“Building Character” (excerpt) by Catherine Magdalena

Catherine Magdalena has been taking Kickstart classes for four years, working mostly on memoir projects related to work, family, and her adventures in home-building and property management. The excerpt below comes from an essay on her childhood in rural Idaho that she wrote while on a Kickstart writing retreat this spring.

My memories of riding with Dad on our combine harvester are mixed with field dust, chaff and sweat. The large life-like machine perpetuated at a 10-mph crawl, sometimes a tad faster if the blonde stands of wheat, pregnant with fat kernels, had grown a little thinner in spots.

I was always happy to feel needed, eager to fetch a tool or water jug. Schlepping the water jug from the truck to the combine was no easy task. It meant hefting myself and the jug straight up an eight-foot ladder. By the end of the day, my legs boasted scratches from walking through the post-harvest stubble and my body bore evidence of the day with creases where sweat and dirt met to become one. Dad would always ask, “How do you get so dirty?” Most of the time I answered by smiling, unaware it was a problem. It was my habit to touch and experience everything. I can still see Dad’s smile, such love in his eyes and teeth beaming white against his dirty, sun-blessed face.

We made the water jugs out of empty gallon-sized bleach bottles. Dad sewed around each one multiple layers of tightly woven burlap, repurposed from livestock feed bags too worn from multiple use. For thread, Dad used the same string that had held the bags shut. We put the jugs in the freezer at night and then drenched them with water in the morning. The burlap acted as an efficient insulator, keeping the water cold throughout the long work day. I loved the damp earthy smell of the heavy jugs. Just lifting them to take a drink was work in itself. They sat like little characters, waiting to be needed.

During harvest in July and August, the normal dry temperatures stayed in the 90s, making the work conditions pretty brutal. The normal work day began at 6 a.m. and ended around 8 or 9 p.m. It was always a treat when it was time for the crew to work on the Home Place, the 240 acres that surrounded our farm, because I got to be out in the field with Dad, Grandpa and the field hands more regularly. I got to listen to the stories at lunch time or ride into town in the grain truck to unload at the grain elevators in Genesee. Our other acreage was located across the canyon, closer to Genesee, and I didn’t get to go there as much.

Best of all was just the time spent with Dad, watching him master the machine, and witnessing the plants get gobbled up into the teeth of the scythe cutter wheel, hearing them get swallowed into the belly and then auger-unloaded up into the holding tank. From the truck, I could see the straw walkers spew the chaff out the back, returning it to the earth from where it once grew. The whole process took only minutes. As a child, I could trust that Dad had his finger on the pulse. Things were safe on his watch.

I loved watching the grain spill from the auger out into the holding tank just behind where my dad sat in the driver’s seat. As soon as it was full enough for me to reach, I would hand pick grasshoppers and rescue them. Some exhibited war wounds like missing limbs and wings that I pointed out to Dad. He’d always chuckle at my sensitivity and I’d scowl back, proceed to pick up the ones I could, shower them with empathy and release them to safety. I didn’t like when they spit their tobacco-colored substance on my hands, but this just became part of my grime at the end of the day.

I learned later that grasshoppers spit as a self defense mechanism to repel predators. I also later read that in some parts of the farming world, grasshoppers aren’t cute when they consume entire crops. As a child, they were a treasure and I loved when they catapulted themselves off into the distance to safety. To me, they were interesting creatures—my friends.