Pipe Moving

  1962  

  Burt Webster had put a sprinkler system on his dry farm but had never raised spuds.  We rented a hundred acres, Stanley Sutton and Warren Walters of Newdale, rented about the same.  We had to buy extra machinery and didn’t have much money to run on but Jess knew that a new sprinkler system and new ground he could grow beautiful spuds.  He was excited but also worried.  Steve, Lee Garth and I all moved pipe and used that money to pay our summer expenses. 

   I enjoyed moving pipe.  When I ask Steve in 1987 what he thought about moving all that pipe he said he had always enjoyed moving pipe.  I enjoyed going up early in the morning.  The world is gorgeous that time of day and the valley shimmers like diamonds.  I didn’t enjoy coming home and feeding everyone breakfast and trying to keep the washing done and the house clean .  Later in the afternoon we would go back up and weed spuds.  

  One day Garen Young came to help move pipe so they could go camping.  He was heavy and sunk clear to his knees in the mud.  One time Mike Robison moved the pipe the wrong way.  We had to move it 36 rows instead of the usual 17 and had to straighten it out before we could turn on the pump.

Tom’s Pipe Moving Memories   

I have many fond and not so fond memories of pipe moving, when we started our pipe moving career on the second year at the Webster farm.  Randy would take one end of the pipe and I the other and with Mom’s help move a line.     I remember many of the old cars we used to drive but most especially the Studebaker, without doors or brakes and the old push button Plymouth we had to push to get up the hill above the three cellars.  When I was 12 and had my own lines to move I was the slowest and always got the easiest line.  Mom would frequently go with me and shine the car lights on the pipe at 5:00 am so I could finish early enough to get to a practice or a game. 

Sometimes the ground was so wet that you would sink up to your knees and moving pipe in grain that was as high as your waist and you couldn’t find the end of the pipe.  A few times we moved pipe in the snow. I remember all of us jamming into the car, after moving the Summers place, to go move pipe on the big pump.   

I remember there was a rattlesnake by an old tractor parked by the big pump and I thought I would nonchalantly run to my brothers, who were coming, and tell them about the rattlesnake.  They said they had never seen me run that fast before. I guess a little adrenaline helps on occasion.     We had to load the pipe on a pipe trailer to move back to the other side of the field  and getting the tractor stuck because I got to close to the wet rows.  

How grateful we were when it stormed and we got a few days off, from moving pipe.  That really was a vacation.  If a pipe broke, you had to move all the pipe, an extra move up.  Happiness was at the end of the season you only had to move once a day.  All the pipe movers would stay for the season  so they could get the extra one or two cent bonus.    

   The first year that we hired Spanish workers to move pipe, on only the first or second day we took them to move pipe, a woodchuck crawled into a pipe.  They were trying to get it out and couldn’t lift the pipe high enough, so I decided it wouldn’t hurt for me to help them.  We certainly should have looked up, instead of putting the pipe into a power line.  I remember being tetanized as the pipe grazed the wire.  I felt like my entire body was exploding and fortunately it threw us all off.  All three of us had burns but I know the Lord was watching over us or it would have been tragic.  Later that year a father and two sons were killed when their pipe touched a power line. 

   Moving pipe helped build character and perseverance.  Among our pipe movers were Dyle and Val Erickson, Brad Young, Rodney and Bruce Call Clifford Weeks and many more.  Pipe moving could certainly teach you humility and patience, along with frustration.   It was a good way to grow up and I am grateful for the great heritage that I have had and the opportunity to work with my brothers for my growing up years on the farm.