Farm Hand Gets More Than He Bargained For

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The hill that provided a young farm hand tractor driver with a greater thrill than he bargained for.

Once farming became mechanized, the agricultural community came to share a lot of daily experiences. Obviously different crops are grown in different parts of the country, farm sizes vary and the climate in our large country has such a dramatic range that no two areas are the same. However, farmers everywhere get up early, work long hours, often do menial jobs and don’t expect anyone to laud them for their efforts.

One element of farming in the early days that’s rarely mentioned and never discussed in any detail is the mind-numbingly long hours spent on tractors in the field. Human nature is such that a person has a natural tendency to remember the good and forget the bad. That is amply evident in the current interest in collecting and restoring old tractors. Owners of old tractors will expound at length on their experiences (usually as a kid) driving whatever tractor is their favorite. But one doesn’t hear much about the boredom produced by that relentless fieldwork. Hot or cold weather is only mentioned in passing. The dust and dirt and bugs that almost drove one crazy for hours on end are largely forgotten.

Rest assured, those now unimportant conditions were front and center at the time the tractors were being used as designed. Operator comfort never figured into the equation. Yes, tractors were noble machines that did amazing things on America’s farms, but the individuals who used them were the real element that made farming successful. Workers today would be appalled if they were asked to do what was routinely done on a daily basis in farming just a few decades ago. 

Occasional diversions

Because of the often repetitive nature of farm work, it is only natural that young farm hands made every effort possible to “have a little fun.” As a kid of 14, this author at one time drove a small Case wheel tractor (I’m pretty sure it had no model identification still visible on its faded paint) mowing hay with a 7-foot sickle. We referred to it as the “pea popper” because it was so small in relation to the farm’s other large, crawler-type tractors.

But it had one feature that no other tractor I ever drove had: a foot throttle in addition to the regular hand throttle. I quickly learned that when moving from one field to another (which usually meant a mile or so of travel) I could double-clutch and go up through the gears. What fun! I would stop several times during the move and accelerate again and again from first through fourth. Total enjoyment time for the whole day was something like 10 minutes.