My Dad's Favorite Joke

This tractor was one my dad bought while I was in Germany from '72-'74. Air conditioning, radio, and a heater were all things nice about this tractor that the old D-6 Caterpillar did not have. When it was early in the spring or late in the fall, dad would put up canvas panels that would force the heat of the engine air back to the driver's seat. The disadvantage was that it sent dirt into your eyes too. I always hated riding on the old tractor when it was cold, but because I was in school, dad was the one who knew most about that whole story. I could always tell when he used the curtains: his eyes would be red when he came home at night from the ranch, and that happened every year when dad was doing fall planting or plowing or doing tractor work early in the spring. He would alone at the ranch and work all week to get things finished.

My senior year was a time when my friends and I started to get into trouble at school, and on weekends we really started having some fun. I remember my dad asking me if I was doing a lot of work at school, and I really wasn't. I was stupid to tell my dad I wasn't doing a lot at school. Dad took me out of school for a week to help with spring work. At the end of the six days, he smiled and said, "Now, if you think that school is just a lot of fun and games and if you want to do something else with your time, you just let me know." What most people do not know about a day's work at the ranch during critical times was that it began long before the sun came up, and dad was always still doing things at midnight. His dad did it that way. My dad did it that way, and when I was with him working on the ranch, I did it that way too.
I still miss him, and as odd as it seems, I enjoyed the work. Almost twenty years since his death, I still miss working with him. The last words I told my dad just before I left to return to Idaho Falls hours before he passed away were ones I whispered into his ear: I told him how much I loved working with him and how much I loved him and how much I would miss his picking me up to go to the ranch.

He played several jokes on me. First, whenever the Malad School District had a school cancellation because of snow or cold, he would call immediately. The phone would ring, and would tell me I had ten minutes. Five minutes later he was in the driveway, honking the horn and revving the engine. Dad had a large motor in his Ford pickup at the time, and he the exhaust system had a great sound, except at seven in the morning. When I came out the door, dad would sit in the truck and laugh when he saw me.

One year late in the fall in the 80's, I was running the old D-6 and planting grain. Dad liked using it, because it didn't pack the ground as much as the wheeled machinery like the John Deere or the Steiger tractors we had. I was just getting dark. When you drill, you check the grain at the end of the field before you turn to ensure that grain is still dropping into the ground through the boots. You could see it in a small opening near some cogs in ten spots or so on each drill. Dad ran behind me without my seeing him, climbed aboard the drill exactly where I would look, and he sat on the grain tank. I turned. Dad waved like you would to a little kid, all four fingers in unison going up and down while he folded his arms. I almost jumped out of the seat of the tractor. The field was ten miles away from the Interstate, and usually at night, a coyote would jog just beyond the lights. Whenever a rabbit sat frozen in fear in the lights, the coyote would find a new entree. When you shut the tractor off at night, there was complete silence and the darkness was overwhelming. The sounds were spooky, crickets and howls during the summer and spring and just howls during the rest of the year. There were a lot of coyotes. Needless to say, it would get "spooky" at night.

But dad's favorite joke in those final years is what still makes me smile. "What does a 600 pound canary say to a cat," he would say grinning that broad smile he would always make. His eyes would twinkle. His voice lowered into a very deep baritone. "Here Kitty Kitty." The best part of the joke was my dad's response. I still miss it.