Sword diecast Peterbilt 379 tractor in 1/50 scale. Photo by author
The scale dude, framed in my right door mirror, stops what he is doing, popping his head out of the door to watch the truck, the hill and me.
The cab of the old Peterbilt smells of diesel and sweat and we are both caked in a half-inch of dust. The Cummings is rattling and I am shaking a little too.Ahead, 200 yards to shift 8 gears if we are to have any hope of topping the summit - miss a gear and the dust clears and you face the humiliation of shutting down the entire operation waiting for loader to pull you over the top and the ridicule of the other drivers waiting their turn at the hill and of course they always make it.
That’s it then.
We go.
Making the first three gears with ease, the old Pete’s pulling hard now, off road hauling and shouldering twice the weight of freshly bucked pine that she was built for. 100 yards. 35 mph, crunch time. Hitting back-the hill robs us of three easy gears in rapid succession.
‘Still in the game kid?’ the taunt from a grinning hill. The Pete’s is pulling her heart out, her cowl jerking with each shift. Left arm poised through the rattling steering wheel, resting on the short aux transmission stick shift, the right hand man handling the longer main gearshift, waiting for the perfect second, the perfect shift, when all the gears are perfectly aligned in the transmission and hopefully the moons in the heavens-make it and the aux slides into place like hot butter-miss it and the main transmission snaps out of gear with enough force to break a wrist-make it and you are over the top-miss it and the world comes to a thunderous stop, with the hill smirking, the sun blotted out in a shroud of dust and the Pete sinking deeper into the loose gravel of her grasp; the impetuous crackle of the bosses voice over the radio;
‘Going to have to do better then that kid.’
The Pete, the hill, and me.
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