“No.”
His grandmother smiled.
“But there’s another lesson available now.”
She looked at Ethan.
“You bought something you don’t understand.”
“Yes.”
“Then understand it.”
Ethan nodded.
That was exactly what he intended to do.
Sunday afternoon, he returned to Bell Farm Repair.
Raymond was already there.
The shop was technically closed, but Raymond rarely seemed to acknowledge that concept.
He had placed two buckets beside the crates.
One contained kerosene for loosening old grease.
The other held rags.
On the workbench lay wire brushes.
“You starting with one crate,” Raymond said.
“Why one?”
“Because if you scatter nine hundred plates around my shop, I’ll sell you for scrap.”
Ethan lifted the first plate.
IH 197B.
Raymond showed him how to clean without grinding away casting marks.
Kerosene.
Rag.
Stiff brush.
Light scraping where necessary.
No aggressive wheel unless corrosion demanded it.
The work was slow.
The first plate took almost ten minutes.
Underneath the grime, the raised lettering became sharp.
IH 197B.
Ethan wrote it on a yellow legal pad.
Manufacturer: International Harvester.
Number: 197B.
Diameter: 6 7/8 in.
Openings: 24.
Center: keyed.
Condition: good.
Raymond watched.
“What seed?”
Ethan shrugged.
“That’s important.”
“How do we know?”
“Manual.”
Raymond walked to shelves along the office wall.
They contained service manuals collected over four decades.
Red binders.
Green binders.
Parts books with grease-blackened corners.
Operator manuals.
Dealer supplements.
Photocopied bulletins.
Raymond removed an old International planter parts catalog.
They searched.
Twenty minutes later, Ethan found 197B.
Corn.
Specific seed size range.
Used in several older plate-type planters.
Ethan wrote everything down.
He felt a small jolt of satisfaction.
One plate understood.
Eight hundred ninety-nine to go.
By the third hour, that satisfaction had disappeared.
The work was exhausting.
Several numbers were unreadable.
Some manufacturers had changed numbering systems.
Some plates were aftermarket replacements.
Others had minor variations almost impossible to distinguish without measurements.
Ethan found plates identical except for one opening diameter.
Raymond made him measure them.
“Close enough doesn’t plant a field evenly.”
Ethan used calipers.
Recorded dimensions.
By evening, they had identified twenty-three plates.
Twenty-three.
Ethan stared at the crates.
“This could take all winter.”
Raymond turned off the parts washer.
“Good thing winter happens every year.”
Ethan created a system.
At first, he used the legal pad.
That became messy immediately.
Numbers crossed out.
Manufacturers mixed together.
Measurements squeezed into margins.
Raymond suggested index cards.
On Monday, Ethan bought two boxes of cards and an old wooden recipe-card file from a thrift store.
Each casting number received one card.
Manufacturer.
Machine model.
Seed type.
Hole count.
Opening diameter.