A Bucyrus’ Brawny Bellow

Among the highest art forms devised by mankind, Harley-Davidson motorcycles rank close to the top of the list. The deep-throated, all-American, guts-and-glory roar of their engines brings tears to my eyes.

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I’ve always loved the sound of power, as did my lifelong friend and mentor Jaybird. Often we’d stop and listen to the steady staccato throb of diesel engines as they pushed center pivot irrigation systems in huge circles, pumping homemade rain to thirsty cotton plants on my father’s Mississippi Delta farm. Once this love of machines and the music they make got my friends and me in a ton of teenage trouble. A drainage canal bordered Dad’s farm, and occasionally the county’s Bucyrus dragline dredged it of debris and silt. While traveling to and from work sites, it clanked clumsily on flat tracks, but when raising, lowering, and swinging its bucket, the monstrous machine pirouetted around its axis like a beautiful ballerina. The Bucyrus’ brawny bellow hypnotized us barefoot boys. As it dumped cascades of water, lily pads, reeking sludge, eels, turtles, garfish, snakes, and other slimy denizens that inhabit canals, the engine’s effortless, uninterrupted roar was a symphony of strength to our young ears. One day while the dragline operator readied the machine for a day’s work, I asked to sit in the cab and watch him operate it. He agreed, even offering to show me how to crank the engine and swing the bucket.

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When a spell of heavy rains set in and filled the canal to its banks, the dredging was halted, setting the stage for much muddy mischief. “That big Bucyrus dragline is out in the middle of nowhere,” I said to my eager pals. “Nobody will know if we play on it. Shoot, I’ll even show y’all how to crank it.” Crank I did, and pushed levers and pedals until I could swing the bucket in arcs over the water. Taking turns at the controls, we climbed in and out of the cab and rode the bucket over the canal, flinging ourselves outward, kicking and screaming down to the water. Soon, pedals, gauges, levers, and seat were coated with mud. Our errant adolescent adventure halted abruptly when a pickup driven by Jaybird pulled up. His face was livid with anger, and a face even more livid belonged to the man next to him: Dad. Jaybird killed the engine and ordered us to climb in the back of the pickup. We muddy, miserable muskrats huddled hopelessly, watching two angry men’s heads in the cab nodding vigorously while discussing our impending punishment. “Boys, Jaybird is driving the dragline to the farm shop,” Dad growled. “Here are brushes and buckets. Y’all will spit shine that machine’s cab from top to bottom, and then — and then! — I am going to belt y’all’s butts to frazzles.” And, while Jaybird stood witness, that’s exactly what happened. I still love the sound of powerful engines, but there’s one that I would just as soon never hear again: a Bucyrus’ brawny bellow.

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