Semi View: The other colors of autumn

What?

Oh, I'm not talking about the leaves; I'm talking about the grain trucks.

You see for many of us involved in agriculture those seem to be the only colors we get time to notice in the fall. In fact, often by the time we get done with harvest and get a chance to slow down and look up, the leaves are gone.

I been taken by the diversity of everyone's trucks. I guess it's because I have spent so many hours in line waiting to dump a truckload of corn or soybeans.

The trucks, their colors, and especially the decals with the farm name are as diverse as the farmers themselves.

Of course, I'm sure looking at the truck colors and the farmer's decals is probably not something every trucker does. (That's the advantage, or maybe disadvantage, of being a woman trucker.)

Sometimes the quieter the farmer, the "louder" the color of the trucks. I often wonder, did the farmer just buy the used truck that was the best deal? Some did, obviously. There's the purple truck with the blue bed -- talk about clashing. Or the bright yellow trucks with silver trailers. And of course, there are lots of old trucks, with rusty trailers -- really good deals, I'm sure.

Others seemed to have put a lot of thought into their colors. There is the red, white and blue truck with the red, white and blue tarp -- very American. There are also the sleek gray, red and black trucks with white and silver trailers.

The farm names, required by law, are also diverse. Some are huge, taking up the whole door. Others are so small you can't even see them. Some are written with grease pencil. Just like leaves (or is that snowflakes?) no two trucks are alike!

If you look closely, you'll also see that many of the trucks have "scars."

The dents and scratches are usually not made by traveling on the road, but by squeezing trucks made in the 21st century, into elevators built for trucks from the 20th century -- like 1950.

I always think of our local elevators as an obstacle course. Sometimes an inch or two can make a difference between catching a step, a tire or a mirror on a building, railing or into the side of a concrete hallway dump pit built back when grain was hauled in the back of pickup trucks.

And of course I'm always thankful for the guy who knocked the hole (the size of a mirror) into the ends of some of those pits. His embarrassment means I have an easier time driving out, provided my mirror is the same size as his.

For some reason, I've always noticed grain trucks. Maybe it was foreshadowing?

In fact, as a college student working summers and Christmas breaks at the Jones Store in the Blue Ridge Mall, I was appalled when I saw a two-ton grain truck in the parking lot. I called my farmer-boyfriend (guess who?) and told him how some "silly" farmer actually drove his grain truck to the mall. "Can you imagine," I asked?

"Well," he calmly explained, "he probably took a load of pigs or grain somewhere in the city and his wife went along. They probably stopped on the way home to do some Christmas shopping. I think it was pretty sweet of him."

"Well, I'll never ride to the mall in a grain truck," I thought to myself.

Yeah, right.

Fast-forwarding 20 plus years, not only have I been to a mall, I've also been to a grocery store, convenience store and fast food restaurant in a grain truck -- driving it there by myself. Now I call it multi-tasking -- farmer style.

So I guess that's why mom warned, "Never say never."