How I Met Bob and Joe and Lived to Tell About it

In a recent blog, I promised to tell about the Navajos that I worked with on the farm the summer I was 16. To recap, my Mother had banished me 500 miles away from home to Idaho for the summer, ostensibly so I could get a job, earn some money, learn to become more self-sufficient, and all that. The reality was that she was deathly afraid I was going to get my girl friend pregnant, or worse, marry her. Which I might very well have done if my girl friend hadn’t broken up with me the week before Mom decided to get me the hell out of Dodge, though Mom didn’t know it. All my friends were going to be gone for the summer, so I went without a fuss.

The farm was some 10-15 miles south of Nampa as the crow flies, maybe 25 miles by car, and in the middle of nowhere. I lived on the farm itself in the labor camp. The labor camp was a cinder block building made up of 6 apartments, as I remember, though it could have been 8; I’m a little fuzzy on some details. It was clean, and just like a regular apartment, and included a provisioned kitchen with appliances and all the dishes, pots and pans that we needed. My college kid would kill for something as nice. The best part was it was free.

I should mention that this particular location had 5000 acres under cultivation. I believe I heard that there was another 5000 at another location, but we never went to that farm or met anyone who worked there. Where I worked was its own mini-community, with entire families living in the labor camp and something going on all the time. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Work primarily consisted of irrigating very large fields with 40 foot long, 4-inch diameter aluminum pipe with a 3 to 4 foot riser and Rainbird type sprinkler head on top. This was in a time before motorized self-propelling irrigation lines. We moved the pipe by hand, one length at a time. Typically, one line was roughly 32 pipes, give or take a few according to the width of the field, and extended about ¼ miles in length. I had a wheat field that was mine and only mine to work. The field was about a mile long and a quarter mile wide. It usually had five lines set at any time. The lines were laid out about 1000 feet apart, and each morning I would move each one from east to west about 120 feet and then do it again in the evening. In this way, I watered every part of the field about once a week or maybe a little more often. When a line came to the west end of the field, my crew boss and I would take a tractor and pipe trailer out, put all the pipe on the trailer and take them back to the east side to start over.

I could move a line in about 30 minutes. I won’t go into all the gory details of moving and setting lines. My typical morning started at 6 am and I moved all my lines in about 3 hours. In the evening, I moved all the lines again, starting at 5 pm. We worked 6 days a week and had Sunday off. I got paid $1.50 per line, which was great money, working out to about $3 an hour. Minimum wage was $1.25, which is what they paid me to do other non-irrigating work during the day. I usually picked up two or three hours of in between work on weekdays. This extra work most often involved moving lines that had hit the end of their field to the other side to restart, but also included hauling in baled hay, maintenance on irrigation ditches, and other odd jobs. Not many of the other boys volunteered to do this extra work but I always did. There was not enough extra work for all of us and my boss preferred me to most everyone else, so it worked out well.

Just to put it in perspective, I made a little less than $20 a day most days. This was 1971 when gas was $0.32 a gallon, smokes were $0.30 a pack, and I could take a girl on date, feed us both a burger, fries and a shake, see a double feature drive in movie with popcorn and a coke, and the gas to go to and from and still spend $5 or less.

Now to the Navajos. These two men, probably in their mid 30s, were from deep in the Navajo Nation. Really deep, at least that was my impression. I have never been to Navajo country, so I’m only going on my impressions and some things I’ve heard here and there. I could be all wet about what I think. I know they did not speak English very well, though we did work it so we could communicate adequately. I tried to learn their names, but I couldn’t pronounce them, couldn’t even begin to think how to spell them, and so could not remember them to save my life. My crew boss had given up years before and simply called them Bob and Joe. That’s what everybody called them. They were perfectly fine with this and answered to those names as if they were their true names. They could almost have been twins, though they were not, and I kept confusing Bob with Joe and vice versa until I didn't know which was which. Worse, they each readily answered to either name and never seemed to take the slightest offense. They smiled a lot and had perfectly straight and gleaming white teeth.

They had been coming to work on this farm for years, according to my crew boss. They would show up each spring about when the irrigating was to begin, and leave to go back to the reservation when it ended in late summer. They had wives, children, in-laws, parents, cousins and others that they supported on the reservation. They made enough money in the summer moving irrigation pipe to support their families for a year. The farmer loved those two guys. They were his best workers. My crew boss said the farmer fretted about whether they would show each year. There was never any communication from them whether they were coming or not. That would have required using a telephone or writing a letter, neither of which were up there on Bob and Joe’s list of things to do, if they could do them. Each year when they showed up the farmer reportedly danced a jig when he saw them, which often as not was the sight of them hiking down the long gravel road to the farm.

How good were they? I moved five lines a day, which wasn’t bad; most of the other boys were moving three or four. The Mexicans were better than I, each moving 8 to 10 lines. They stayed out longer in the morning and evening to do it though. But, even their efforts were puny compared to Bob and Joe. Bob and Joe moved 20 lines each! In other words, where I was responsible for one wheat field one mile long and a quarter mile wide, they were each responsible for four such fields. They would go to their fields at 6 am just like me and come back around 8 pm, just like me. The difference was I would come back for breakfast around 9am and would head back to my field at 5pm. They didn’t come back at all. In fact, they did not stop moving pipe all day, except for lunch and a couple of breaks in the morning and afternoon for a drink of water and some shade. The farmer made sure that someone took them lunch and water every day. (He did not provide me lunch)

Consider that if they worked at my pace it would take them 10 hours to move their morning set and 10 hours to move their afternoon set. Yet, they were moving their lines in about 10 and half-hours all told, not 20. How could they do this? The answer is they ran everywhere. When they picked up a pipe, they did a fast walk with it to the next set. You can’t imagine how incredibly hard and tough that is. That 40 foot aluminum pipe is heavy and awkward to hold, and the ends bounce up and down in time with each step. The faster you go, and they went as fast as anyone could, the bigger the bounce and the more brutal the harmonics. Once they attached the pipe to the next in line, they ran back to get the next one, not jogged, ran.

I mentioned that one of the in between jobs I did with my crew boss was to move lines that had reached the end of the field back to the other side to start over. We did this for Bob and Joe's fields, too. When we were at their fields, I would get to watch them working and it always left me speechless. The only time they stopped running was to turn on the water and watch a few minutes to see if they had a blow out. Then they would take off again. Just consider that once they had laid the last pipe in a line, they ran the ¼ mile from the end of the line to the valve. They were doing a 400 meter run 40 times a day! It is not an exaggeration to say that every day they ran a marathon.

The Energizer Bunny had nothing on these guys.

They had a weakness. They liked beer. Like most Native Americans, they could not tolerate alcohol well. It only took two or three beers to get them drunk as skunks. Usually on Saturday night but sometimes on Sunday morning they would come around knocking to see if someone going into town would give them a ride. In town, you see, there were bars and taverns, and for about 2 bucks each Bob and Joe could get loop-de-looped. If they couldn’t get a ride, they just set off walking and hitchhiked as they went. In those days hitchhiking was a respectable form of transportation. My friends and I got to all sorts of places that way.

I made good friends with Manuel, a Chicano whose family lived locally. He was the other boy that the crew boss could count on to help during midday odd jobs and was a good worker. He had two older brothers who had a house in Nampa. We were welcome to come over and join the party whenever we were in town, but, of course, we were more welcome if we brought along some beer. I am a bit embarrassed to say it, but Manuel and I quickly figured out that we had a ready source of beer right next door. Manuel had an old Chevy pickup that ran about half the time. It took two quarts of oil to get to Nampa and two quarts to get back, and Manuel could have hired on as a navy smoke screen if the truck could float. We soon struck a deal with Bob and Joe. We would take them to town, and we would even bring them back if they were ready to go when we were, and they agreed to buy us beer, with our money, of course. They were very happy with the deal. It simplified their weekend beer drinking considerably.

On at least two occasions we left them at the tavern and then later had to go into the tavern and physically half carry them out to the truck. Nobody in the tavern minded; Bob and Joe paid good money, kept quiet, never caused any trouble and didn’t puke on the floor. They just went incoherent after the third beer or so.

I can remember that after one of those tavern incidents we went to the store for them to buy our beer, but Bob and Joe were so bombed they barely understood what was going on. Finally, in frustration, I led Bob, or Joe, to the beer cooler, grabbed a case, and carried it to the cashier, while helping guide him along. The cashier was a girl not much older than I was. I put the beer on the counter. I took the money out of my pocket and gave it to Bob, or Joe, and then helped him hand it to her. She gave me a “you’ve got to be kidding look” and I just looked at her all dumb and stupid. She shook her head, but rang up the beer, made change and gave it to Bob. I picked up the case and helped him out the door. I let him keep the change. After that, we insisted that Bob and Joe buy the beer first before we took them to the tavern.

I sometimes think I should feel guilty or bad about “taking advantage” of my Native American friends. But, I don’t.

Remember, these guys spent 6 days a week running non-stop 10 to 11 hours a day. It was hot, heavy, tiring work and they did it hour after hour, day after day, so they could make enough money to support themselves and their loved ones during the other 7 or 8 months of the year. So what if they got drunk one day a week? As far as I was concerned they earned every drink. So what if I helped them do it? So what if the arrangement was for them to provide me, a minor, with illegal beer that might get them thrown in jail? Okay, maybe this last question is sort of a big deal. I still don’t feel bad about it, though.

I suppose if I were a liberal pansy ass I would be sitting around now thinking about all the things that could have gone wrong and fretting about the might haves and what ifs. Like how I might have facilitated their alcoholism. I might have helped keep them repressed and stuck on the reservation by taking advantage of their naive innocence. What if they had been thrown in jail for buying me beer? Blah, blah, blah. The fact is, the only thing I facilitated was what they were already doing and were going to do any way, and they did not go to jail for buying me beer. Besides, I really liked those guys and they liked me, so shove it if you don’t like it.

However, there was one time when it did all go wrong and they did go to jail. In this particular case, Manuel and I had nothing to do with it. We were completely innocent, mostly.

In a rare occurrence, the farmer decided that Bob and Joe’s fields needed to take a day off from irrigation. I don’t remember why, but I think he wanted to do some maintenance on the main pump that serviced their section (they were on a different pumping system than me) He gave them Saturday off as well as Sunday.

I had to work on Saturday as usual, as did Manuel. There was this girl at the Dairy Queen in town that I wanted to get to know better, and Manuel had something he wanted to do in town as well. Once we moved our morning line, we hit the showers and then caught a ride to town with one of the farm mechanics. The farm had two mechanics employed full time with their own triple bay shop and a complete inventory of spare parts for everything from the pickups to the combines—like I said, a big farm. We had to be back by 5 pm to move our evening sets, but we figured we could get a ride somehow. Manuel’s truck was busted at this point and non-functioning.

One thing led to another, and before we knew it, we had no ride and an hour and half to go 20 miles or so to get back to the farm. We panicked and started hoofing it down the road, throwing our thumbs out at every car that came along. No luck. We started to despair we weren’t going to make it and wondered aloud if we would be fired or something else even more terrible.

Just about when we had given up all hope, here came a metal flake purple 68 Chevelle SS, with big slicks on the back and loud pipes, weaving down the highway at high speed. It blew past us, and then locked up the brakes and went into a skid. Oh boy! We had a ride! We sprinted up to the passenger side and the door opened up to let us in. Who should we see in the front seats grinning at us from ear to ear? You guessed it, Bob and Joe. They were drunk as skunks and supremely happy with themselves.

Now I have to tell you, as I mentioned in the previous blog, that I really did spend two hours one Sunday trying to teach them both how to drive a tractor. It was both funny and sad. When I would holler that they had to “Steer, for Chrissakes!” as they were going off the track, they would usually panic and turn the wheel in the wrong direction. Let’s not even talk about brakes. They simply could not grasp the concepts of driving. The whole idea of turning the steering wheel to make the tractor go left or right simply seemed to be beyond them. It’s as if they forgot they had to be actively engaged in steering.

I don’t know that forgot is the right word. I think it more likely that they had absolutely no contact with vehicles for most of their lives, and only encountered them later as adults when they left the reservation to work on the farm. They never really internalized that vehicles were machines and not living entities. I’m not sure they even understood the concept of machines. Probably intellectually they did understand about vehicles and machines, but I think their worldview, their whole take on reality, never quite caught hold of the idea. In that worldview, vehicles should know how to do the turning for themselves, just like cows or birds do.

Now, here were Manuel and I staring into the interior of a certifiable muscle car that could go well over 100 mph, operated by two guys who couldn’t figure out how to steer or stop a tractor going 3 miles an hour. Were we seriously contemplating getting into that car? It seemed we either got in and probably went to our doom, or passed and were fired.

We got in. God Help Us!

It was the scariest ride of my life. Period. Manuel and I in the back seat were like so much laundry tossed around in the dryer as the car swerved from lane to lane down the highway. Bob, or Joe, I don’t which was driving, only knew that if you pushed on the right pedal you went forward and if you pushed on the one next to it you stopped. Bob, or Joe, had no concept that it was possible to go forward at a constant speed. It was either full speed ahead or “all stop, full reverse thrusters!” Then there was the problem of steering. Bob, or Joe, knew that the idea was to go in the direction that the yellow stripey lines pointed, but he wasn’t at all aware that if he got going in the right direction, he only had to make very minute turns on the wheel to go in a straight line. Rather, he apparently had figured out that moving the wheel left and right steered the car, so that is what he did, he actively steered the whole time by moving the wheel right and left that resulted in continuous sharp zigs and zags. Imagine a 3 year old behind the wheel and you get the idea.

Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the car had an automatic transmission. I say fortunately because we did not have the added distraction of clutching and shifting to add to the opportunity for disaster. I say unfortunately because it is likely they could not have driven the car at all if it was a manual transmission and, thus, Manuel and I would not be about to die a horrible, fiery, bodies smeared all over the highway death.

It may have been the longest 20 minutes of my life, mostly because I was trying to imprint each second on my brain, knowing it was my last.

Suddenly Bob, or Joe, slammed on the brakes and the car was skidding sideways to a stop in a huge cloud of dust. I looked out and as the dust cleared saw we were home, the farm, the labor camp, salvation. Against all the odds, we made it and still lived.

Bob, or Joe, opened the passenger door and got out so we could push the seat forward and get out of the car. My legs were shaking, and Manuel, normally a brown sort of fellow, was as white as a sheet. Bob, or Joe, was all smiles and seemed as happy as I had ever seen him. So did the driver, Joe, or Bob. I can remember standing beside the car and suddenly realizing that Bob and Joe were grateful to Manuel and me. Giving us a ride had made them very happy, I guess because they thought they were repaying us in some way for all the transporting to town and back we did for them.

Bob, or Joe, pounded me on the back while smiling hugely with his brilliant white teeth that made the sun look pale. He was clearly nearly overjoyed. I tell you, I really liked those guys.

Then he jumped back in the car and slammed the door. Bob, or Joe, hit the gas and sprayed gravel all over us as they fishtailed down the road, disappearing in a cloud of dust. Hi-Ho Silver, away!

I came back from my field on Monday morning after moving my lines and found the farmer waiting for me. Had I seen Bob and Joe he asked? He had a worried expression on his face.

Oh, oh, I thought. I told him I had seen them on Saturday afternoon.

Really, he asked with interest, where?

Well, here and sort of in town, I replied. He didn’t say anything and just stared at me. Now that I am an old fart and have a teenage son of my own, I realize how it was he knew there was more to the story. His look got to me. I broke down and explained the circumstances.

“Where they hell did they get a car?” he demanded, then apparently realizing that I wouldn’t know had another thought. “Oh, crap! We’re they drunk?”

I could only nod.

The farmer didn’t say another word. He just spun on his heel and the last I saw him he was high stepping double time for the main house.

On Tuesday, there was no word of Bob and Joe.

On Wednesday, still no word.

On Thursday about 3pm the farmer’s big Chrysler pulled up in front of the labor camp. The two back doors opened and out stepped Bob and Joe on either side. They looked worse for wear, with cuts and bruises all over their faces, heads and arms, and Bob, or Joe, had a heavy limp. They both shot me an impish grin, but went straight to their apartment and didn’t come out for the rest of the day.

As it turns out, once the farmer talked to me, he realized what must have happened. While drunk in town somebody offered them the opportunity to buy the Chevelle. It being pretty purple, with dice hanging from the rear view mirror and dingle balls all across the visor, and as soused as they were, how could they refuse? The farmer knew too well they could not drive. He started calling every hospital, sheriff, and city and small town police department he could think of. It took him two days, but he found them in jail in Vale, Oregon, about 75 miles away.

In Vale, their luck ran out. Bob, or Joe, ran the car straight into a big oak tree, totaling it. Frankly, I am surprised they got so far before crashing. The Vale police arrested Bob, or Joe, for drunken driving and probably a host of other charges. The other one, Joe, or Bob, they also arrested, probably for public drunkenness or aiding and abetting, or something like that. That was in truth probably a kindness by the police since he clearly had nowhere to go, no money (they both having spent most of it on the car and beer) and was unable to communicate to the police who they might call to come get him.

The farmer drove to Vale first thing on Thursday morning. He had already arranged to see the DA with whom he was able to make a quick deal. The farmer would tow the car away and take care of it, pay for damages to the fence and tree, and promised that Bob and Joe would never show up in Vale again, driving or otherwise. There was a quick impromptu hearing with the local judge with some fines involved that the farmer also paid. The police release Bob and Joe to his custody, and he brought them home.

Apparently, Bob and Joe also had to promise the farmer that they would not go to town anymore or drink. For the rest of the time I was there, they did not. Manuel and I lost our source of easy beer, which probably wasn’t a bad thing considering. The truth was we only used them to buy us beer 3 or 4 times the whole summer. It's not like we got to town every weekend, and even when we did we usually did not have beer. We never had it on the farm, ever.

The episode with the Chevelle happened in early August. Three weeks later, I left to go back home. My senior year in high school started a week after that.

The day I left, a Sunday, Bob and Joe made a point to come around to shake my hand, give me a big hug, and flash their brilliant smiles at me. I never saw them again. I really liked those guys.