Don’t Upset the Potato Cart

  I have been talking about being thrifty as of late. I guess as Christmas and bad weather gets closer I start to think about how to tighten the financial belt.
   My dad used to head out into the early Fall to pick up potatoes north of Prosser. I remember those day, it was still warm and we would get up early and make a day of it.
   We used my dad’s truck to collect 500 lbs of spuds. They weren’t the little ones either. Those were up to three time the size of the potatoes you find the supermarket. They were fresh and we loaded them into potato sacks.
   The summer when I we eleven we went out and dad asked me to take the wheel. This was a great honor; it was my first time driving a vehicle of any kind. My dad sat in the passenger’s seat and everyone else got in to the back and I started down the field.
   he asked" okay James let's go a little faster."
   I looked back and lee was riding a sack of potatoes like a surfboard.
   We were on our way to the end of the field where the machine had trouble picking up the potatoes. I driving, dad guiding, mom sitting and there was lee standing like he was in his own captain Morgan commercial.
   Well he shouts, "Stop!"
   I put both feet into that brake like I was trying to kill a rat.
The truck stopped sliding a little to the left and lee did not. He came forward at 25 or so miles an hour and over the cab he went and didn't stop until his hand and arm was touching the hood. I looked him in the eye through that windshield. He had outrage in his eyes and I quickly closed the window and locked the door. He climbed off the cab and reached for the door. It was locked and he ran to the other side where I had crawled over my dad to roll the window up and lock the door.
   "You have to come out sometime," he screamed.
   "You said stop," I yelled back through the locked door.
   Dad laughed and opened the door, baring him from killing me out right. I wonder to this day if I wouldn't have been sporting a black eye if it wasn't for my dad.