Answering the question “Have you ver feared for your life?”
Dads tractor had no brakes among other broken stuff .
Learning to drive this way was truly dangerous. Its funny how it became normal to expect things to suddenly go from boring to near death in a few seconds on the farm.
We were haying in the back field which required going over a hill to get to and from the field.
The normal setup was Dad on the tractor pulling the baler with Emmett on the wagon behind the baler stacking the bales. The second tractor sat idle. This time they took the wagon off the baler and Emmett and I started back to the barn with me driving dad’s tractor. Dad must have taken Emmett’s tractor back to the barn or stayed behind to rake more hay or do something with it.
He normally would have driven the load back to the barn with Emmett and I sitting on the loaded wagon. I was sort of in-training and they were trying to get both tractors working at the same time. This later turned into me raking with one tractor while they baled with the other.
Anyway I had been told to never use 4th gear when going down the hill. Also to never shift gears when going down the hill. Today I wondered why. I was often told things to do or not to do but most times I was not told why. It was like they were so busy, they didn’t have time to explain why or they figured I wasn’t old enough to understand why.
It was slow going in 3rd gear so I though I’d try 4th just to speed things up a bit. Emmett was sitting on the top of the load of bales on the wagon behind me. I was already in 4th so I didn’t shift to 3rd as we crested the hill. Down we went. The tractor and wagon and me and Emmett accelerated down the hill. I knew enough not to try shifting to 3rd at this high speed cause then it would get stuck in neutral and the engine would not be able to slow the descent at all. At some point one of the wheels on the wagon broke. It was a spoked wheel and the welds that held the spokes to the rim broke. The rim rolled past me down the hill all on its own. One corner of the wagon dropped and dug into the ground. The load of hay Emmett was sitting on flew off the wagon with Emmett still sitting on it. It was like he was flying through the air sitting on a flying carpet made of hay bales. I can still see him if I close my eyes. Boy can Emmett swear! Emmett said swears that I’d never heard before. Most were being yelled as he flew through the air. He landed pretty softly on all the hay bales thank god. I though he was going to kill me. In the end it was just another day on the farm . Nobody got hurt. I was pretty sure I could out run Emmett anyway.