Any Topic Essay

By

Nick Daugherty

           

Rock Picking

As the years have progressed my dad has gotten more gators and people to pick the rocks.  It kind of just started out with my brothers and I on the loader.  Finally, we got old enough to drive by ourselves and my dad sent us out with a tractor and wagon.  Gators came along shortly after and we hired a classmate or two to fill the empty seats.  Now we go out with three gators and we have Tyler Wieberdink and two other people come and help.

            Although some people and most kids think that rock picking is the worst job in the world, I don’t think it’s the worst but it isn’t the best.  Bending over and picking up rocks all day gets boring but it has to be done.           

However, to get rid of the boredom we think of things to do.  Like one time we found a cover to a pail and we played tag with it from gator to gator.  You had to throw it and hit the other gator for them to be it.  I don’t think we pick up a whole lot of rocks during that game but it was fun.  Another time we collected corncobs that still had corn on them and when we finally had enough we started a little war with them.  It was pretty intense one guy had his hat taken off by one of the corncobs thrown at him.   If there aren’t any corncobs in a field we will just use dirt clods. Those hurt a little bit more than the corncobs. 

            However, the past couple years we have been wrecking the transmissions in the gators by trying to go up steep hills.  We took the transmission out of one of them already and had to get it replaced.  We race with the gators too that sometimes turns out good and sometimes not.  Let’s just say Tyler and I are fortunate that we didn’t get hurt one time.  We started racing on the road against my brothers.  I had a great plan for hitting a short cut.  On the intersection we had to make a right turn, there was a grass area and we took the ditch.  When going back up on the road I couldn’t decide whether to take the approach or the ditch, so I took both.  We hit both the ditch and approach at about 20MPH.  Tyler flew out of his seat into the air about two feet and I almost fell out and got ran over.  Our buckets and lunch boxes went flying everywhere on the gravel road. It took us about five to ten minutes to find all the stuff back, including the shovel that got thrown to the other ditch on the other side of the road.  We met up with my brothers after we found all of my stuff back. 

            We make rock-picking fun even though it is tedious work.  We even hooked up radios so we don’t get so bored any more.