Where Did The Unbelievably Long String of Bailing Twine Come From?





It wasn't there on Friday when Mary parked the floater in the field ready for putting down lime starting at the crack on Monday. Somehow, somtime over the weekend, what had to be almost an entire reel of happy pink and white shiny nylon or poly twine ended up starting way down the country road, running past the field back and forth across the road several times, took a sharp 90 at the stop sign and continued most of the way down the crossroad to the first, maybe the second barn. Maybe the second because it doubled back on itself in front of the first barn and spent some distance wandering in and out of the ditch full of queen anne's lace and clammy ground cherry. Not that I followed it. I was stuck with Mary and she was working in that one field and not inclined to leave to follow anything even if it was shiny and half bubble gum colored. Passers by mentioned it, that string was inconvienently long.


Every time a car passed over it it would jump and change location on the road and Mary wondered all day Monday when it was going to wrap itself around someone's car axle and go zinging behind as it wound itself tighter and tighter until the twine broke or the car did because sooner or later that twine was going to mess with something. That twine was going to cause a problem for someone, unless someone did something. Something like picking it up. But it started way down the road, went round the corner and almost to the next. Mary was stuck in that one spot.


Mary fretted all day about it. Country rule number one: if it isn't yours and you didn't put it there don't mess with it unless you ask first. That twine mighta been there for a reason. But it was nylon or poly and it was amazingly long and because it was if no one ever moved it, it would be there forever waiting for an animal or axle or mower blade to get all wrapped up in it. Mary fretted.


Where did the amazing, extra long string of bailing twine come from? No one seemed to know. No one being the farmer that owned the field that it surrounded and then some (because Mary asked him, ya never know if something like that was there for some purpose). So it was kids messing around, bailing twine that was just dead set on a life of adventure instead of securing round bales of hay so it attempted a leap from the back of a hay baler, grabbed a hold of a tough weed and unrolled itself as the baler traveled, or it was left there by aliens maybe as some sort of place marker. Doesn't matter, it was there.


Tuesday, how long was it really? Could a person pull all that slippery twine from where ever it was to one spot? Let's find out I, Fantastic Fabiola, urged. Mary would have ignored me, but that nylon or poly was never going to decompose. Never. So in the four minutes that it took for the floater to load, we started pulling and wrapping. Out into the field to unload, back, hook up the hose, start the pump, pull and wrap. Repeat every other four minutes all day. Swear.


Ten thousand feet, almost, was how long that string of twine was, the better part of two miles. It made a dandy bubble gum pink and white and weed ball.