AN August 1972 article ‘North with the Wheat Cutters’ by Noel Grove in the National Geographic magazine caught the attention of the BBC television ‘World About Us’ series editor Anthony Isaacs. He asked producer Tim Slessor to investigate the possibility of making a film about the North American wheat harvest. Tim was fascinated by the history and culture of the High Plains, having in the mid-’60s interrupted his television career for a year to teach in Nebraska.

In the summer of 1975, when Dale was running nine machines, Tim made three trips to the States and with different film crews shot Yellow Trail from Texas. The film captured the imagination of a lot of viewers, many requesting to be put in touch with Dale Starks with a view to working on harvest. Understandably they all received a standard reply saying Mr Starks was a busy man, combine driving being a skilled operation, and that harvesting could be a pretty tough life. This and following letters put all but two people off. Charlie Norman and I would not give in.

We had said we would work for nothing and sleep in a truck if necessary. Tim decided to put us in touch with each other, arranged to meet us at the BBC, showed us the film and took us to lunch. For me this was the first sighting of the film – I was enthralled.

It took three years of letter writing and phone calls to make it actually happen. Dale was keen to hire us, but US work permits and immigration were the problem.

Charlie and I were from very different backgrounds. Although not from a farming family, Charlie had helped on several local farms during school holidays and had a passion for the life, the machinery and especially the combines. On leaving school he had started work on a farm that was to be a year’s practical experience before going to agricultural college. However, he got sidetracked, went to France for a few months, then returned to England to join Lloyd’s of London as a junior clerk. By 1979 he had progressed to being a broker, but his heart was in agriculture, not the City.

I was brought up on a small rented farm in Derbyshire but in 1969 my father’s health and our financial position saw us leave the farm. I left school at fifteen and got a job on a large arable farm in Norfolk. After five years I had saved enough money to buy two second-hand tractors and a fertiliser spreader and was able to start a modest contracting business. The work was seasonal, giving me the opportunity to do other work in the summer.

At last, in May 1979 Charlie and I flew to New York and caught Greyhound Bus 8243 to travel the 1,500 miles to Wichita Falls, Texas where we had arranged to meet up with Dale. New York was as far removed from harvest as you would expect it to be. As we stood in line at customs, an officer angrily accused a lady of jumping the line. He picked up her bag and threw it across the room. I wondered what we had come to. Like all other cities, I was pleased to be out of it.

The Greyhound Bus company is a very professional outfit. The bus was clean and the staff polite and helpful. ‘Ridin the Dog’ as it is known, was a new experience to us and an economical way to travel. Our bus journey took us through varied landscapes, but we were nearly at our Texas destination before we saw the first combines. My heart leapt. Combines on lowboys hauled by trucks were to be seen going down the highway in twos and threes. This was a world away from New York, this was it – we had finally made it.

From Wichita Falls bus station we called Dale to discover that he had not yet left his base in Oklahoma. He suggested we check into a motel for a few days until he came south but, after putting the phone down, Charlie and I decided this was not a good idea. We caught a bus to Nash, some thirty miles south of Manchester, called Dale to announce our arrival, and were picked up by John Costello, one of the crew members.

The few hours spent in the small town of Nash gave us a taste of the friendliness we would encounter in these small rural communities. When we had asked to use the phone at the local gas station we found the proprietor very friendly and helpful.

As customers called in for gas he would introduce us to them. Obviously it was unusual for two very English speaking people to be in town, and word soon spread. The local Pastor came to see us, and a farmer told us all about the ‘Army Worms’ that were invading his wheat.

When we arrived at the farm we met Dale. I felt at ease with him immediately. It was not difficult to convey our enthusiasm for the task ahead, and although we were a continent apart in culture I felt that all was going to be okay.

Margie was conspicuous by her absence: she was five hundred miles away on the ranch in Nebraska. This was the first year she did not go on harvest since 1951, and meant that the domestic side of the harvesting operation was going to be changed dramatically. Dale had hired the Costello family that year. Don and his son, John, were to be drivers, Jerry was to be the cook.

Having spent twenty-four hours in Wichita Falls bus station with little sleep, we were very tired on arrival at Manchester. After a meal and a long talk with Dale he showed us the bunker. It was a trailer with eight bunk beds where the single guys would sleep. Apparently, it had just been brought back from Kansas where it would have been used on the corn harvest the previous fall. The unsecured table and chairs were scattered all over the floor and it was in a hell of a mess, but it looked pretty damn good to Charlie and me who had not stretched full length and slept properly for two days. The rest of the single guys were sleeping in an old house across the fields, so we had the place to ourselves that first night.

We soon settled in and made good friends with the crew, including Terry Laws, a twenty-year-old farm boy from Missouri who had seen ‘Yellow Trail’ on US television and been inspired to do a harvest run. Terry contacted Massey Ferguson in Kansas City who gave him Dale’s number. When he spoke to Margie on the phone at the ranch, Dale had just left for Manchester. Margie told Dale to hire him on, and Terry was offered the job. Terry was to work for Dale for the next four years and become his right-hand man.

We spent our time preparing combines and trucks for the onslaught. Only one crew member, Danny, alias ‘Slim’, had done the harvest run before, but not with Dale. Slim was a likeable character, but basically a drifting alcoholic in his late thirties. We were not to know it, but most of that crew would not make it to the end of the season.

Each January Dale would place advertisements in newspapers for crew members. One or two might be farm boys used to operating equipment, but most would have little or no experience. Very few returned to do a second harvest: it was a tough life, the hours were long and the pay was poor.

Dale ran five Massey Ferguson combines that year, a guy called Terry Pfeiffer running two machines along with us. Dale had three 1977 760s, a 1976 750 and one brand-new 750. Terry had one unused 1978 760, and another 1978 760 that had completed one harvest.

Trucks that year were: ’77 Chevrolet tandem; ’74 Chevrolet tandem; ’73 GMC Diesel; ’70 Chevrolet twin screw; ’68 Chevrolet drag axle; ’67 Chevrolet 4-wheel bobtail, and a ’66 Chevrolet parts truck. There were two Chevrolet Scottsdale pick-ups, one of which Dale drove. It had toolboxes in the back, a mobile phone and two-way radio installed, the top of the dashboard serving as his office. The other was Margie’s, a 1975 model with a 7.25 litre engine. Although driven by any crew member, it was always referred to as ‘Margie’s pick-up’.

When travelling between jobs, the grain trucks hauled a combine each, the parts truck hauled the bunker, and pick-ups pulled the two smaller travel trailers, the Red Dale and the Terry Trailer.

Don Costello, an ex-garage mechanic with Chevrolet experience, was rebuilding the engine in the ’70 twin-screw truck. Charlie and I were pleased to be doing simple work, sometimes things as mundane as cleaning down a truck bed ready for re-spraying. Of course, we regularly sat in the combine cabs to familiarise ourselves with the controls.

Dale would not say who were to be combine drivers, most people’s first choice, and who would drive truck. He was far too astute to commit himself at that point, but he was assessing the crew all the time, and was a pretty good judge of people. We lost two crew members before we even left Manchester. Cliff, single in his twenties, quit after a few days. A married couple whose names I can’t recall decided to hitch up their trailer, retrieve some catfish that Jerry was storing in her freezer and head for pastures new.

After about a week we loaded the machines and headed for Burkburnett, Texas, some 250 miles to the south, down by the Red River where the wheat was close to being ready for harvesting. I was glad we had not waited in Wichita Falls for them to come south, for we had seen Dale’s base in Manchester, got to know everybody and had built up some confidence at the start of our dream adventure.

There were enough drivers for all the trucks and pick-ups to enable Charlie and I to ride shotgun with other people. Charlie rode with Slim in the GMC Diesel pulling combine. I rode with a guy...