Posted by JDseller on February 12, 2012 at 17:17:24 from (208.126.196.144):
In the early 1980s I was working part time at a local JD dealer in the shop. There where five of us mechanics. I was the youngest by about thirty years.
The oldest two where bachelor brothers that where in their mid seventies. These two guys where some of the BEST mechanics I ever worked with. They had started right out of the service after WWII. They had a small farm they lived on with their mother(she was in her late 90s). In those days we did not have uniforms provided. Those two would start out clean on Monday and by Friday you could have stood their cloths up in the corner. They would clean up Saturday night and go to church. Then they would put on a clean pair of overhauls and then would wear them until the next Saturday. So you can picture that personal hygiene was not a high priority with these two.
They would never use hand cleaner they would just wipe their hands on a red shop rag and that was it. So the callouses on their hands had grease worked well into them.
They eat a packed lunch everyday but Friday. The local restaurant had a chicken bucket special. Ten pieces of chicken for $3.50. They LOVED chicken. They would get a bucket each. They would go and sit in the shop. When they would start eating that chicken their hands would be stained black with old tractor grease. When they where done their hands would be white as snow. The chicken grease would work the old tractor grease right out. I got thinking about it one day and about got sick thinking about where the old tractor grease ended up. LMAO
They where good men though. They worked well into their eighties. Even then they worked in an old barn on their little farm. Their mother lived to be 99 before she passed on. They got very few home cooked meals after that. My first wife would always fix them pies when she did the baking. We would then have them over for Sunday lunch few times each month. They would have marched on Hitler for my wife. When she got sick with cancer and was bed ridden I took care of her mostly by myself. Those two would come over and do any shop work I had so I could watch her. They never would take a dime.
They where true friends. They both lived into their late nineties too. They just passed a few years ago at home, a few months apart. It seems that there are not many of those type of people anymore. Many today would look down on those two men as uneducated and not worth much. I say that this country would be much better off with more like them and many less college educated know-it-alls. They never asked for anything that they had not earned. They where happy with what they had not trying to keep up with the Jones all of the time.
I just thought of them while reading the post below about hand cleaner. It is funny how your mind will jump around to things like that. I miss them two old farts.
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