It must have been late June, with haying was under way all over the county. Rain was forecast for late that day, and Arrie, who had the use of my two small fields, already had the grass in them cut and drying.

Now it was time to drag the hay rake through the fields again, giving the grass a final turn and laying it into windrows for the baler. Steve, only thirteen, had helped his adored grandpa through the cutting and first turning, and now was ready to back up "Pa" in the last stages.

Around noon, the two of them were on Arrie's front lawn, greasing the baler. Every few minutes Arrie would pause to scowl at the northwest sky. Suddenly he said, "You go now. Get going with the raking."

Steve jumped onto the tractor, already hitched to the ten-foot-wide hay rake. He fired up the motor and waited for Arrie. "He always went with me," Steve recalled. "He would ride on the tongue of the tractor, quietly, letting me do the driving." But then it came to Steve. "That day he was telling me to go, get the job done, ALONE!" Steve's heart was pounding. "I was still expecting him to jump up on the tongue of the rake as I pulled out of the yard." But he didn't.

It's 25 years since Steve was thirteen-and over 50 years since I was. But as easily as Steve can recall that day, I can imagine his feelings as he steered that rumbling, shaking rig down Route 26 and swung it, wide, onto Allison Road. I can feel the boy's awe, exhilaration, fears. Here he was, a skinny kid of thirteen, abruptly assigned a man's job-and by the grandpa he worshiped. "Pa was putting his trust in me. I knew I couldn't fail him."

When he'd driven the mile to Stone Mill Acres, Steve swung the rig onto the property. Nobody was there. Gwen and I were four hundred miles away in Annapolis, and the tenants, both doctors, were working at Bassett.

The property only had about four acres of hayfields back then, a wishbone-shaped tract that bracketed the house and barn and then continued south, narrowing between tree lines. The ground rolls in spots, and there are tight turns for a tractor, especially at the south end.

Steve got the rig aligned along the west side of the west field, hopped off and lowered the rake's tines, climbed back on and threw the tractor in gear. The motor coughed and roared. The rake's tines began rolling the dried hay into a windrow on the left. Steve's heart must have been thumping in his throat. He was raking a field, by damn, and all by himself!

"I was about two rows into the job when a shear pin on the rake broke. I had set the height too low." Steve was horrified. "Pa had the tool box and spare pins. I didn't want to look like a failure, having to return home and say the field wasn't done yet. So I thought quick, and knew that there had to be a spare nail or pin in your barn."

That barn had been mine for only a couple of years. The former owner, Stan Stucin, was a man given to saving things because "you never can tell..." I had a barn packed to the doors with stuff that Stan thought might come in handy.

A dozen doors were in there, and twice as many window screens. There were plywood sheets and rickety sawhorses, plus fence posts and boards of every length. Stan even had kept a stack of wooden signs from when St. Mary's in Cooperstown had a summer carnival.

The barn's walls and low rafters were festooned with lengths of rusty chain, coils of frayed rope, tools missing either handle or head.

To crowd things further, in a downstairs corner loomed Frances Stucin's huge feed bins; she'd raised chickens on the barn's second floor. In fact, Steve Baker's recollection of the barn was perfect:

"The downstairs of your barn was full of stuff. Old doors leaned up against the walls; storm windows, boxes and crates in every direction. I had to climb over things looking for a pin." But then a boy's ingenuity triumphed. "I found a sixteen-penny nail stuck in a window sill. It was only pounded in half way. Without a hammer, I worked at getting it out quick. Then I climbed over all the stuff to get back out of the barn."

Steve ran, ran almost ahead of himself, back to the tractor and rake. Kneeling, wiping sweat from his eyes, he lined up the metal sleeve with the shaft inside, and slipped the nail through both. "I used a rock to bend 'the pin' over so it wouldn't fall out." And then the boy was back in the seat, gunning the motor. "I was back to raking again!"

"It took me two more trips to your barn, torn-up hands, scraped knees, and a torn shirt to finish your small lot. But it was worth it. I had just turned off the tractor and dropped the rake when Pa pulled in with the baler. Later in the afternoon, when Pa wasn't looking, I snuck a real shear pin from the tool box and placed it where the nails had been."

Steve said he's never told that story before, but I could pass it on to you. I'll bet you got a kick out of it, too. And I'll also bet that Arrie, wherever he is, is grinning with pride over what his grandson pulled off.

"Thanks to a couple of pilfered sixteen-penny nails," says a now almost middle-aged Steve, "I was free to do many solo jobs that summer. Also, I never had another broken shear pin on a rake again. Never."

Education, somebody said, is "enabling experience." What a piece of education Steve gave himself that day!

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. He can be found on the web at JimAtwell.com.