The summer I was 16, I had my first full-time, work-every-day job.
I drove a tractor on a hay crew that toured southern Pontotoc County baling hay for farmers and ranchers who lacked the equipment, and perhaps interest, for baling their own.
Most days, I drove an old gray Ferguson tractor that pulled a New Holland side delivery rake.
Pay was $1.25 an hour and came in a lump sum at the end of the summer. At the end of August, I was rich.
It was a spectacular three months filled with 12- and 14-hour workdays. You got to be outside and there were lots of interesting things to learn and see.
For example, I learned that one of the old rectangular bales of hay is supposed to weigh 67.67 pounds. They used to sell the rectangular bales by the ton, which was reckoned at 30 bales and works out to 67.67 pounds per.
I also learned how to rake round corners, which sounds oxymoronic but made life much easier for whoever was baling the field.
And one morning I was driving to a new meadow and startled a couple parked along what they thought was a deserted road.
Turned out to be a girl I knew from another high school and her boyfriend. We saw each other at ballgames and the county fair and such things afterward but neither of us ever mentioned it.
But I digress.
Because I was a teenager, I could drive a tractor in the August sun for 12 hours a day, eat a huge dinner and be just fine.
Those hours in the sun are why I now have pre-cancers removed from my face, hands and arms a couple of times a year, but hey. At 16, I was fine.
The fellow who ran the mower was named Bud Flynn and had lived in Fitzhugh as long as I could remember. His grandson was one of my best friends.
He was in his late 60s that summer and often offered me advice on coping with the heat.
“You’ll be fine if you don’t overload your stomach and don’t get overhet.”
Fast forward half a century to this past weekend.
It was the first time since the Covid came that we had a full slate of high school sports, so I figured I would catch as much as I could.
There was baseball on Thursday, a couple of softball games Friday afternoon, McLoud’s football scrimmage Friday evening, a cross country meet Saturday morning, the Chandler football scrimmage at 2 p.m. Saturday and the Meeker scrimmage at 6.
The athletes, who probably averaged close to 16 years old, seemed to be just fine. Some of the football players were leaking heavily, but none looked to be a third as hot as I felt.
Mealtimes found me driving from one event to another, so eating right was a problem.
By Saturday, I had resorted to a hay-field diet: a fried cherry pie, a cold diet Dew and half a can of Spam for lunch (dinner, if I’d been in Fitzhugh) and the rest of the Spam, plus potato chips, some corn chips and assorted bread products before I went to bed.
Sometime after midnight, I woke up with a huge thirst, a headache and the slightest bit of a queasy stomach.
And what was that I was hearing inside my head?
Why it was Bud Flynn’s voice. And he was talking about handling hot weather in your 60s.
“You’ll be fine if you don’t overload your stomach and don’t get overhet.”