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This weekend and last, my husband and I worked on updating our new race trailer. We had to pull up the floor and replace it with new plywood. Then we coated it with garage floor epoxy and put sprinkles in it. (That was fun!) This weekend, we took the wall panels off and insulated the trailer. What a difference in heat and noise control! Running the power tools and helping with the table saw made me think about my dad and all the time I used to spend just hanging around with him.

I used to go out to the shop just to watch him work on the hay equipment or a woodworking project because I enjoyed his company and seeing his creativity. More often than not, though, he would put me to work. That’s how I learned how to change spark plugs, run power tools, and make new tools out of old parts.

One time he built his own sand blaster out of an air compressor. He built a wooden box, cut holes in the front and stapled long welding gloves inside. He had me run to the house and find something to test it on. He etched my name into a apple juice jug. Then we found a mirror and covered it with contact paper. After using a craft knife to cut out a flower design, he blasted that too. There were a couple of spots where the sand took off the protective layer, but all in all, it turned out really nice.

When he decided to put an addition on our house, of course I was right there with him. He made this special jig for putting on the siding so that every layer was spaced exactly the same. When it got too high for me to reach from the ground, he had me lay on the roof and hold the boards from there.

Growing up in a ranching community that was far from town, Dad was always improving and fixing things. Every year, the ranchers would get together and help each other for branding. This involves roping a calf, bringing it to the ground, and marking the rancher’s brand in its hide with a hot iron. This can be traumatic for the calf and sometimes they take a while to recover. One year, my dad welded together a “branding table” where the calf was walked down a chute, squeezed by two panels, tipped on its side, branded, stood back up and released. No one had ever used one of these contraptions before and the other ranchers laughed at him. They said it would never work. Well, it did, and the calves resumed their normal behavior like nothing had happened to them. We had less infection, too. The other ranchers soon started using them, too.

On our mountain ranch, we did all the work, even putting up the hay. Unlike the eastern plains of Colorado, mountain haying is a once-a-year deal. When my sisters and I were old enough, we became part of the hay crew, too. Someone had to run the swather to cut the hay, another person raked it into windrows after it had time to dry and cure, another person baled the hay and someone else was responsible for picking the bales and stacking them. I think I did just about every job, but my favorite was the swather. It’s kind of like a gigantic lawn mower. One time, we were far up the valley doing custom haying for a neighbor. Dad sent me up to a different field to cut the hay. It was a beautiful day and things were going smoothly until I broke some of the teeth that cut the grass. I had helped Dad replace teeth before, so I shut off the machine and got some tools. I climbed under the swather and started hitting the rivets that hold the teeth in place so I could break them out. One of them was stuck and I waled on it for quite a while. Pretty soon our yellow Ford truck rolled up and Dad got out. “Hadn’t heard you in a while,” he said. “Thought I’d better come check on you.” Of course, he had the teeth out and replaced in minutes. I think I spend a half an hour under that darn thing.

I even learned a little animal husbandry from him. I helped him replace a prolapsed uterus in a cow one time and even assisted the vet with a cow cesarian. He built a chicken coop for me and one night, helped me defend a laying hen from a determined skunk. We saved her and most of her babies.

There was nothing my dad couldn’t do. If he didn’t know, he taught himself. I even remember him calling my geometry teacher one night because of some project he was doing and he couldn’t figure out the pitch of a roof.

I loved working with my dad and just the smell of sawdust can take me back to my childhood.