[AT] OFF Topic -- Now Contemplating Our Navel

Thu Nov 2 23:06:58 PDT 2017

Cecil,

I completely agree with your assessment. I taught all four of our children (2 boys, 2 girls)  all the basics of automobile ownership, including changing their own oil and filter, checking and replacing the other fluids and filters on schedule.  Minor tune-ups, windshield wiper replacement, etc.  Basic Carpentry and plumbing skills.  When my two boys moved into High School, I became concerned they might have too much time on their hands and get into drugs or worse.  So I made a suggestion to them.  I would buy a pickup and loan them the money (time payback required) to buy lawn maintenance equipment so they could start a lawn maintenance business. They were required to first pay me back what they owned me keeping only 10% of the after costs earnings and once the equipment was paid for they were required to put a minimum of 50% of their after cost income in the bank and they could have complete control of the other 50%.  They got to use the pickup free of charge but they had to feed it and maintain it. Somewhat to my surprise they took the bait hook line and sinker. 

We happened to live in an area where there were many affluent owners who provided them with more work than they could handle inside of a month. First they would bid jobs by the hour, then they found out they could make more money if they bid a total job price. It wasn't long before they were not only in the lawn mowing business but doing other maintenance such as plumbing and electrical work.  It wasn't long before I realized I had created a monster. They were working their butt off but they also were rolling in disposable money. So I became concerned about them having too much money to spend but I reluctantly didn't try to change the agreement. 

To make a long story shorter, for three summers this is what they did.  They truly did stay out of trouble, learned a whole lot about running a business and had more spending money than they should have had.  But it turned out ok,  Both went to college and graduated as Engineers and one went back to get his MBA.  A Mechanical Engineer that also got a MBA and the other a Masters in Optical Physics. 

They did have a shop in High School but it was a joke, unfortunately.  It wasn't staffed or funded properly because funds were being directed toward computer education. I even volunteered to do night shop classes in the High School.  Night Classes in High School???  You have to be crazy. 

Bottom line my for children were prepared for the real world when they left home. One daughter, a stay at home mother,  who can't be out in the sun, does all the maintenance and repairs on their home. Ask her anything about Air Conditioning, furnaces, electrical wiring, plumbing. Kitchen appliances, cabinets, etc,  she has learned all about them and does most of the work herself. 

So where did these kids get their basics training. It sure as hell wasn't the shop in High School but it should have. Now with 9 Grandchildren I think only One of the 9 may have acquired the basic skills their parents were taught. I'm embarrassed to admit that one male Grandson was asked to mow the lawn because his mother was ill but was told to check the oil in the mower before mowing. He filled it to the top.  Needless to say he fogged up the neighborhood.  But he recently Graduated with Honors with a dual major, Computer Science and Math.  Brilliant but no basic skill set. He is learning now however because he has to as he is on his own. 7 of the 9 have Graduated from College and most have a technical degree of some sort.  One in college and the last a Junior in High School.  One Granddaughter I am particularly proud of, graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree and now works for Ingersoll Rand and is in their management training program.  In middle school and High School she drove her parents crazy because she had ADD.  Now here I want to compliment her parents and the High School teachers and  staff. They really went to work to get her the help she needed. It was a private High School which probably made all the difference. Between Medication and counseling in High School and then a couple years in Community College she was able to settle down and fully concentrate for long periods. She then went on to a full University and got her Engineering degree. And now she is an intense Engineer working long hours not necessarily because she has to but it keeps her brain engaged. She has come a long way.

But the bottom line of all this is we cannot depend on the school system at all anymore for life skills training.  For example I think all High School kids should be trained on owning and maintaining a home AND even more importantly several credit hours on human relationships and marriage. The Churches used to play a heavy role in this but as society has become almost totally agnostic so that influence is gone as well. 

I better quit.

Dean VP
Snohomish, WA 98290

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com [mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Cecil Bearden
Sent: Thursday, November 2, 2017 4:43 PM
To: at at lists.antique-tractor.com
Subject: Re: [AT] HayWagon build up.

Dean:

Most have spent so much money on those smartphones and have such a college tuition loan or payment that they have no money for anything important.

I fully believe that downfall of our society will be the removal of shop classes from our high schools, and the lack of Driver education in the high school.   I have never seen the numbers of young people who cannot drive safely, or have no clue when anything malfunctions either in the car or around home.  Girls cannot cook , boys can't drive a nail or use a screwdriver...

Cecil

On 11/2/2017 3:07 AM, Dean VP wrote:
> Indiana Robinson,, I truly enjoy reading about your 1940's and 50's 
> experiences. Your experiences parallel mine in so many ways.  Many of 
> our wagon gears were made out of model A axles and I didn't know there 
> were such things as store bought wagon gears until well into the 50's. 
> But then a really Monster wagon arrived on our yard that was a bright 
> Red 300 bushel rectangular steel box on truck axles with truck split 
> rim wheels with a PTO driven dual cylinder hydraulic hoist. Right now 
> the name of the brand escapes me but maybe it will come out of the fog 
> while I write this. My Dad pulled it from the Manufacturer somewhere 
> in Illinois all the to NW IA behind a 1947 Plymouth with a bumper strap-on hitch. Now let me tell you ...
> that wagon was big and heavy.  How he did that without destroying the 
> Plymouth is beyond my imagination. Damn, I can't think of the name. I 
> think you would recognize it.
> The reason Dad bought it is we had several pieces of land scattered 
> around within 5 miles or so of the home farm and hauling small wagons 
> was not very efficient. When that wagon was loaded it drove the 
> tractor whether you wanted it to or not. Actually loaded it was 
> dangerous with the weight of tractors we hauled with it but...  nobody 
> got hurt.  I only dumped one flare wagon in the ditch full of ear corn 
> when I was watching Tornado funnels more than watching the road I was 
> driving on. Tornado's literally scared me so much I would have bowel 
> movements at inopportune times. I had seen what damage they can do.  
> More than one time I crawled into road culverts for cover.
>
> I don't know if your Horn wagon was made by the same company as our 
> Horn Loader we had on our tricycle tractors.  The horn loader we had, 
> had two huge vertical cylinders attached to the frame of the tractor 
> right behind of the front wheels. The steel braided cable was run over 
> pulley's on top of the hydraulic cylinders to raise the loader. That 
> stinking loader was built so stout it would pop front tires on the tractor and could lift a house.
> Clumsy as all get out to mount and was so bad we finally dedicated a 
> tractor to it. Power Steering??  You got to be kidding. Armstrong Power Steering.
>
> But before I go over the deep end with recollections of the past I 
> really admire your attempt to capture the history for the later 
> generations. Where I live in the suburbs of Seattle a little bit out 
> in the country, there isn't really anyone out here who gives a damn. 
> Our local club was going to sponsor some FFA students to help them 
> restore antique tractors for the National FFA competition.  Found out 
> the new $27 Million High School recently built doesn't even have a 
> shop. SUM TING WONG here. We put on an Antique show every year and the 
> young people who visit the show are more interested in smart phones 
> than learning a little about the history of farming. All but 4 of the 
> Dairies have been run out of the County due to excessive EPA rules, 
> etc.  So I have become quite discourage about offering a little 
> history to be appreciated.  The other change that I have noticed about 
> the younger crowd is that a few of them have attached themselves to 
> Antique tractors but mostly related to competitive pulling which I 
> detest with a passion.  The other thing that really gets under my skin 
> is they will buy a tractor and then not buy the appropriate manuals to 
> support their purchase. So they completely depend on those that are willing to supply them with a free lunch.  The Leech syndrome. And get irritated when some say "Buy
> a Manual".   I guess I am now fully qualified as a Grumpy Old Man.
>
>
> Dean VP
> Snohomish, WA 98290
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
> [mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Indiana 
> Robinson
> Sent: Wednesday, November 1, 2017 7:28 PM
> To: Antique tractor email discussion group 
> <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Subject: Re: [AT] HayWagon build up.
>
> This thread got me thinking... I have a light wagon gear my father 
> made out of Model A Ford axles, radius rods torque-tube etc. shortly after WW-II.
> More modern (for the time) farm equipment was hard to come by here in 
> the corn belt right after the war. Retooling for peace time production 
> went slower than the switch to war production had gone. Lots and lots 
> of the old stuff, mostly horse drawn had gone to scrap during the war. 
> Those factors along with lingering war shortages and a half zillion 
> veterans coming back home and wanting to start up farming or to build 
> up the family farm operation to support their new families all meant 
> that good used stuff usually sold pretty high dollar if it was good. 
> It did ease in a few years... I've talked here before about my father 
> needing a second tractor and not being able to find anything good that 
> he could afford. He bought two McCormick 10-20's and made one on 
> rubber out of them. He also built a fair amount of other stuff. He and 
> a neighbor had built an elevator out of scrap which they shared. He 
> later bought an elevator "kit" of sorts from Sears that included the upper part and a hopper along with the chain and flights.
> He built a frame for it using largely Ford Model T parts including 
> several frame rails and a front axle. He fabricated a wide winch to 
> raise and lower it from bits and pieces and a worm gear drive with a 
> crank off of "something". He fabricated a lift up drag chain dump to 
> carry ear corn or small grain from the wagon to the main elevator. It 
> ran with a  small B&S engine but in its later years he had wired the 
> place and it ran from a largish electric motor about 1 HP. The drive 
> was to a large pulley from a combine and to a jack-shaft made from a 
> piece of line-shaft and bearings from an old piece of shoe repair 
> machinery that he had saved from the depression days of the 1930's. It had a lever on it saved from "something"
> that steered the axle so you could line the upper end up with the hole 
> as you backed up to set up at the crib.
> Kind of surprisingly as I think back in those days most of our close 
> neighbors were still pulling the wagon up by the crib and shoveling 
> over the side of the wagon into the upper part of the crib, sometimes 
> a bit over their head. Our closest neighbor didn't get his first tractor until 1946.
> Lots of changes happened during those war and post war years.
> My father-in-law was working on a 640 acre farm in Fayette County IN 
> and in the very early 1950's they were still farming it with a barn 
> full of draft horses.
> My father had made that wagon gear in the later 1940's that I 
> mentioned, actually he made two but later sold one as we got some 
> other stuff. The beds on those wagons were all metal flare wagon beds. One had the name "Horn"
> painted on it and the other said "David Bradley" but they both looked alike.
> He kept the David Bradley one because it had a false endgate in it he 
> had designed and built. It was operated by a wide small diameter winch 
> across the back with a long handle attached to a ratchet gear from an 
> old manure spreader apron feeder chain.
> I kept the whole thing for some time but it eventually just started 
> disappearing into rust.I do still have that one wagon gear. I was 
> planning on a special purpose use for it but I have several other 
> wagon gears I can use for that. I think maybe next summer I'll go over 
> that Model A gear (minor repairs, paint and a half decent set of 
> tires) and buy or build a flare bed for it and use it for show. People 
> need to know how needs were often met with self reliance in those 
> times... With proper signage it should be able to tell a good historic story.
>
>
> ..
>
> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_
> campai gn=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=icon>
> Virus-free.
> www.avast.com
> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_
> campai gn=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=link>
> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
>
> On Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 7:47 PM, John Hall <jtchall at nc.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> Grant, if you have never seen those, then you may well be surprised 
>> to see hay wagons with tandem rear axles and even tandem front axles.
>> I've been around lots of wagons, but only in the last few years did I 
>> ever see a tandem rear axle setup and it was on Craigslist. Just this 
>> summer I saw an ad for a new wagon with tandem front and rear (I 
>> assume it is a 5th wheel style). You would be hard pressed to use 
>> anything that big here as our fields are so "twisty" you would have a 
>> hard time keeping the load on. I have to be careful as it is if I 
>> fill a wagon full (125
>> bales) so I can get to the shed without losing some as the 2 ways to 
>> the shed are both downhill and a pretty serious twist.
>>
>> John Hall
>>
>>
>> On 11/1/2017 11:00 AM, Grant Brians wrote:
>>> That looks like a nice solid trailer. Here in California I have 
>>> never seen a John Deere or Oliver or IH Hay Wagon. Lots of shopmade 
>>> and trucks were and are used, though.
>>>               Grant Brians  - Hollister,California farmer
>>>
>>> On 10/30/2017 5:39 PM, John Hall wrote:
>>>> Deere wagon, mid to late 70's model.
>>>>
>>>> John Hall
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> AT mailing list
>>>> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> AT mailing list
>>> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>> _______________________________________________
>> AT mailing list
>> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>>
>
>
> --

_______________________________________________
AT mailing list
http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at