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lee: A great many events such as this took place across North America. Many of these just as that young lad, wanting to prove he had talked his dad into buying the right tractor. Sadly some of them did end in tragety. However many many more of these events turned out some of the finest tractor operators the land has ever seen. I remember as a 10 year old I was allowed to drive the Farmall Cub. My younger brothers were not. One day coming home from hoeing, my brother talked me into letting him drive. Another brother and I got on the trailer. What I failed to do was tell him how to stop, thus he drove right over the firewood pile. With that my dad enlightened everyone how to start, move, stop and shut off the tractor. Dad saw right away his boys were going to drive those tractors whether he liked it or not. Suddenly everyone who could reach the pedals were allowed to drive the tractor as long as it was useful work. From that day foreward my dad and mother raised 5 boys on a dairy farm that grew from a dozen cows in 1950 to 50 cows by 1965. My dad also taught about 20 other young people to drive tractors. Some would say that farm had some very dangerous equipment, narrow front Farmalls with front end loaders, just as an example. I later bought that farm from my dad and it became 100 cow farm with skid loaders, tower silos, 150 hp tractors, trucks, etc. I practiced the same policy of letting the young operate equipment. The unfortunate part is by 1970, government regulations on labour put an end to this other than immediate family. And yes we are worse off as a result. Those farms were the driving schools of the nation. My dad and I together probably trained 35 young people to drive tractors. That farm never had a lost time accident in all those years. One young lad I remember in particular, dad had him raking hay with Farmall 130 by the time he was 8. Dad's average baling day was about 3,000 bales and that young lad raked it all for about 4 years. He is now reaching 50, has become a long haul trucker and has seen every mainland State in the Union, Every Province in Canada. Probably he has logged as many miles as anyone his age, and he has yet to put anything more than a minor scratch on a motor vehicle. No lee, the person who never made any mistakes in life, didn't do a whole lot. Young people have been injured and killed, from a lot more hairbrained ideas than pulling a big load up the hill with a tractor.
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