By Wayne Hinshaw

For the Salisbury Post

Under the brutal blister- ing June sun, with tempera- tures in the high 90s in his field, Jerry Whitaker com- bined his wheat on Monday.

The combine mowed through the field on Dunns Mountain Road. cutting the wheat, splitting our the straw and dropping the wheat grain into the storage tank on the machine. Cut- ting row after row, a very pretty pattern soon formed in the field with the rows of straw contrasting the mowed rows. After a few trips across the field, the grain is pumped into the back of an awaiting truck.

Whitaker, stopping only long enough to speak, said that it was hot in his 1977 Allis Chambers combine

that has no air-conditioning like much of the newer farm equipment.

Like all optimistic farm- ers, Whitaker is hoping for some rain to cool the air and

moisten the ground before he plants a fall crop of soy- beans in the same field.