I remember a few my dad tells of when he was younger:
He was disking with a John Deere A. It had the channel type seat bracket with a pan seat. As he pulled out of the field and up the ditch bank towards the road, the bolt that holds the channel or the channel itself, not sure which, broke, dumping him off the back of the tractor while it was moving. He managed to somehow grab the clutch lever as he went down, just enough to disengage it and stop it from pulling the disk over him. Said he fell just inside of the rear tire so it missed him when it rolled back down the ditch bank.
We have VERY stoney ground here. We run across some big rocks each year that have to be removed with the skidsteer, but all of the REALLY big ones had all but been removed by my time, but my dad was around for the removal of a lot of the big ones. Said he would ride his bike to Gower hardware, about 6 miles away, and get a case of dynamite and caps. Strap it to his bike and ride home. Had one big rock that had popped up in the last couple years that they had to farm around. His dad put 4 sticks of dynamite under it to pop it out of the ground. It didn't work, it was too big. So dad said they dug around the bottom of it in 3 places, and packed 4 sticks around it in each of the 3 places. 12 sticks total, packed mud around them to split the rock and lift it out of the ground. Dad said when they set it off, there were 3 or 4 BIG pieces laying on top of the ground. This was when Farmall H's were a common tractor on the farms, 1950's. They had to hook his dad's and his uncle's H to each chunk of the stone to be able to drag it over to the river flats out of the way. And they had to go fix windows, as they knocked windows out of a couple houses that bordered their field. Some of them big old rocks are still around, but dad said most were hauled away when the steel truss bridge was removed and replaced. I guess that area along the river was where everyone hauled their big rocks.
My grandpa had a Model 41 Silver King, after it was out of the family for 60 years, I got it back a few years back. All in pieces, but I have all of it back nonetheless, just need to put it back together. All Silver King tractors would move right along, but this one had the 36" rear tires instead of the 24" tires a lot had, and it had the high speed ring and pinion of 3 options, it would go around 40-45 mph from what everyone tells me. Dad said he could remember riding on it into the village up the road 4 miles, and passing cars on the way up there. This was when alot of people that didn't have a lot of money were still driving quite old cars that didn't go all that fast from what I gather.
Dad's cousin had just gotten married to a guy that was willing to help her dad, my dad's uncle, on his farm, even though he didn't have much exposure to most types of farm work/machinery. Dad's uncle had to leave for the day to take care of something else, and there was still corn standing that needed to be picked and put in the crib for the cows. This was late November. His son in law had been fully thrust into the farm life, so he said he'd run the corn picker and finish up the field. So off he went to pick the corn by himself, and a while later, mid morning, not knowing for sure yet what everything was supposed to look and sound like while it was running, plugged the corn picker. He stepped off the back of the Farmall H to see what was going on, but didn't turn the PTO off. Got the leg of his full winter Carhartts wound into the pto shaft. He was a pretty good sized guy, and pretty strong. It beat him around some before he was able to get hold of something and it finished ripping the Carhartts off from him. He laid behind the tractor next to the corn picker hitch for hours before a neighbor had arrived home and heard him yelling for help. You see, when it was beating him around, it had pulled his knees apart, and opened them up at the kneecaps, and packed them full of mud and field stuff. Dad said the mud packed into where his knees were opened up caused terrible infections that took months to get under control, along with numerous surgeries. He's lucky to have been able to walk ever again, but even luckier to have been allowed to live. He was fairly young when this happened, and hobbled quite badly for the rest of his life. He was always cautious after that.
One more I remember dad telling me. When he was about 7 he went to get and bring in the cows for the night. It was dark out, and the cows were about a half mile away, past the woods where the fenced lane opened back up into a fenced pasture. On the way back walking behind the cows, dad said the whole sky lit up like it was daylight, he could see everything. He said a huge fireball was coming across the sky, seemingly right at him. He was very scared, had no idea what it was, and hid under a wagon next to him in the lane. He said it got dark again within probably a few seconds. He said he just sat and waited for the impact. A few minutes later he ran and shut the cows in that had made their way back already, and hurried and got inside their house. He said come to find out a few days later, the fireball that was coming straight for him was a meteor that hit in Canada somewhere. We're in MI here.
These were just some of the stories my dad used to tell me when I was little that would keep me awed, and wide eyed with wonder as a little guy.
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Today's Featured Article - Uncle Cecil's Super A Lives Again - by Mike Purcell. A week or so out of most of my childhood summers was often spent with my Uncle Cecil and Aunt Sissie in the small East Texas town of Maydelle on their 80 acre farm. Some of my fondest memories of these visits are those of learning to drive a tractor at the helm of Uncle Cecil’s 1948 Farmall Super A. Uncle Cecil was the second owner of this wonderful little tractor, but it was almost as though he had adopted an infant. The original owner was a man from Minnesota who bought her from a local dea
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