Scrap Iron Symphony
Love Songs from the Innovation Generation
I’ll bet you never heard ol’ Marshall Dillon say. Miss Kitty, have you ever thought of runnin’ away? And settlin’ down, would you marry me?
Toby Keith - Should’ve Been a Cowboy
Cancer stole another gem from us this week.
Say what you will about Toby Keith's politics or his giant hats, but he was highly respected in the music industry, and many will miss him. I grew up with this guy and his string of country bangers cracklin’ through the old Alpine stereo.
I often talk about my connection to music and how songs transport me to another place. Slipping into nostalgia is a magical experience for guys like me.
Keith’s early gems like Who’s That Man and He Ain’t Worth Missing teleport me to 1994 when I ran an 8650 John Deere yanking around a ten-bottom plow.
Losing a music icon sometimes feels like losing a friend.
Sturgill Simpson isn’t lying when he says life ain’t fair and the world is mean.
Fuck cancer.
Rest in peace, Toby, you patriotic legend.
The Innovation Generation
There’s a common misconception that farmers are just hillbilly dipshits nibbling on toothpicks in bib overalls and trucker hats.
Not true.
Many of these guys would make fine engineers or inventors. Instead, they farm, and they tinker. And let me tell you, some of the stuff they create is bonkers. Cosmo Kramer doesn’t stack up against this kind of bonkers.
I’m talkin’ Regis Philbin-style bonkers.
One of the neatest things about being a seed-slinging sum bitch is the on-farm visits and seeing all of the innovative things farmers design and build.
I visited a grower last week who repurposed his wood stove to burn waste oil instead. This crafty bugger had grown tired of shoveling ash daily, so he decided to upgrade the stove’s front door.
He attached an electric fan to force air into the burner pot and used a three-foot steel tube from an old grain auger as the waste oil holding tank. From there, a short section of narrow pipe leads to the burner pot with a valve to start and stop the oil flow. A final petcock in the line adjusts the oil drip and, therefore, the heat intensity.
The guy could patent this modified door and make a couple-thirteen-fourteen million smackers.
The whole project cost him...ready for this?
Eleven bucks.
The only thing my innovative pal had to purchase was an eleven-dollar valve. He found everything else lying around the farm.
It’s wild. The new stove door looks like it was designed and fabricated by professional blacksmiths.
I often rip my dad and uncle because other than food wrappers and asswipes, they haven’t thrown a thing in the garbage since The Dukes of Hazzard was on the telly.
Ya never know! Might need that someday!
Though I still don’t see the need to carry six spare alternators and fourteen flathead screwdrivers (unopened, because perhaps they’ll be collector's items one day, idk) in the side door of their eighteen-wheelers, I will concede the fact that saving some stuff pays off.
You never know what unique creations could be made from scrap iron and retired farm machinery in our era of throwaway cheap junk.
It’s inspiring to witness the incredible ingenuity of some people.
Before the environmentalists tag and bag me, I’m not here to debate the merits of burning used oil for heat. All I know is this: it seems to me it’s much better to burn that stuff than to do what we once did with waste oil.
At one of my early farm jobs, we used waste oil to minimize the dust on the gravel driveway. To do this, the boss hoisted a fifty-five-gallon barrel full of black gold in a truck box and laid it on its side with wood boards on either side to keep it from rolling about.
With the top of the drum hanging past the endgate, the bossman instructed me to use his channel lock pliers to open the cap as he wheeled up the driveway.
Dumping black sludge on the earth didn’t feel very responsible, but I followed his orders cause I was a thirteen-year-old kid, and what was I gonna do? Say no to this guy. Are you kidding me?
He wrote the paychecks, after all.
I’m such a sellout.
I haven’t seen environmental wreckage like that in years, and I imagine there are still a few dudes out there doing this stuff, but boy-oh-boy, if they ever got caught by the EPA, they’d levy fines that’d break Mark Cuban.
Thinking about homemade farm contraptions makes me wonder if we’ll lose this creativity when the innovation generation retires and moves to South Florida, kicking it with the rest of their homies in white tennis shoes and jean shorts.
Many people in my generation struggle with simple tasks. Some, like me, can’t find their way out of a wet paper bag.
Will farm technology and cheap goods strip farmers of their innovative ways?
I used to think it was nonsense to spend rainy days making scrap iron sculptures with Gramps, but my views have changed. A life of tinkering is how they learned to create valuable items like our neighbor’s waste oil furnace.
It’d be a cryin’ shame to see such artistry and craftsmanship disappear from our industry.