Raindrops Aren't Falling on My Head

All is takes is a little rain on a hot and cloudy July morning to send me into a flashback that isn’t necessarily my most cherished trip down memory lane.

When I was a freshman in high school my parents bought a cattle ranch in the Gisela Valley about 12 – 15 miles SSW of Payson, Arizona. It consisted of about 150 acres of fee land and 13,000 acres of land leased from the BLM. The fee acreage was on two levels, a lower level that ran along the Tonto River and an upper level on an elevated mesa. On the lower level, we grazed horses, milk cows, a fee sheep, and a steer or two that were destined for the freezer. We also grew alfalfa for hay in a couple of fields on that level. The top level was undeveloped when we bought the ranch. Little did I know at the time that it would become the source of a flashback in July 2006 in Bakersfield, CA.

One of my jobs on the ranch was to help with the irrigation of the fields on the lower level. Our water entitlement was subject to a strict schedule that could have us “letting in the water” at any time of the day or night. Getting up for water duty at 3:00AM was not unusual. We weren’t exactly a high-tech operation, either; in fact, we weren’t even low-tech irrigators. We had a few concrete “gates” with metal slides that we lifted or lowered to allow water into this or that field. But we also donned our rubber boots and used a good old No. 2 shovel to cut the ditch banks open to get the water where we needed it, and then to fill those hole back up to stop the flow.

I liked working in the lower fields. I felt like this was honest work that Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper or Alan Ladd might have performed in some classic Western movie. I did this work with my dad, grandpa or some other adult hired hand, so it seemed like a “man’s job”. What I ended up doing on the upper level lacked any such redeeming value.

On the upper level of our fee property we built a new home, barn and corral. Then my dad added two artificial water retention ponds, a pump system and several fields for growing various forms of cattle feed other than alfalfa. These fields were watered by water pumped from the ponds into rows of movable sprinkler pipe. The astute reader now knows where this posting is going. Someone had to move those rows of sprinkler pipe from section to section and field to field. During the summer months “someone” was me. My dad spent untold sums on this money pit, but he wouldn’t buy enough pipe to eliminate the need to move it.

Moving sprinkler pipe isn’t the hardest job in the world, but to a teenager it’s a hard-enough mix of long, frustrating and unbelievably boring work. This was not the kind of work that Randolph, Gary or Alan would have touched. I didn’t do this work with my dad, grandpa or any adult hired hand. I did this work by myself most of the time. Occasionally, I got a rudimentary form of “help” from my little brother, although I use that word in the loosest possible sense. It was actually pre-rudimentary assistance that bordered on being anti-help. In other words, he was a normal 11-year old. More times than not, we ended up in a rock or dirt-clod throwing fight, at which time my brother would walk off the job, an option that I didn’t have.

Sprinkler pipe and sprinkler heads are tools of the devil. I’d think I had them all in place and properly hooked up only to watch pipe link “blow out” as soon as the water pressure hit the joints. By the time I got the pumps turned off small ponds would have formed around the breaks. That meant getting into rubber boots and heading into mud holes, mud that was more than capable of pulling the boots off my feet.

Even if the pipe joints held in place, there was another challenge to overcome – having the sprinkler heads get clogged with wasp bodies. Somehow, dumb-as-dirt wasps that landed on the pond would get sucked into the pumps and then shot through the pipes only to come to a complete halt at the tip of a sprinkler head. It was never a bee or another bug; it was always a wasp. I can’t count the number of wasps that met their untimely end in this manner; at least a couple of them every time I fired up the system. While that’s a fitting end for a nasty insect favored by the devil, it was a constant problem for “someone” in charge of the pipe system. I would not shut down the pumps to solve this one. I’d just don the boots and trudge out to the problem spots with a piece of baling wire to jab the critters loose, which put me in a rather waspish mood.

Another odd memory is that I don’t recall the crops in those field ever getting over six inches tall, or ever being harvested. I’m sure they grew and I’m sure they were harvested. But, all I can recall is the dirt, the pipe, the mud, the wasps, the sun, the sweat, and how much I wanted school to start again.

So, what’s the flashback? Every morning when there was a pipe move scheduled anywhere in next 48 hours I would scan the sky for promising clouds. If it rained, I might get a pipe-moving reprieve. If it rained enough, I might not have to go out there for three or four days. I would pray for rain. If I knew how, I would have danced for rain. If I had not been afraid of the punishment, I would have sacrificed small animals in order to appease the rain gods. I would delay the pipe move as long as I could if the sky looked like there was any reasonable chance of rain. Unfortunately, with the devil involved as he was, I suffered a lot of disappointment.

On countless days, the dark and promising clouds would form on the horizon as if on cue, only to literally split at the head of the river canyon and go on both sides of, but not over, our land. Or, it would rain, but only enough to make the pipe move twice as hard; not enough to equal a sprinkling.

As a result of this deeply scarring experience, when I step out into a summer morning and see a little rain or the mocking clouds that promise a little rain I am to this day immediately thrust back to the upper mesa not far from the end of the Gisela Valley. An involuntary reflex comes over me as I utter the prayer of the nearly hopeless, “Dear God, I hope I don’t have to move the pipe today.” Inasmuch as the devil is so directly involved in that work, you’d think that God would be more responsive. But, as I said, I’ve suffered a lot of disappointment waiting on a little rain from promising clouds.