When you are farming, every day is a new adventure and some days go better than others. When I-75 was being built, traffic was being routed down Hwy. 19-41 from Griffin to Hastings Bridge Rd. From there it turned onto McDonough Road and took the traffic over to a finished portion of I-75 and on into Atlanta. It carried the most traffic we had ever seen. I was helping a friend haul a load of hay to a farm on McDonough Road. When we made the turn at Hastings Bridge about twenty bales of hay fell off into the Highway, blocking traffic in both directions for as far as we could see. I think these were the hardest bales of hay I have ever tried to move. It was also very embarrassing with all the horns blowing while we cleared the highway. Obviously these folks were not from around here.
When I was in Rome, we had a tractor driven feed mill that we used daily. I never knew which tractor would be available for this task, until one day it was settled. A young man was pulling a silage wagon from the field to the silo and was going too fast to make the turn onto the paved road. When he tried to slow down, the silage wagon ran over the tractor and flipped it over. Fortunately the driver was not seriously injured, but the tractor was nearly totaled. The sheet metal was all bent up and it ran a little sideways. They gave it to me to run the feed mill.
Silage blowers are huge fans that are capable of taking the fresh cut silage and blowing it all the way to the top of the silo. One day while the blower was being revved up for the day’s silage harvest, there was a loud crash. We all gathered around the blower to assess what had happened. The fan had been destroyed and the shaft was locked up. While we were standing there, one of the farm hands came up and asked if we had seen his new thermos jug that he had left on top of the blower. Problem solved. Now all we had to do was go get another blower from one of the other farms.
The farm operation in Rome included five dairies that were spread from Cave Springs up to Summerville. One day while in Cave Springs, I was asked to pull a side delivery hay rake up to Armuchee. (Pronounced Armurchee, but the second “R” is only there in the minds of locals). Side delivery rakes are wheel driven, and in order to transport them the gear box, must be shifted to neutral and the lever tied off so it stays there. I watched through the rearview mirror as a farmhand tied off the lever. What I did not notice was the fact that he tied it off to a universal joint that turns when the rake is pulled. Everything was fine until I stopped at the first stop sign. When the rake slowed down, the gear box jumped into gear. I would estimate about twenty miles per hour. The gear box exploded, breaking a hole in the box and shedding gears. The wheel was locked up. I unhooked it at the stop sign and went back to tell the foreman where he could find it.
In Yatesville, we had a fairly new Ford dump truck. I watched as a farm hand pulled up to the gate and jumped out to open the gate. As he got the gate open, the truck rolled past him and headed down the hill straight for a large pecan tree. As I was pondering how we were going to explain this, the truck hit a rock which steered it past the tree. The truck rolled up the hill on the other side of the tree and then backwards up the hill on our side of the tree about three times before it settled undamaged. I didn’t have to explain much about the importance of using the parking brake, as the driver was still in shock.
Then, there was the older tractor with the live PTO that we used to mow pastures. As I approached a ditch with about a fifteen-foot drop-off, I pushed the clutch to stop. The mower took over and drove the tractor over the edge of the cliff. The front wheels became suspended in midair as I tried to figure out what to do. When the center of gravity was reached, the front end began to fall. I lowered the lift as it went down and the corner of the mower caught the ground at the top and stopped the fall. I climbed off of the uphill end of the tractor. The machine was sitting straight down with the mower straight up in the air. As we pulled it out with another tractor, I decided that I would go buy a clutch for the PTO so this could never happen again. I think I will stop here. These are not fond memories and, while I am not out of stories, I am out of room. (to be continued).
