Combine cab offers a thresh perspective.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the last in a six-part series about Bob Welch doing other people's jobs. Today, he drives a combine.

HARRISBURG - On hot afternoons, driving through the farmland north of Eugene, I've sometimes seen combines plying the fields and thought: Man, I'm glad that's not me out there.

After driving one, however, here's what I'll think next time I see one: Man, I wish my pickup had air-conditioning like that combine does. I'd give anything to be in that cool, stereo-filled environment, especially around dinner time when the boss delivers a pot-roast dinner.

Driving a combine is way cooler - literally and figuratively - than I imagined. I learned as much when Veldon Kropf, a third-generation farmer, allowed me to take six laps with his 18-year-old grandson, John Vodrup, in a John Deere 9600.

Kropf, with son Michael and help from seven other relatives, farms about 2,300 acres - a medium-sized chunk around here - of annual rye grass.

First, the grass is "windrowed" - cut into neat rows. Then the combine, like a giant frog skimming a pond for bugs, sucks up the grass and separates the grass seed from straw and chaff. The seed piles up in a bin behind the cab and, about once a lap, is blown into a truck. The straw and chaff are flung out the back, later to be baled or, in some cases, burned.

After observing for a couple of laps, I took over - with the combine still moving at a steady 2.9 mph. The only time John stops during his 12-hour day is to be handed his dinner, made by Grandma Dorothy (Kropf) or to go to the bathroom.

Propped up 13 feet high and surrounded by windows, you feel as if you're driving a really massive - and really quiet - riding lawn mower. The cab is less noisy than the inside of a commercial jet.

What little bounce you feel is absorbed by the hydraulic seat. Hydrostatic transmission makes forward and reverse a snap. A built-in drink holder cradles jumbo drinks. And dust in the cab is rarer than consensus in Eugene.

"This is way nicer than the interior of my car," says Vodrup, who drives a '92 Accord.

"Mine too," I say, thinking of my '95 Nissan pickup, whose cab, on summer afternoons, becomes a pizza oven on wheels.

Everywhere in the John Deere 9600 you see dials and buttons and gauges. If something goes wrong, a code number pops up on a screen like on a sophisticated copy machine. If you're low on fuel, a soft horn beeps; this, essentially, is a 35- by-12-foot computer that just happens to thresh grass.

With a carlike steering wheel, it's easy to drive. Corners are a tad tricky but add variety to an otherwise boring route. Unloading seed in a 10-wheel Freightliner truck is the highlight.

For starters, you get to talk to the driver over a CB radio, which makes you feel like you're piloting a KC-135 Tanker involved in the farm equivalent of midair refueling.

"You sure I can do this?" I asked Vodrup, a recent Junction City High graduate.

"You can do it," he said, sounding like "Airplane's" Capt. Rex Kramer trying to guide down nervous fill-in pilot Ted Striker.

In the rearview mirror, I saw the truck coming alongside me. I pressed a button. The auger arm swung out to my left, over the truck bed. When the truck was even, I pulled a handle. The auger started shooting out seed.

What a rush! Of course, for the regular combine driver, there are the other 12-plus hours that I didn't experience. But if they're boring hours, they're also comfortable ones.

My only other farm experience, done years ago, was buckin' hay. Give me combine-driving any day.

Threshing out the experience

Environment: Cool, comfortable and a cab with a view. A.

Challenge: Imagine mowing a 130-acre lawn. C.

Boss, co-workers: Kropfs welcomed me with open pickup doors. A.

Customers: None to deal with! A.

Overall: Even if you go stir-crazy, you'll do so comfortably. B+.