When I was a kid growing up on a farm north of Oak Grove, my dad farmed half the countryside with four mules, a team of horses, and a rubber tired F-20 Farmall tractor. I was only six or seven years old when I learned how to crank that tractor to get it started. I had to stand on a block and hold the crank just right so if it kicked, it wouldn’t break my arm. My folks were unaware I could start the tractor, and when they were both gone I would crank the tractor, drive it around, then park it where I got it so my dad wouldn’t know I had driven it.
One day when my parents were both gone, I started the F-20 and decided to drive it out on the road and down the big hill next to our house. Back then, tractors didn’t have a road gear and weren’t designed to go very fast, so to speed up going down the hill I kicked it out of gear. The tractor picked up speed and was going faster and faster. The next thing that happened, the front end started bouncing up off the ground, and when it was up in the air, I couldn’t steer it. I pulled on the brake lever, but it was a one wheel brake. It swung me across the road and almost into the ditch. By this time, I was probably going over 20 miles an hour, and was never so scared in my life. I had both hands on the steering wheel, and a tight grip on the seat when I finally got it to a stop at the bottom of the hill.
Now days, everything kids do for fun costs big bucks. A few years ago I took my grandson to Worlds of Fun, where he rode all kinds of scarey rides, and including food, I spent the better part of a one hundred dollar bill. When we were coming home, my grandson asked me what I did for fun when I was his age. I said, “I kicked an F-20 out of gear going down a steep hill.” He looked at me and said, “Huh?”
Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers@aol.com
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