Travelling Light, Clayton New Mexico

I drove an International grainer just like this one, working on the wheat harvest in central Alberta. Learned to split-shift and drive down the windrows, staying in tandem with the combines. Keeping the truck just close enough so that the combine could spew grain into the truck box. The worst thing would have been to collide with a combine. Never happened to me, though cornering in tandem was tricky. We'd start threshing at 10 or 11am, as soon as the sun burnt the dew off the crop. We'd keep going until 1 or 2 am, whenever the moisture settled. Sometimes we'd finish one field and move to another in the middle of the night. Those huge wheat fields of Alberta...starting on a new field in the dark  I'd sometimes get lost on my first run, rushing back to the storage bin or elevator. Nothing to navigate by, out there late at night. Though I suppose celestial navigation would have worked. Lots of coyotes for company. CKRD out of Red Deer.
       The first story I published in the United States,"Vulcan", in The Atlantic Monthly in 1985, was based on my experiences on the wheat harvest. That story was optioned in Hollywood and jump-started my career as a screenwriter. It will be reprinted in my upcoming story collection Travelling Light (Canadian spelling, eh?) which comes out in May.

       If you're looking for used farm equipment--like an old pickup truck!--
check out American Ag.  My experience has been that farmers tend to maintain their equipment. And out there in the high-and-dry Western grain belt, rust is less of an issue.