Karen Schwaller: Seeking the bolt
It all began with a simple question while standing outside the combine in the field during a breakdown at harvest time this year.
And I’m not talking about my emotional status.
“Can you run home and get me a bolt this size?” my husband asked, handing me a bolt.
He told me where that size bolt would be, so I—thinking it would be a short sidetrack–got in the pickup and drove less than three miles to my husband’s farm shop.
And that’s where this simple plan went awry.
I scampered over to the bolt bin and saw two different-colored shelves of drawers.
“Which one am I supposed to get the bolt out of?” I wondered. He told me the top left shelf, but was that for the gray bins or the red ones? I couldn’t read the hieroglyphics on any of the drawers that had writing on them. Others had nothing to tell me about their contents.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. My mind began to work like a mother on steriods interrogating her teenager about where they’re going. How long should the bolt be? What kind of top should it have? This one screws in partway then stops—what does that even mean?
So many questions hovering over the simple job of grabbing a bolt and nut. As a grain cart operator, I understand the urgency when the combine is sitting idle. It’s the equivalent of discovering you forgot to make the dinner rolls just as the holiday doorbell begins to ring.
Thus, the pressure I felt as I stood before the bolt bins with my eyes spinning like they did in 1970s cartoons, knowing my husband’s angst while the combine sits idle. So I did what all farm wives do when their laundry list contains more questions about farm bolts than which detergent would get the pizza mustard out of my sweatshirt.
I called my husband.
Naturally, he didn’t answer.
I tried again, but still nothing. By this time I remembered he said he has to almost stand outside sometimes to get phone service, so I lumbered over the boards and around the sawhorses to get to the door to try that call again.
Still, crickets.
I called a dozen times. I found out later that he was on the phone with the implement dealer all that time. Good call. Still, I fancied it a bold move to ignore my call when he specifically sent me on that retrieval mission.
I imagined my husband saying, “My wife’s calling—I gotta go…!”
Today I laugh hysterically at such a preposterous thought—do husbands ever really stop their conversations to take a call from their wives? Even if they have sent them into the jungle that is their farm shop to lay their hands on something they need?
I decided to make an educated guess and took all the drawers of both colors I thought I might need, and tossed them into the pickup before starting my dusty journey back to the field, some 25 minutes later. My husband called just as I was approaching the combine, unaware that I had returned to the field.
“Are you back with the bolt yet?” he inquired, noticing my delay.
I wondered if he noticed that I answered when he called the first time.
Or that I wasn’t back when he called to ask if I was back.
He dug through all of the drawers I’d brought to find what he needed—and was happy to find one bolt out of all of it that would work.
Apparently, it was good to drag all of my angst with me to the field in the form of “possibility” bolt and nut drawers, since I couldn’t get my questions answered by the CEO.
I think this Christmas I’ll craft a beautiful sign to put in his stocking. It will read, “My wife’s calling—I gotta go.” He could clip it into anything he drives, or tuck it into his phone.
What a great and useful Christmas gift it will be—one I know he’ll truly appreciate.
(Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, Iowa. She can be reached at kjschwaller@outlook.com.)
2025 Karen Schwaller
