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COWBOY
LIFE
ON A SMALL SPREAD
by C.
F. Eckhardt | 
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| Cowboyin'
ain't all it's cracked up to be. It's not all horsebackin' and branding and Saturday
night at the dance hall. Herewith a view of some of the cowboy chores Roy and
Gene never did in the Saturday matinee. |
WindmillsThe
windmill, according to Dr. Walter
Prescott Webb in THE GREAT PLAINS, was one of three inventions that made possible
the settlement of the great central plains of North America by the white man.
The other two were barbed wire and Colt's revolver. Truly the windmill-powered
waterpump with its huge fan atop a spidery wooden or metal tower is one of the
great symbols of the American plains, from Texas to North Dakota and beyond. Unfortunately,
the windmill is a mechanical device. All mechanical devices have to be, from time
to time, oiled or greased.
On the old-time windmills, particularly the
Aermotor mills made in the first half of the 20th century, the gears that transmuted
the whirling action of the fan to the up-and-down motion of the sucker rod ran
in an oil bath. This bath was filled with SAE 40w or 50w crankcase oil. From time
to time that oil had to be changed.
The oil sump had a plug in the bottom
like the plug in an automobile's oil pan. It was generally a 1" hex-head bolt-and
no matter how frequently the oil in the sump was changed, no matter how well the
plug was greased when it was replaced, any time you went up the tower to change
the oil in the sump, the plug was rusted solid. Breaking it loose required a two-foot
Stilson wrench with a two-foot cheater pipe on the handle.
Unfortunately,
the platform you had to work on was only about three feet square. That meant about
2½ feet of Stilson and cheater pipe hung out over anywhere from a 20-foot to a
60- foot drop to the hardpan below. You planted your backside on the platform,
put your back firmly against the tower, held on with both hands, and kicked the
bejeezis out of the cheater pipe in hopes of breaking the plug loose. About five
times out of six-the first five times you kicked the thing- all you did was knock
the wrench loose from the plug, which meant wrench and cheater pipe fell to the
ground or into the stock tank. You then had the pleasure of climbing down the
tower, either retrieving the wrench and cheater pipe from the fresh cow-pie they
landed in, or fishing them out of the stock tank, which is where they came to
rest if they didn't land in a cow-pie. And, of course, on at least one try either
the wrench or the pipe would fetch you a clip across the non-kicking shin, which
delayed matters until you could stop hollering.
Folks said that if you
heated the plug with a blowtorch it would come out easier. You could also
set fire to the oil in the sump that way. An oil-sump fire was almost impossible
to put out, and since the heat drew the temper out of the gears inside, the whole
head had to be replaced, which wasn't cheap. Besides, if the mill was mounted
on a wooden tower rather than a steel one, an oil-sump fire could turn into a
real adventure.
Getting the plug out of the sump wasn't the only
adventure you could have on a windmill tower. At the bottom of the mill there
was a long handle you could pull down to immobilize the head while you worked
on it, along with a loop of baling wire to slip over that handle to make sure
it stayed in place. A wise windmill grease monkey always pulled that handle down
and fastened it with the wire.
Then, of course, there was that deathly
still day when not a breath of air stirred the dust anywhere-so you neglected
to lock the mill before climbing the tower. The last breeze, a couple of days
ago, came out of the south, so the fan faced south, the tail pointing at the north
star. You confidently climbed the east side of the tower-and just as you got belt-buckle
high on the platform, a gust of wind came out of the west. The unlocked fan swung
to face the breeze-and the tail came around to the east! If you were lucky-very
lucky-all it did was take off your hat and send it spinning to the ground. To
land, of course, in a fresh cow-pie. If you weren't lucky it caught you
upside the head. When you woke up-if you woke up-you discovered you were
the one in the fresh cow-pie.
Even if you did remember to shut off the
mill, there was another very probable adventure, in the form of a nasty surprise,
awaiting you just below the platform. You never noticed it from the ground, of
course, but when you came nose to nose with that basketball-sized red wasp or
yellowjacket nest in the shade under the platform, you definitely noticed it.
Some of the finest Olympic-quality high diving in sports history has been performed
by fully-clothed cowboys from near the top of a windmill tower into a stock tank
with a squadron of annoyed red wasps or yellowjackets in hot pursuit.
Assuming
you managed to get the oil changed without falling off the tower, dropping the
Stilson on your shin, setting fire to the sump, or jumping into the tank with
a pursuit-squadron of wasps on your tail, there was another chore to be performed
on the windmill-and it was nastier. About once a year you had to pull the sucker
rod and change the leathers.
A windmill's pump is simplicity in itself.
When the sucker rod goes down, it is forced into the water in the well. Leather
washers above the perforated disk on the bottom of the rod are forced up by water
pressure, opening the perforations. When the rod comes up water pressure forces
the leathers down atop the perforations, sealing them and lifting a column of
water. The next stroke lifts twice as much water, and eventually water flows out
of the well casing into the runoff pipe that supplies the stock tank. Those leathers
deteriorate over time-their usual life is about a year. When they've deteriorated
enough the pump doesn't work any more. It's time to change the leathers.
You start by turning off the mill and disconnecting the sucker rod. Don't drop
it. If your well is 300 feet deep with water to the 100-foot level, you'll only
have about 120 feet of sucker rod. If you drop it, you've got the problem of fishing
120 feet of 1½" wooden or ¼" steel sucker rod out of a 5" diameter well casing
180 feet down.
Sucker rods come in sections, so you lift each section carefully
out and disconnect it from the section below, being careful not to drop the sections.
The sections, having been submerged in water for a year or so and usually being
joined with metal, are of course rusted tight. This brings you back to Stilson
and cheater pipe, but in this case you need two Stilsons and cheater pipes, one
for each section of rod.
When you finally get all the sucker rod pulled
you have to take the nut off the end-more rust-remove the old leathers, soak the
new ones in water a while, put them on, replace the perforated disk and the nut
that holds it in place, and put the sucker rod back in the well-without dropping
it. By the time you've finished the wind will have died and you'll have to climb
the tower and spin the fan by hand for a couple of hours so the tank will have
water in it for the stock.
Another
thing cowboys did-and do-that you never saw Hoppy or Red Ryder doing, is fix barbed
wire fences...Page
2 - Barbed Wire Fences and Prickly Pear Cactus > |
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