Where's Your Son?

Growing up on the farm lots of things happened I like to tell some of them mostly to get you folks to tell yours. One summer I was cultivating soybeans with my 3010 Dad had 2 of them the older one I drove and the newer one my next younger brother called his. Mine was older but would turn about a 1000 more rpm. We had about a 100 acres of cleared land on our farm so dad rented land all over the island we lived on, many days it was to far to drive the tractors back at the end of the day. That day I was about 5 or 6 miles from home plowing beans for the last time since they were a good size, we called it "laying them by". Dark starts to set in and no one has come to pick me up.Our dad loved to talk and still does so it was not that unusual for him to be late. Anyway it gets dark so I take the tractor to the head of the road and back it up next to some trees and shut it off. Next thing I hear is the mosquitos swarming all around and over me so i can't stay here. Just by luck the 3010 cranked back up {Dad did not believe in buying batteries) so I headed back to the field, thank goodness it was a clear moonlit night, and went back to plowing. Back at home Dad has his supper takes a bath and finally sits down in his chair to watch TV and after awhile when its' about his bed time Mom turns to him and says where is Ronnie? OOPS. When He gets there to pick me up all he says is You sure got a lot done today. Anything like That ever happen to You?

Sorry about 100 rpm.
Ron

Well when I was a kid growing up , my Dad had Ford tractors . I started driving solo at age 7 . I could do about anything as far as field work with the tractor . Later in my teen years Dad decided to buy a new Ford with a side mount sickle mower so we could expand our abilities to make money . We didn't own any fram land so Dad used other land for our crops . We kept the owners fields all mowed & in crops in trade . Then dad hired out to PenDot mowing berms . I started doing that at age 15 & my work was liked by the road bosses so much that Dad went back inti garage work as a mechanic . He'd have Mom check up on me at times . Well one day , Dad left a note for me as to what area to mow . So off I went, mowed that area plus went on down the roads further . Well after he got out of the garage for the day , he came looking for me & couldn't find me .At the end of the day he or Mom would come pick me up so I didn't have to drive back .He finally found me & wasn't very happy . Here I was to move to another area when finished instead of going further on the road I did .He had forgotten to make that known to me in his notes . All I have to say is , the beating I took in public that day would've landed Dad in prison if it would've been today .How things have changed . Kids today don't know what work is or how being corrected back then was thought of as permissable . God bless, Ken

My folks went away for a weekend and we were behind on field work due to wet spring. So I was in charge(@ 15) for the weekend. I was told absolutly no Sunday tractor work as was the norm in those days for our community. Choring allowed but no field work. Well I went out on Sunday and got the tractor stuck in the mud and panicked. So I went to the neighbor (Dads Best friend) to get pulled out so I wouldn't be in trouble for that . But of course I was in trouble for all the other stuff especially getting the neighbor out on Sunday also. Did not get a butt tanning but heard about it for a long time. Funny how we always got things done in those days without Sunday work. Wish we had some old values back!

Early 70's, we used to hang out on the resupply wagon for the grain drill when we were probably 5 or 6 years old.
One time for reasons unknown, the grain drill disappeared over the horizon and never came back.
After some discussion and near panic, we decided to make the long journey on foot back to the farm (probably all of 1/2 mile).
Funny how you think the world might be coming to an end when you're that age.
My friend is dead now, for 28 years. I'll never forget those times.

Once we took an RV trip way out west and had stopped at a rest park and then thinking my wife was in the RV bathroom took off down the interstate, I wondered about the wife n told one of the kids to check on mom in the bathroom and HE COMES BACK N SAY SHES NOT IN THERE OOOOOOOOOOOPSSSSSSSS

We make an illegal U Truns n head back n there she was barefooted on the interstate runnin our way screramin n hollerin n mad as (*&^% for some reason lol We laught about it now but she wasnt laughin when it happened

Ol John T

Not that persay. But any of ya ever be drivin down the road, and there in the middle of nowhere will be a huge tree, only tree for miles and will have a makeshift roadside memorial by it? Seriously. I get to wonderin how in the world does that happen. No trees for miles before that tree, and none for miles after that tree, but where of all places does one spin out? That stupid big ol' tree apparently like its some kind of magnet or something. Now here's why I brought it up. When I was a kid growin up a couple of years before my Dad died, the hog pen was over by a fenced in apple orchard that we didn't use, and by that was a corral that we used to move the hogs into to load up and take to market. At that time me and my buddies came shoulder high to a hog, so I guess we were about that young. This particular day me and two friends, Rusty and Anthony had been fishing down at the pond and were on our way home about supper time. Now when we passed that area on the property we could've just as easy climbed the fence and cut through the old orchard, gone the other way and cut through the corn, or gone straight up the middle and climbed the corral fence and waded through them hogs, cranky sows and all, then climbed the other side and continued home just like it was some sort of magnet. So what did we do? Naturally we waded through the hogs that were as tall as us and out weighed us by 5, 6, 7 times and made it to the other side and climbed out where my Dad just happened to be and saw us climbing out. Holy cow, he nearly beat all three of us to death right there...out of love and fear. I'll bet them hogs were carrying on cause they must've figured when he got done with us that they were gonna get the good slop that they'd just missed out on. After all, they did eat Charlott, a runt that we took out of the pen and fed good and raised kind of like a dog until we figured she was big enough to put back in the pen and fend for herself. That wasn't a good idea, she didn't last until morning. They didn't take kindly to her. But back on that day, not one of us had considered what could've happened in there by them angry hogs that pretty much would eat anything before we waded through them. Lookin back on it, I guess Dad just didn't want to be the first person to put up a makeshift roadside memorial over at that corral near the back of the property where no one would see it to drive by it anyway.

Kind of make you wonder how we all made it this far without wearing helmets to ride bikes and sleds and stuff? Probably explains why Mom had gray hair by the time she was 30 and was always gonna drive me or my brother to the orphanage, where ever that was at...eveytime we'd make her cry. Hmm? Come to think of it, I sure do still owe Mom a lot of apologies for things I did as a kid that she still don't know about. When's Mothers Day? Is that comin up soon? I'd better take her out for a steak or something.

Have a good day.

Mark

When I was a youngun about 1943, 44 we would work all day and then roam the farms around at nite. One of our orchards boardered the main road to and from town . We had a lot of tomatoes go bad from one of our fields so we used to throw them at each other. Then someone got the idea of throwing them at the cars on the hiway. Well, we would get a half bushel really rotten tomatoes and climb an apple tree and throw them at the cars. Several times we got the constables car and he would chase us into the cornfield and lose us. On nnight I got home and mt dad was waiting iin the yard for me. Strange i thought, he has to get up early next morning. His 1942 olds was plastered with tomatoes. Took two weeks for the belt welts to even start going away. Henry

About 20 years ago a 22-24 year old college student was taking acrobatic flying lessons at a nearby airstrip. Well long story short, something in the plane malfunctioned, we guess. The instructor and her both had chutes. He augered in on a northerly heading. She was no where to be found. We all searched in the wrong direction. Next day they found her body, and partially opened chute in the hog lot. Well,,at least they found her skeleton.

Hogs will eat a person.


Gene

I was the grandson, not the son , but . . .

There were always three tractors during my time on Grandpa's farm. For Farmalls there was a BN, that had it's own space in a shed, and then an H, that shared what we called the "old garage" (They had cars before they had tractors.), first with a narrow-front Oliver (a 66 I think, but may have been a 70) which was their heavy tractor. The Oliver was later replaced with a Farmall 400, after the local (and very small) Oliver dealership closed about the time of the merger with White.

So there I was, just a kid, out playing on the H. I'd watched Grandpa or his father start it a thousand times and somehow figured that as long as I didn't pull out that little silver button, it wouldn't start and I couldn't do any harm. Didn't know up from down from sideways about what a clutch did. So there I was with the tractor resting nicely in the ruts it had worn over the years into the clay floor of the old garage when I hit the starter button. Well, whaddaya know, it lurched forward. I was too startled to actually lift my palm from the button so she drove right ahead. Right into the old rusty safe where Grandpa kept the dynamite and caps. Not sure to this day why I didn't drive tractor, safe and all right out through the back wall.

So what's a kid to do? I had any kid's aversion to gettin' his behind kicked, but I really had no desire to see Grandpa and the old garage blown to flinders, if some kind of electric current between the tractor and the safe were to touch things off, and I hadn't the first idea of whether I could even back it up on the starter to make it look like nothing had happened.

So I fessed up.

Grandpa had a funny kind of a laugh and it went on for a long time when I told him. It took him even longer to get his straight face back on. Grandma was madder'n'hell, but that was her nature. We went out after supper and Grandpa put my 60# or so onto one tire of the H and he got onto the other and we rocked and rolled her back into her usual spot.

Next day, he showed me how to run and drive the BN, and had me cultivatin' beans before long. Maybe cultivatin' the beans was the payback!

Anyway, it's been uphill or downhill, accordin' to your perspective, with me and tractors ever since.

i knew of a man near mt carroll il. that had a stroke while checking out something in a hog lot.
when someone found him he had somehow wedged himself between a hog feeder and a fence where the hogs couldn't reach him.
he later told someone he didn't know he could fit in a space that small.

Around 1970 my sister worked strange part time hours for the census bureau ,, She Carpooled when a vehicle was not available from the family motor pool. Occassionally Dad would be scheduled to pick her up from Work. One evening Dad came home with a load of Urea for us to put on the wheat and came directly to the barn .. While we were gettin the spreader all set up and loaded..Mom hollers out the kitchen window and says, WHERE IS NORMA ??.. POp took off in the car to go fetch her .
My neighbor forgot to pick up his wife at a church meeting , he went runnin farm errands, and made it all the way home before he Realized .
Best one happened to Me , I had balecd about 200 balesof alfalfa , and left them for a customer to get out of the feild the next evening ,. went to my job about 10 miles up the road,at noon it looked like the hay might get rain , So me and another Guy went home to get it in and left My brother on the job . Got home and a Horse man was picking up the hay and loading it on his big truck and trailer as fast as He could . I am thinkin ITS MY CUSTOMER , So We jumped out and helped finish the Job before it poured rain . I told him I got room under the lean to to keep it from gettin wet and He pulled it in the DRY , THATS WHEN WE GOT TO TALKIN. He was thanking Me for helpin and at the same time was confused as to who I WAS .. Thats when I realized that He had been Sent to Morgans Lane Crossroads by his Boss and went the opposite way and picked up my hay BY MISTAKE . So we hopped in my truck and went over to the correct field ,Sure enough that is where He belonged ,And That place barely got much more than a Sprinkle ,called his Boss who I knew would take it very Well , And HE just Laughed and said ,If Your OK , I am OK, I said Shucks Im Fine , But I figure I owe you guys some BEER for getting my hay up,. that settled it ....

Not quite the same, but my son is on a guided missle frigate in the US Navy.

Gene

Funny you should bring that up, I was driving on a long straight stretch of road with a fence on each side, and noticed by that fence a piece of Telecom equipment and a set of vehicle tracks which came off the road and straight into it,Not a tree in sight.

Amen ,to getting some values back

My parents forgot me at church and there were only three of us kids, should have seen my moms face when one of the old timers brought me home. Maybe it was just a hint. LOL