But despite all of that it was, of course, the job of the bog to give me the most nerve wracking, and surprisingly short, drive of my life. As I usually get into these situations, Basil told me that we needed to move a tractor from one part of the bog to another, as the turf is growing dry and was ready to be collected. There were a few hiccups from the outset, the first being that the battery of the tractor was dead and we needed to lug out a replacement, the bog itself was still too soft from recent rains so we would have to walk part of the way, and finally Basil’s back was a bit banjaxed so I’d be in the hard metal seat when it came to the actual moving. No matter though, since I’m a Yank I figure it’s nothing I can’t handle.
We borrow a battery out of a spare tractor, grab the jumper cables and head out to the very end of one fork in the bog road and there, at the far end of the field, the tractor in question sits. This is where things start to get a bit difficult as the industrial battery has to be lugged out by hand only to discover that our spare battery also lacks the power to provide a satisfactory jump so it’s hauled back to the bed of the truck despite complaint on behalf of my hands. We consider next to take the battery out of the truck and use it as a surrogate, only we lack the proper wrenches to extract it. So it’s decided that, with no other easy option, that we’ll risk getting literally bogged down in the muck and reverse the truck in for a direct connection. With fingers crossed the truck is backed in and by god it does not get stuck and leave us painfully screwed, walking back towards the house to arrange a tow out.
Lo and behold the tractor turns over with the help of a two Euro coin in lieu of a key and I’m given a quick run down on just how to handle the beast, it has three gears and reverse, a throttle, a clutch, and brakes which I suspect are mainly for show. It is windowless, rusted, moss covered, and feels less like a tool of agriculture and more like a bygone machine of war and from atop its steel seat it sounds like a pack of deep throated and angry dogs inhabit the engine compartment. First gear edges it steadily forward though, and soon I’ve left the security of the open turn and am on the unpredictable bog road.
Now the tractor may be a bit out of date, not perfectly maintained, and slightly unwieldy. But off of the soft turf and onto the stony ruts of a road it is the trailer I’m towing which really starts to put me on edge, you see the trailer is in fact wider than the doubled up rear wheels of the tractor making it just ever so much more liable to slip off into one of the ditches on either side and pull me down towards an ugly wreck. I have to hold my concentration as strongly as possible on correcting the tires off of the uneven and ugly ruts, bumps, and potholes, but there is one slight distraction, for added to the din of the rough old engine turning, the trailer is conveyed along on a pair of steel drums which produce a sound like grim, catastrophic death echoing just ten feet behind me.
First gear is all well and good, but it’s only prolonging the suffering, throwing it into second is achieved after a fair amount of grinding and shoving and now we’re fairly flying. The howl of metallic churning intensifies and the worrisome shaking continues as I try to drive thoughts of one ill timed slip of the steering wheel out of my mind. I’m following behind Basil in his blue pick-up truck but we’re not alone on this road, for others are collecting their own turf and have parked their cars on the shoulders of the road, I can feel their stares of apprehension as I carefully navigate my oversized load around their relatively new, shiny, undented cars. A fender bender under these circumstances is not the first impression I want to make on my new neighbors, not exactly because they’ll hold it against me forever, but because they’ll never let me forget it no matter how long I live there and how many rounds of pints I buy them.
I navigate the parking lot without incident and look ahead to the one, last, decisive obstacle to overcome. At the turnaround in the road there is a narrow bridge, with a low wall on one side and nothing to keep things from tumbling over the other it is the literal embodiment of a rock and a hard place for me and my contraption. But with a combination of nerve and those brakes of suspect effectiveness I creep over the span, holding my breath and saying the shepherds prayer. We’re in the home stretch now, heading for the far end of the bog again I throw caution to the wind and shift into third gear. This may have been a mistake I quickly realize, because while the speedometer is pegged permanently at zero I estimate I’m now traveling somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 miles per hour. That speed may not seem all too unsafe and when you’re in the security of an enclosed and safety feature equipped vehicle it is nearly a grandmotherly pace.
But when the wind is blowing rusted bits of metal into your face as they fall from the deteriorating roof of tractor, you can look down to see the stones flying by underneath your feet, you’re trying to figure out how best to free yourself from the wreckage if it rolls over, and behind you trundles a great mass of angry metal and wood, 35 miles per hour may as well be the speed of sound. There’s no going back now though and the finish line is in sight I pull past the turn in for our bog with its rows of footed turf waiting to be transferred to the big pile around the back of the house and begin the process of backing into place. After the 8th or 9th point in the turn I’m finally in position and can shut up the irritable motor, angry at being called into service for yet another year.
We’ll leave the actual loading for another time and head back home. My constitution is just starting to settle as I tell Regina about the experience, how it was the hairiest thing I’ve ever driven and how it took everything I had to keep it on the road. I show her a picture and she laughs, “Oh, the turf cart. Yeah, when we were kids we used to ride in the back of it, it was loads of fun.” Yet again I am humbled, for as often as I think this country is trying to kill me, the locals see it as one big playground.
