Then thoughtful.
“Hold on.”
He called an engineer.
Twenty minutes later four people stood around the actuator discussing back-driving.
Adah enjoyed that more than she should have.
Vernon walked over.
“You causing trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He pointed toward another display.
“Come see something.”
A manufacturer had built a modern worm-driven manual backup system.
Painted blue.
Sealed bearings.
Detachable crank.
Load rating stamped on the frame.
Adah examined the gear housing.
“Single-start?”
The engineer nodded.
“Self-locking under rated load.”
She smiled.
Vernon crossed his arms.
“Looks familiar.”
Adah checked the price tag.
$2,870.
She laughed.
“What?”
“My original was cheaper.”
“How much?”
Vernon groaned.
“Don’t start.”
“Eleven dollars and forty cents.”
The engineer stared.
“You bought one for eleven dollars?”
Vernon walked away.
Adah called after him.
“Still want it back?”
He raised one hand without turning.
She laughed.
Walt died the following winter.
Quietly.
Heart failure.
Seventy-eight years old.
He left few possessions.
Tools.
Clothes.
Three oil cans.
Boxes of handwritten notes.
And one sentence in his will concerning Adah:
Give the Ferris girl my mechanical books. She reads the parts everybody else skips.
Adah cried harder at that than she expected.
She built a shelf in the machine shed.
Walt’s books went there.
Harold’s manuals beside them.
Above the shelf, Adah hung the brass oil can Walt carried the night of the flood.
She never used it.
Some tools become memory before they stop being useful.
By 1978, Adah had paid off the operating debt.
By 1981, she purchased forty acres adjoining the north boundary.
By 1983, the repair side of the farm became Ferris Agricultural Service.
She hired two mechanics.
One was a young woman from Lincoln whose previous employer told her customers would not trust a female mechanic.
Adah hired her the same afternoon.
The other was a seventeen-year-old high-school dropout who could diagnose engines by sound but could barely read service manuals.
Adah required him to finish his equivalency diploma.
He complained for six months.
Then did it.
People occasionally asked why she remained on the farm when the repair company could make more money in town.
Adah always gave the same answer.
“I like knowing what the machinery is for.”
In 1986, fifteen years after the flood, the irrigation district asked her to attend the replacement ceremony for North Canal.
The original gate was finally being removed.
A larger reinforced structure would replace it.
Modern hydraulic controls.
Backup generators.
Manual override.
And, because institutional memory sometimes survived embarrassment, a mechanical worm-drive emergency system.
The old $11.40 winch had not been required operationally in nine years.
It had been tested every quarter.
Always held.
Vernon had retired.
His replacement was an engineer in her thirties.
She invited Adah to stand beside the gate before demolition.
“Want the district to buy the old winch now?”
Adah smiled.
“You know the answer.”
“We could put it in the office.”
“No.”
“Museum?”
“No.”
“What are you doing with it?”
“Taking it home.”
The engineer laughed.