A square bale of hay could have many uses with an imagination like I had when I was young. On the farm, there was always work to do before any playing could begin, though.
After the hay was baled, it was time to climb into Daddy’s old pickup truck and drive to the hay field. Daddy usually hired one or two boys to help him. They were a few years older than me, and I always had a secret crush on them. Of course, I never told Daddy about that or this little girl would have been staying home.
I don’t remember any of my girlfriends going to a hay field, but my Daddy was very special to me, so I always wanted to be anywhere he was. I didn’t care where it was—I just wanted to be with him.
Having one bale fall of the truck was one too many, so those bales were placed so tight. I admired the way they were so carefully stacked. Each one had to lay a certain way for the truck to hold as much as possible, and it always seemed that the very last load was stacked the highest. Hauling hay was hot and tiring work, so that last load of the day got the two or three extra bales that seemed to always be left over. No one wanted to make an extra trip back to the field for two or three hay bales.
Loading was only the first part. Every load had to be unloaded. Once again, one bale at a time was thrown up in the loft and stacked. There were times when no help was hired, and that’s when my brother and I helped. Daddy had a pulley where my brother and I hooked bailing twine to a hook, and it then it was all the two of us could do working together to pull down and raise a bale of hay high enough to where Daddy could reach it. He’d then remove it and stack the hay in the loft.
Every now and then, an extremely heavy bale would be hooked, and our weight combined would barely be enough to get it to the loft. Daddy would have to catch it while it was swinging back and forth. It was hard work, but I’d never complain. It was more important to make my Daddy proud of me that it was to complain. That final hay bale meant we could play the next day.
That barn loft full of hay would serve as forts and different rooms for a playhouse. My brother Donald and I would push and pull and tug on that hay to make move it around. It was so much fun.
Those baling twines would be used as a swing. We never had a swing set, so we’d take the twine and tie it to a tree branch and sit on it. I was short, so I’d have to turn a bucket upside down to be able to sit on the “twine swing.” It wasn’t the most comfortable swing, but not having a comparison during that time, all I can say was, it worked! When it would break, we’d just fix another one.
When we’d get tired (or I guess it’d be best to say, when our rear ends started hurting really bad), we could always go climb up into the barn loft and climb on hay.
The barn’s gone now. I don’t see a lot of square bales any more. It’s mostly round hay bales now. But that’s why it’s important to make memories we can keep and share with others. I hope you will enjoy reading them half as much as I enjoyed making them. Share one of your memories with someone! Until next time….
