Plowing corn

J

John *.?-!.* cub owner

501 Club
It is funny how some memories come to mind you had not thought of in years. When I was in my mid teens, some 50 years ago there had been a film on the news of a National Guard training jet crashing on take off at Lambert Airport. Movies were pretty rare at the time, and someone taking a home movie had been visiting and filmed the takeoff, low altitude stall out, and ejection, followed by the crash of the aircraft, and the whole thing was on the news the next day. The ejection seats fired almost horizontally due to the nose high angle of the aircraft, but the 2 crewmen survived with only minor injuries, which was miraculous due to the low altitude it happened at and the angle of ejection. The day after I was plowing corn (local term for plowing out weeds, or cultivating) in our bottom field below the railroad tracks. It was early summer, and the corn was pretty small, so I was running about 1/3 throttle in first or second gear on the H, which is pretty slow and boring, so my mind was drifting. Being a typical teenage farm boy, my mind was on airplanes, and jets, and the crash i had seen on the news,

After about 2 hours I suddenly heard this ground shaking roar from behind me and when I looked over my right shoulder I saw this huge blindingly bright light about 20 or so feet above, coming straight at me. My mind immediately went back to that crash, and I was halfway off the left side of the tractor, planning a right angle escape route before I realized it was the oar train from Pea Ridge iron mine coming around a bend on the raised track bed. :tears: At that point in time the train is running up hill, pulling 80 to 100 loaded iron ore cars, with 6 engines running full throttle and normally doing 15 to 20 miles an hour. The roar is deafening from 30 or 40 yards away, and actually shakes the ground.
 
Sounds like when I was driving truck.

I was getting tired, truck stops were all full, cold outside and I was in need of a quick nap, not a full sleep. So I pulled into a Wal-Mart lot, pulled up and parked in front of a light pole, left it running and put my head down on the steering wheel and fell asleep.

You guessed it- Woke up with a start, truck was rumbling at an idle, and I was headed right for that pole. I panicked, stomped on the brakes, then realized I was parked.

I stayed awake till i got where I was going. :bellylaugh: :bellylaugh: :bellylaugh:
 
Dale Shaw":2hvmtgev said:
Sounds like when I was driving truck.

I was getting tired, truck stops were all full, cold outside and I was in need of a quick nap, not a full sleep. So I pulled into a Wal-Mart lot, pulled up and parked in front of a light pole, left it running and put my head down on the steering wheel and fell asleep.

You guessed it- Woke up with a start, truck was rumbling at an idle, and I was headed right for that pole. I panicked, stomped on the brakes, then realized I was parked.:
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A driver at a trucking company I worked for in the 70's pulled into a rest area at the top of a steep grade. He crawled in to the sleeper for a rest.
While he was asleep, he dreamed the truck was rolling down the mountain. He jumped from the sleeper, into the parking lot, breaking his arm. He was dressed in his underware.
He was very touchy about the incident. So we could only snikker behind his back.
 
I failed to mention that the old H, which is the same one the guys on the forum surprised me with a few years ago, had a straight pipe, and even though it was not pulling real hard was loud enough to mask the sound of the train till it got pretty close. It was good there was a creek a few yards away, it was handier than making the half mile trip back to the house to get cleaned up. :lol:
 
John same field ,same train ,years later sure did disapoint a hay crew bout 3am tryin to put "all Edgar baled in one day" That big ole light swung across that field and revealed probally 800 more bales in what we thought was a almost empty field.
 
Dad had a New Holland 77T baler with a Wisconsin V4 on it. I never saw anything that would handle more hay in a day than that thing would until they came out with the big round balers.
 
Reminds me of my teenage late night dateing. The next day I was driving a Farm-all M tedding hay After several times around the field trying to stay awake, I happened to see a JD hay fluffer setting in the swath that looked just like the one I was using! It had come unhooked and I went all the way around the field just riding the tractor. That woke me up a little....... Jay M
 
Another train story about twenty five -thirty years ago i went deer hunting in the uwharrie mountains near Denton,NC i went down on sun.evening and was sleeping in the back of my IH scout about fifty feet from the RR tracks about two in the morning the ground began to shake and before i realized what was going on the engineer sounded the horn i almost destroyed the inside of the old scout.

Jim
 
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