This time of year, each year, I see farm fields where silage cutters drive back and forth along standing rows of cornstalks. Chopped corn ferments and cures into rich winter feed, silage for herds of cattle when it's piled and packed on the ground or blown with a high rpm fan into an upright silo that looks like a missile standing on a launch pad. After the first day juice squeezed from the packed corn begins to puddle and prompt workers to joke about collecting it to make corn liquor, White Lightnin'. The syrupy sourness of it draws flies by the thousands, and a man's boots soak up the smell and slipperiness of it. It's been a long time since I worked with silage, but I remember those times well.
One time, a young man, who'd just gotten home from high school football practice and feeling proud that he'd finally learned to "hit" and please his coach, quickly changed into his work clothes and boots and drove the mile to a farm where he was to take his father's place on the silage making crew so he could come home to do the milking chores. Watching that day I can still see the sixteen year old kid, dumb as a pup, working to unload a wagon box full of chopped corn and then making a life-changing mistake.
A few leaves of spilled silage from the many wagon loads that day kept building up at the place where the wheels of the wagon came to rest at the blower's unloading apron. The catch release of the wagon's top-hinged rear endgate therefore stood a bit higher and harder to reach with each load. The solution was easy enough, something he'd done before, learning it from the men who did it. Luckily, he pulled the lever to stop the auger's spiral twisting but did nothing to slow the hum of the heavy fan driven driven by a tractor's pulley that spun it at hundreds of rpm's.
Now, here is the point I want to yell and wave my arms to catch his attention, "No, don't step on that platform with those wet boots to trip that catch!" Of course, there's no point in doing that. It would be futile! The scene occurred fifty years ago, fifty years ago today, to be exact. Warning cries can't be heard across those years, and it's no use wishing that he should have braced himself before the falling weight of the heavy tripped endgate caused his slippery shoes to slide and cause him to tumble feet first toward the hum of the fan. His left foot anchored against the metal housing of the fan, but his right found nothing except the forbidden mouth of a cave where the flesh-eating Grendel devoured his victims.
The man in the story has learned to live with the events of the day, but the boy still recoils in horror with the pain and the sight of the shattered bones sticking from his mangled flesh and the gangrenous infection that nearly took more than his limb. Fifty years ago today; it has not been forgotten!
