by Tammy J. Finney
Columnist

The first Tuesday of each month has always been vegetable beef soup day. If Christmas or any other holiday happened to fall on that particular day of the week, homemade soup was served as the main course with a side order of turkey, ham, or red, white, and blue burgers.

Mom had her order of things down pat when preparing her delicious dish, and it was the one Betty Crocker staple that I actually learned to cook well. Timing was everything in the five-hour start-to-finish process. Jobs around the house could be done in between the meat-simmering and vegetable-

peeling, but a pot not watched turned into a wicked, wicked meal.

When bounced on the kitchen counter, the tester dumpling didn’t quite make the required six-inch rebound, meaning the kettle of goodies was about a half-hour from perfection. “As the World Turns” was tuning in and it was a good day…

Holly had received the news of an incurable disease and I wiped tears away as I answered the phone during a commercial. The words “Honey, I need a pull” made me bawl out loud and curse the day I married a farmer.

Ed said it would only take a minute or two—oh, sure, just like the last technical difficulty he got himself into that’s still out in the mud somewhere! As I scrambled for an excuse of any kind, Ed used the silence on my end of the phone to give directions to the field he was in and to tell me to bring along the extra-heavy log chain and long-handled spade.

Weighing the two options of chef’s-delight soup or a very angry husband buried in mud, I repeated our wedding vows out loud to myself, emphasizing the word “worse” as I walked out the door, pouring our

Tuesday evening meal into the dog dish.

The scene was just as I had expected. The top half of the tractor was visible, which was a good thing, but Ed’s hat was torn in half and I didn’t dare ask on what part of the planet he had left the field cultivator.

Getting out of the pickup, I repeated to myself the word “better” over and over again as the situation most certainly could not get any worse. Innocently thinking I had nothing to do with the big fat muddy mess in the field, I guess I was terribly wrong; while peeling the potatoes for the soup, somehow I had steered the tractor toward the mud hole at the same time!

I didn’t dare say “Triple A” out loud—that would have ended my life—but I did sneak in a funny about digging down to China for the rest of the tractor, making sure all the while that Ed had enough mud on his boots so he couldn’t move and that his hands were empty of wife-threatening objects.

“Put it in four low, and when I wave, floor it.” At this point of no return, I’m hooked to ten tons of steel, and for a slight instant I imagine a happy-go-lucky fellow at the controls of the tractor, wearing a suit from “Green Acres.” Stupidly, I start humming the song. I guess I missed the “wave” as my cheerful little jingle was rudely interrupted by a hammer crashing into the back windshield of the pickup.

Wishing the truck came equipped with an “eject” button, I would have gladly pressed it even if the directions stated “no parachute connected; you will land on your head.”

With teeth clenched, I tapped out the “Green Acres” jingle on the steering wheel with my thumbs while staring into the rearview mirror, holding my breath, and waiting for instructions.

The “floor it” wave commenced, looking more like a one-armed, high-speed windshield wiper than a “please pull me out of this mess, honey; I’m an idiot.” Just like all the other pulls and right on track, the pickup slid sideways, and of, course, it was because my wheels were turned in the wrong direction.

What was left of Ed’s hat was now torn into little-bitty shreds as he made a disgruntled counter-circling direction with both arms, like all the other times I crapshooted the start of a pull.

With wheels facing the proper direction, the pull was in motion once again, only this time I really feared for my life as the mud and smoke from the pickup tires limited my view to the little Hawaiian dancer on the dash.

With white knuckles on the steering wheel, I could feel the truck moving and quickly planned my own funeral if or when the two hundred horses under the tractor’s hood reached solid ground before I did.

Pulling the happy little dancer off the dash and tossing her out the window made me feel a whole lot better when everything had come to a stop and both machines had completed their mud wrestling for the day. Ed unhooked the chain without a glance up, down, or sideways to acknowledge that Emily had saved the day.

Over chicken pot pies for supper, we both laughed at the dog, wondering how he could eat the entire pot of soup and leave every carrot untouched. No words will ever be spoken out loud about pulls, as it

would result in thousands of wifeless farmers.

I fully intend to call the telephone company one of these days to install caller ID for “Honey, I need a pull”…