Hauling Hay

Teaching school can be a fulfilling profession, but the low pay could cause many teachers to have to resort to work in the summer just to make ends meet. When I taught high school in northeast Oklahoma there were some teachers and even students that worked in the fields hauling hay during the summer. There was a teacher who had a couple of sons that lived nearby me and they would come in from a hard day's work covered in sweat, dust, and hay straw. They would bail, load onto flatbed trailers, and drive the hay squares to barns to be stored. Sometimes he invited me to come and make extra money doing the job, but I declined because I made my extra money by coaching and driving the school bus. I will never forget seeing those fields dotted with hay bails, a rural beautiful and rustic sight, and the people who had to labor to supply hay feed to the cattle. This ink drawing is a tribute to those teachers that had to take on extra jobs so they could teach.