Making do

Last month, while rolling into Fields from Denio, Nevada, my wife Sue and I decided to stay overnight so I could have one of those deee-licious cheeseburgers for breakfast for which Fields is so famous (I wasn't disappointed!).

At dusk we were surprised to see a kettle of turkey vultures coming in to roost in the cottonwoods right across the road of the motel and restaurant. While watching the vultures trying to perch, Sue and I had a good laugh just the way we do when watching them coming into the night roost in Sisters.

Vulture are the Masters of the Air when soaring, but landing they are the goofiest and most uncoordinated of all the birds - worse than albatross. It appears they never learned the art and technique of landing; they crash into each other, and often miss the limb they're heading for completely.

While we were enjoying the vultures, all of a sudden Sue let out that exclamation that parents know all too well: "Oh, no...!"

I looked up to see a huge orange forklift with gigantic tires wobbling across the uneven sagebrush carrying a rusted out red, two-ton International truck. The forklift was headed for a flatbed trailer hooked to a blue Dodge pickup. The guy driving the forklift was grinning like didn't have a care in the world, and when he arrived at the flatbed, he gently set the old Corn-binder down and trundled off, searching for more prey.

It was then I noticed two other guys: one working on the trailer lights, and the other starting a gasoline-powered chain-saw-like machine, but with a large metal cutoff wheel where the chain would have been.

Suddenly there was a loud crunching and breaking glass sound from where the forklift had gone, and in a few moments it came into sight carrying what was once an older model Jeep station wagon, squashed down to the height of the doors.

I glanced over at the two guys by the truck anxiously, but they didn't appear surprised at the arriving flattened Jeep. As the forklift operator dumped the Jeep on its side, the fellow with the cut-off saw went over to it and began cutting the attachments that held the front and rear differentials to the frame and transfer cases.

As I carefully walked closer, the man operating the saw looked up and shouted, "The owner wants to keep the differentials, so I'm cuttin' 'em out." And proceeded to do just that.

In the course of the next hour or so the forklift operator delivered a blue four-door sedan of some species, another Jeep, a rusty 500-gallon fuel tank, and a completely rusted out cattle guard, the vehicles mashed down to the thickness of the doors, and placed it all (except the cattle guard) strategically on the old farm flatbed trailer.

Turns out these three men were entrepreneurs in the scrap business. One was a laid-off electrician, the other two an out-of-work builder and an oil man. When I asked them how they were doing with the scrap business, one answered, "Oh, we're doing OK; got to do somethin' to make do these days."

When I asked the man who looked and sounded like the head honcho where he was headed with that good-looking pile of scrap he said, "Oh, we're takin' it to Caldwell (Idaho); we get a better price there..."

These are the characters who make this nation of ours keep going. They know how to make a buck, keep their families with a roof over their heads, have a positive outlook on life, keep a grin on their faces, and make do.

After the fuel tank was mounted on top of the mashed down blue sedan, the forklift trundled off again, this time returning with a bent-up piece of two-wheeled haying machinery that the operator jammed into the Jeep on the rear end of the trailer. The last thing to go on was the cattle guard, which acted like a lock, holding the rest of the load in place.

With the air of expert cowboys roping steers, the three threw binder straps over the sagging machinery and fuel tank and strapped everything on the trailer tight.

"Don't the law-enforcement people kind of look at you guys sideways?" I asked the guy, who called himself Mark.

"Shucks no," he replied, "they're so happy to see all this old junk go away they never bother us."

The last I saw of the three galoots was when they pulled out of Fields at dusk, passing me close enough so I could see their big grins as they went off down the highway for the long, overnight drive to Caldwell to deliver their load of precious metals.

"We'll be back about 11 tomorrow," the builder shouted out the window. "See you if you're here!"