They still stand like silent wooden soldiers along most of our prairie highways, many are no longer in use, and a trip back to the farm from my home in Prince George B.C. seems to find another one missing each time. An important part of the community, the local grain terminal was seen anywhere there were even the smallest traces of a prairie town. It seems almost like the chicken and the egg, I wonder which did come first. Unfortunately these old wooden monuments are disappearing, replaced by a much more robust structure made almost entirely of cement.
I can’t remember my first trip to the local grain terminal, as I was undoubtedly very, very young. Subsequent trips are etched within my mind however, both by the characters we met there, and the smells and sounds that were present in all those old elevators.
These first trips I sat bouncing up and down in our fifty Ford one ton. The ride seemed to take forever, although it was only seven miles to town. On the seat beside me was most likely a grain sample in a jar, some old oily gloves, and perhaps some part off our swather, either about to be installed or on its way to the growing used parts pile out behind the shop. The floor boards were inhabited by a variety of tools, old v-belts, a jug of oil for our thirsty Minneapolis and an assortment of old rags fairly well soaked with the latter.
Every square inch of that old Ford was covered in a thick uniform layer of dull brown dust. It had settled everywhere, well everywhere but on those things regularly used, like the steering wheel, or the gearshift knob. To turn on the fan inevitably created a volcanic like eruption that filled the entire cab with a sort of haze that left everyone coughing and sputtering until that famous prairie flow through ventilation cleared it all away. This thick cloud was always accompanied by a lot of shrieking and yelling, at least until everyone got their noses out the window and cleared of the offending dirt.
The inside of the truck wasn’t the only place there was an abundance of airborne prairie soil. Out behind our little grain hauler was a plume of dirt that at times obscured all in our path. I would stretch out and look in the mirror, watching it swirl and churn. In that instant we were transformed into a rocket ship to the moon, or maybe a jet truck on the salt flats. Through the sixties the space race was present, always, and in the mind of a small boy it was there in that old Ford as we thundered down our dry, dusty back road headed into Salvador.
The wait wasn’t usually very long, a couple trucks at most. I watched in wonder as the grain flowed like water out of the box, and disappeared through the floor. Sometimes I could catch the sample, the little cup mounted on the end of the long handle nearly yanked from my hands each time. The agent would peer at those kernels as if he were looking at the finest diamonds, then, quickly dump it into the bucket, only to scoop up some more. I stared at those samples. Obviously, something was different here or he wouldn’t be checking each one so closely. Well, I looked and looked, but it still just looked like a bunch of wheat.
And how about that ladder? I’d peered up it numerous times. Can you imagine a ladder as tall as an elevator, or the lift? Now that would be even better. Wonder what’s up there? Sometimes the agent would step into that little cage and just disappear, like he was shot from a cannon, then hardly had he left and he was back. Very curious, yes, curious indeed.
The balance scale was yet another mystery. He’d slide those weights with a flick of his finger, and it would settle out dead center almost every time, then a little tap and with a flip of the catch it was all over. Out into the sunlight we went on our way home for another load. Oh what fun.
The first day of a new quota was entirely different; always it meant an early start. That first load in the box and waiting in town well before those big doors opened up. Try as we might though we were never the first ones there. A long line of trucks stretched back down the ramp, all wanting that same head start on their day. Never a complaint I heard, regardless of the length of that line. Up and down the row of trucks those farmers wandered. How much rain last night, did anyone get any hail? You know, so and so planted canola this year. How’s that look? What do you suppose the price will do? Of course any new truck in the line up was always good for more than a few minutes. You just can’t make that line go any faster, so, you might as well catch up on all the local news while you’re there.
As a teenager roaring about the countryside on my motorcycle, I regularly passed by the old Donegal town site. Not much there except for the elevator and a small tumble down building across the tracks. One afternoon we found ourselves climbing around this old pile of sticks. The pit was just that, a big, empty open pit, gutted of all its internal workings, as was most everything else we found there. One thing that remained seemingly intact was the ladder. Oh yeah I remembered the ladder. I really, really, wanted to climb this ladder. A quick look up brought it all back, a very long black vertical shaft with a small light way up there that represented the top floor. Off I climbed into the darkness, the light at the top like a carrot hanging in front of my nose. Twenty feet up I stopped and looked down, the bodies below me only a dark mass blocking the little light that might have seeped into this dark, dark, dusty hole. Voices echoed around in this black void, everyone was talking at once. On I climbed, my hands knocking loose the dust, chaff, and birdie pooh from countless undisturbed years. This constant trickle of unwanted debris instantly fueling a shower of verbal abuse from the ladder beneath my feet.
Someone from below screamed, a loud piercing scream that cut through all the other noises, then again. We all froze. Hanging from that invisible ladder, I heard it instantly, a familiar squeaking from somewhere out in the blackness. The words came to everyone and from everywhere at once, as if choreographed. “RATS.” With numerous killer rat movies in mind, I was propelled to the top floor of that elevator nearly as fast as the caped one himself. Interesting you say, maybe even funny. Well now we are at the top, no cape and only one way down, ain’t that a hoot.
Years later I worked in a small old grain elevator for a short time. I did climb the ladder a couple times, and I vividly remembered my earlier experience as I worked my way up through the darkness, and of course I often used the lift. I got to do all those things that had intrigued me so when I was younger.
The lines of trucks filed endlessly over the scales, only now the difference was that I ran the balance beam. No magic here, just practice, and that grain that disappeared into the floor did actually show up somewhere else, routed through various storage bins and eventually into a boxcar waiting out on the tracks.
Those old leaky boxcars are long gone now, as are a lot of the ancient wooden elevators, and to my knowledge none are being built. All the new elevators are concrete, cold but practical structures, with vastly superior grain handling, and far less maintenance issues. They do make much more sense, but lack the character of the old wooden ones that seem to be slowly disappearing from the skyline.
The new age grain terminals are farther apart than their wooden predecessors, making for longer trips to deliver the product. In many cases, this means that trucking companies now haul much of the grain, Commercial grain hauling seems to have exploded since the introduction of this new style of terminal. These larger trucks now haul right from the farmyards, something that was nearly unheard of when I was growing up. Many of the farms have gotten bigger necessitating these commercial haulers, and these increased distances to the elevators makes hauling with smaller trucks impractical for many farmers.
It would appear that the days of hauling in your wheat in a one-ton truck are pretty much gone, well for a lot of farmers anyway. I enjoyed bouncing along the back-road on the way to the elevator, and the great conversation with the rest of the farmers who crossed our path. The great conversation is still there, but you may have to look elsewhere for those extra long lineups.
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