A Farm Story

This morning, for reasons best left to my imaginary therapist to figure out, I woke up to a dream about one of the more unpleasant experiences I had while growing up on the farm. What happened in the dream, of course, wasn't an exact retelling of what happened (for one, I was an adult in the dream, for two, there was the potential for naked women in the dream--there weren't any, unfortunately, but that potential always exists and my dream mind is always quite hopeful of the chance and more than a little disappointed when my dreams don't take advantage of the opportunity), but it put the event in my mind so I figured I would share it because it quite accurately illustrates one of the main reasons that a life on the farm was obviously not a viable option for me.

See, even though I was only nine years old when this event took place, it COULD have happened to me as an adult. I'm just that kind of adult and NOT cut from farming cloth. There were other events, of course, that gradually turned my mind away from the life my father and his ancestors through time immemorial chose or had thrust upon them, but I have to admit, this one ranks in the top two.

As I said, this event happened to me when I was nine. Rather, I was eight, but I would be turning nine in a few weeks--which would make it early July of 1983--but I considered myself nine. We were plowing. An explanation of plowing might be necessary for anyone unfamiliar with farming, but I'm not going into it because what "plowing" is really isn't important to the story. Let's just say that plowing is the part of the field working process that happens shortly after harvest and leave it at that.

The summer I was eight was the first summer that I was a "regular" plow operator. The previous summer, I had spent several hours learning how to drive the tractor, but had been relegated to lunch time relief. This summer, though, I had been deemed worthy of regular time on the tractor (or, more likely, either my dad or one of my uncles--whom he farmed with--decided that they rather liked the idea of having someone other than them driving a tractor. This, actually, is the primary reason for procreation in farm families--breeding replacement workers so that the parents can do something other than spend twelve or thirteen hour days suffering through the blistering heat and mind numbing boredom out in the field. Being the second oldest child in our chunk of family, I was declared "ready" at an even earlier age than most kids on the farm are. This, of course, sucks for farm kids and is probably the reason most of us growing up hating anything and everything about farming--it did, after all, rob us of our childhood summers and the fun that's supposed to go along with it. But that's another topic for my imaginary therapist to work out) . I wasn't full time, yet (that wouldn't happen until the following summer, when my dad "conveniently" went down with a slipped disk and I, at the ripe age of almost ten, had to pull most of his weight in the field), but I was working six to eight hour days ever day. And, by the way, I was paid $.50 an hour for my work. Child labor laws, anyone?

The day in question, we finished up in one of our fields around 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning and were preparing to move to another one about six or seven miles away. The tractors that we owned were old, slow, mostly cabless (which means there was no air conditioning except for the stifling 100 degree wind that heated up to 120+ when it was blowing over the impossibly hot tractor engines), and awful because we were poor and couldn't afford the nice tractors that the bigger operations used. This, I was assured from the very beginning, built character. And, looking back, I suppose it did.

Anyway, the top speeds on the tractors we owned were between 15-20 mph. The one cab tractor we had going that day (which my uncle got to drive because he was the oldest one out there) was the fastest, and the beat up old John Deere 4020 that I had to drive was one of the slowest. However, for reasons I never understood, these 4020's had TWO overdrive systems set up--meaning it was possible to extend the throttle range beyond the top position two additional times.

As we moved, I followed my uncle because I didn't really know where we were going. Quite probably it had been discussed, and I'm sure I was told, but I hadn't been paying the least bit of attention because, honestly, I didn't really care where we were going. It would be just as hot and dirty there as it was in the field we were leaving, and I had Star Wars to think about.

So, because I didn't really know where I was going, I couldn't just allow myself to fall well behind my uncle's tractor lest I end up driving randomly until I had to stop at some house and ask them to call my family to find me. But because the lead tractor went faster than my tractor, I had to make use of the double overdrive system to keep up.

The first overdrive is on the throttle itself. By pulling out the knob on the end, it was possible to extend it just a tad further and increase the RPMs. The second overdrive was a little pedal on the floor, which, when pressed, increased the RPMs just a little bit more.

The problem came from the fact that I was very short--far too short to press on the floor pedal while still sitting on the tractor's seat (actually, I was too short to sit on the seat and push in the clutch to change gears, too, which should have been a pretty handy sign to my family that, perhaps, I wasn't quite old enough to be driving a tractor just yet. Side note: that summer was also the first that I had an accident while driving a pickup truck--I was only going five mph at the time, but I still managed to run into a tree, also because I wasn't big enough to reach the clutch and brake without sliding down the seat). PLUS, I had a notoriously short attention span.

So, there I was, standing on the floor, trying to pay attention to keeping the pedal pressed down, barely able to look over the steering wheel, and attempting to keep up with my uncle, all while daydreaming about Star Wars (I have to assume, since that was about ALL I thought about at the time). A recipe for disaster, which is what followed.

As we reached our goal, I recognized the place we were going--one of the family farms (actually, it was the farm house that we bought the year before and which my family would move into the next year--at the time, though, it was empty as we were doing extensive repairs and remodels on it still). Since by that point it was coming up on 11:30, I assumed we would be pulling into the drive to stop for lunch. My uncle, however, decided that we had enough time to pull into the small field right before the driveway and get a start on that before we broke for lunch.

He slowed and eventually came to a stop in the middle of the road to pull out the series of pins that were necessary to keep the plow from wobbling all over the road and destroying itself at speeds that exceeded five miles an hour.

Because I wasn't paying close enough attention (and because I assumed we would be pulling into the driveway a few hundred yards ahead), I didn't slow down the way I needed to. See, tractors don't use brakes. They HAVE brakes, but they aren't used to slow them down. They are used to make sharp turns by effectively stopping one back wheel or the other. It's possible to use them to slow the vehicle down, but only if they are latched together so both brakes go down at the same time (or if the person driving is adept enough to hit them both at the same time, which I wasn't)--but even then, the slowing down process is painfully jolty as the tractor makes lunging, skidding decelerations.

Thus it was that I approached my uncle at very close to road speed with almost no way to stop myself.

I must have realized what was going on eventually, because I didn't run into the back of his plow at full speed. If I had, someone might have died. And that would have been tragic. I DO remember trying to use the brakes to slow myself down, but, since they weren't latched together, the result was more of my tractor being thrown to the right and then the left than of actually slowing down. I hit his plow at probably close to 10 mph.

What followed would have been very entertaining video to watch, I'm sure.

My uncle, wisely, removed himself from between his plow and his tractor. He waved his arms wildly at me, which might have worked a charm if I'd been a charging cow. Perhaps it was a little ironic, then, that I proceeded to mount his plow like a randy bull with my hot, dirty tractor. Or perhaps not.

What followed was a series of cursing outs that I have mostly blocked out. It was explained to me, at great volume and peppered with colorful words and phrases, that I'd mostly destroyed our biggest plow, which would take weeks to repair, and would significantly slow down our progress. Between guilty sobs, I apologized profusely and tried to explain my side of the story, to no avail, especially since I really didn't have any good excuses to give them (except that I was NINE YEARS OLD, of course, though that bought very little sympathy from any of my family).

Then I asked where we would be going for lunch.

Possibly not the most interesting story out there, but it certainly made an impact on me. So there you have it.

And in child-related news, Gabe just realized that his little cardboard playhouse was gone earlier this morning. One of his favorite games for the last several months has been to come up to the gate to the office and ask for a piece of tape. He would then take that piece of tape to his house and "fix" it by randomly applying the tape. Earlier today, he came up to the gate and asked for tape. I said, "We don't need tape anymore since your house is gone. Nothing needs fixing anymore."

He wheeled around to the spot where his house had been (but hasn't been for more than a week now), noticed it was gone, and melted down. He started wailing and gnashing his teeth and pulling his hair and pounding his fists against his breast while he cursed the heavens for the cruelty of the world. Well, he did start crying fiercely while repeating, over and over again, "House. Gone. House. Gone." He ran around the table and sat down heavily on the other side while sobbing and repeating his mantra. I went over to comfort him and tried to explain. "You have an awesome room to play in now, you don't NEED your house anymore. You haven't even played with it for a month now."

This pissed him off no end. He got up and ran to the place where his house used to be. He threw his arms up to the wall and leaned his face heavily into them, still crying and saying, "House. Gone." It was INCREDIBLY damatic. So I had to grab the camera.

Of course, when he heard the camera turn on, he knew what I was doing, so he ran out of the room and was sufficiently distracted that he stopped repeating his two word lament over and over again. Which sucks. Why is it that kids can't keep doing priceless things for just an extra thirty seconds while the camera is prepared?

Anyway, here is what video I got, which really only shows just how upset he is about his lost house and little more. Oh well.

Also, last night I got Button to laugh. Not just smile, laugh. It was a kind of weird, nearly creepy (but still cute as hell, somehow) little noise. I had her doing it for almost a minute, breaking occasionally to yell to Libby to come in there. But Libby wasn't in any hurry, so, by the time she got there to see it, Button was slowing down. Then, by the time Libby got around to getting the camera, we'd been at it for like a minute already, so Button was bored with my antics and we only got one little sort-of-laugh out of her. But it's on video! Woo hoo!