl! Don't stall!"
Then I stalled.
"Now deliver these crates to the yard, get a empty one and bring back two ladders and me and Kath's picking bins. hurry up girl we can't do anything till you get back OK".
So off I went. 3rd gear, into 4th, 50ks an hour down the track. I had to go through the tree rows to get Cocksy's bin.
That's when it happened. It had to didn't it? It really had to happen. We'd just spent the day talking about how expensive it was. It wasn't just a crash.
I get disorientated when I reverse. My heads the wrong way round to my body so when I head towards something I shouldn't, instead of turning away from it... I turn towards it.
I turned off my straight line between the trees and headed in slow motion it seemed towards the line of trees a couple of feet to my right. Really I was going 60. My head was on backwards so I couldn't think where the brakes were! And I braced my legs for the impact and in doing that accelerated! There was a lot of swearing. A LOT of noise. I turned at the last millisecond away from the trunk of the tree but there was no avoiding the main, fruit laden branches sticking out. They started to slam against the windows, snapping right at the base. Big sickening crunches over the screaming roar of the tractor. Every time I tried to turn away the front of the tractor slammed into the trunks! It went like this for maybe ten trees before I remembered I had brakes.
Cocksy's beautiful tractor was making a very sick noise. I turned it off. Scrambled out, shaking like a STUPID leaf. There were broken branches hanging off the back, stuck in the wheels and on the forklift bit. Decent sized branches, about the size of my arms.
Like a woman possessed i ripped those branches away from the tractor and stowed them under a still intact tree.
there were (well, used to be) big mud flaps/fluoro sticker panels hanging off the back behind the big back wheels. One of these had been ripped completely off and the piece of steel it used to be attached to was bent right back and sticking into the wheel... Hopefully that's all the sick noise was! Adrenalin can make you strong when you need to be. I've never bent a hunk of steel before but i did it! the forklift was crooked... but only a little bit. I hoped desperately that they just wouldn't notice. In my rush I didn't check the paint work on the side.
I started to think of ways I could cover all this up.
The tractor started OK and sounded OK as far as I could remember. I delivered the things I had to, picked up the new crate, bags and bins and headed back very sloooowly.
The story I told Cocksy - and everyone else at work - is that
"I bounced over a tree root and it set the tractor off course. Then I over corrected and bumped a branch. the indicator lights broken. I'm so sorry!"
If they didn't look closely that's all they'd see. And it worked!
The trees I demolished aren't due for picking for a few more weeks. My guess is that in that no one will find them before that time. But what then?
They've already nicknamed me Crash. Hopefully its not upgraded to 'Fired'!
Oh and it turns out the tractors so expensive that I didn't have to worry about the glass breaking. It's bullet proof.
This is the kinda thing i'mm talking about but WAY bigger wheels and forklift on the back
Hey Lydia, saw the comments you left on my blog. Thank you and I hope you enjoy reading my blog posts. I enjoyed reading your tractor story. Have a lovely day.
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