My day is ending and I haven’t written my blog. Here are my thoughts for this evening.
When Bob and I were first married we didn’t have anything to decorate our mobile home. In my endeavor to put a little color into our rooms without spending much money, I started collecting salt and pepper shakers.
Back in the 1970s, rummage sales had the best bargains. For twenty-five cents, I could buy sets of all sorts and sizes. I liked the funny ones best, but anything, odd or different was good, too–I even brought home some chipped ones just because they were so different.
After a time I actually had too many salt and pepper shakers. There was no room in my curio cabinet so some got packed away. Also, our toddlers were accident prone and pieces were broken.
As time has passed, the price of the shakers went from a quarter to $2, to $5 or more. Good thing I had no need for more.
Maybe, if I look through my cabinets and stored sets now I might find a few real treasures. But I doubt it.
They served their purpose. But I’ve gone off collecting salt and pepper shakers or any knickknacks. The main reason why I’m no longer fond of them is because they have to be dusted.
Every year, teachers work hard figuring out little inexpensive gifts their students can make for their mothers on Mother’s Day. One particular gift I got many years ago is still etched in my memory.
snapshot of little Robby
Our first born, Robby, was going to a pre-school out in the country. This was a couple of hours, a few times a week.
The Friday before Mother’s Day, I parked in the driveway waiting for my little boy. Other children came out of the house. Each held a colorful handmade tissue paper flower–the flower was about the size of the child’s head.
Eventually, Robby came out, but he wasn’t holding a flower. To keep his gift a surprise he hid his flower under his jacket–not one of his better plans.
“I have something for you, Mommy, but you can’t have it until Mother’s Day.”
“Is it a ball?” I asked. “Or a horse? Or a flying carpet?”
He giggled. “No. And I can’t tell you.”
When we got home, Robby ran upstairs to his bedroom. From the living room, I heard him cry.
“Do you need help?” I asked.
“NO! Not you.”
“I’ll send Daddy up when he gets home from work. Okay?”
“Okay,” Robby sniffled.
Later that day, Daddy went upstairs and saved the day.
When Mother’s Day arrived, I was very surprised when Robby handed me my unsmashed tissue paper flower. It’s a memory I’ll cherish forever.
My dad chose my name, Susan. My parents called me Suzie-Q when I was little. As I grew, they called me Susan. I don’t know where the name came from. Dad just said he liked it and never had a boy’s name in mind. Of course, back in 1950, there was no way of knowing what their little baby would be before birth. Good thing I wasn’t a boy or I might have been a boy named Susan.
My sister came along 18 months later. When Karen started to talk she couldn’t say Suzie. Ss were hard for her to pronounce. Karen shortened my name to Z. Just thinking about my little sister following me around and calling me Z gives me a warm feeling.
Back in 2007, my Bob had trouble with his Allis-Chalmers D-15 tractor. He was using the tractor and loader, moving tree branches he had cut when suddenly the engine made a horrible sound. Somehow Bob was able to limp back up the lane to the machine shed before the poor old tractor went belly-up.
The D-15 took down the old chicken house in the late 1960s.
Bob knew right from the start that he had major problems. He didn’t have a lot of hope for it even when he started to take the engine apart. Deep inside the innards of the tractor, Bob found the starter had disintegrated, sending pieces of metal into the engine, wrecking it.
“What are we going to do now?” he said to the tractor. He had a couple of choices: try to rebuild that engine (parts would cost more than the tractor was worth), junk it and buy a replacement (if he could find one) or take the engine out of his other D-15 and make one out of two. He decided on the last choice and began dismantling the broken tractor, but first, he had to remove the loader.
The loader on the AC D-15 isn’t like new models that attach and detach with a quick click. There’s a lot more to it. While I was helping Bob take out pins and bolts, he started telling me about his first tractor with a loader.
“It was a John Deere A,” said Bob. “Up until then, we used pitchforks to clean out the barn and fill the manure spreader. This loader on the D-15 is modern compared to that A.
“First off the John Deere A had a
narrow front end. It also had a hydraulic pump that worked off the Power-Take-Off
(PTO). The only time you had power to the hydraulic pump was when the PTO was
running. The thing with this tractor was the PTO stopped every time you
disengaged the clutch.
“Let’s see if I can explain it to
you,” he said to me. “You had to shift the tractor into neutral and engage the
clutch to raise the loader. With that narrow front end every time you hit a
hole you’d get stuck, especially when you had the loader full and since the
loader only had a hydraulic lift you couldn’t use to get yourself unstuck.” (You should know that Bob is a pro at using
the D-15 loader to push down into the ground to get out of trouble.)
“To dump
the bucket, you’d pulled a lever that would trip it. There was no hydraulic on
the bucket. If you were lucky, the spring would bring the bucket back into
place. Otherwise, you’d have to lower it to the ground, back up, scraping it
against the soil so it would latch back in place.
“Here’s how it went,” he said. “Every time you loaded the bucket, you would drive forward into the pile, disengage the clutch, shift into neutral, engage the clutch so the hydraulics would work, raise the loader up, disengage the clutch, shift into reverse, engage clutch to back up, disengage the clutch, put it in forward gear and engage the clutch to drive forward. You could raise the loader while you were moving, so if you planned ahead you would have it at the right height when you got to the manure spreader.
“If you screwed up, which I did a lot at the beginning, and needed the loader up some more to dump the bucket you had to stop, shift into neutral, engage the clutch, raise it up, disengage the clutch, shift into gear, move forward and then dump. But it still saved a lot of work. It was a heck of a lot better than using a pitchfork that’s for sure.
“This orange baby is an environmentally green machine now,” Bob said with a smile as he started it after making one running tractor out of two. “The only thing new on it is the oil filter. Even the tires are off an old combine.” (My husband is big into reusing what he has at hand.)
The D-15 was used when Bob and his
father bought it in 1967. As Bob wiped the grease and oil from his hands he
said, “I wonder if there are other farmers out there who keep an old tractor
around just for old time sake? I kind of think there are.”
This photo from 2013 shows Bob driving his MF 2135 tractor. It replaced the D-15
I too think there are farmers who have a love affair with their old tractors. If you’re one of them, drop Bob a line and tell him about the old machine you love or one you fondly remember. He’d like hearing from you.
Another Tuesday, another gathering with friends at Sissy’s in Seymour for coffee.
You can never tell where the conversation will take us as we sip our coffee. This day the talk took a turn when someone mentioned Maplewood Meats would no longer be butchering. This brought on memories of early days when butchering on farms was common.
Bob’s Dad (Shorty), Uncle (Hippy) and Grandpa John Manzke taking care of a farm raised hog-1950s Mokena, Illinois
I remembered visiting one of my mother’s friends when I was 5 or 6. I always loved going to that farm, except for this one particular day. When we walked into their farmhouse that day we found the whole family busily cutting up the carcass of a hog.
I wasn’t bothered seeing the pig being cut up for food, until I rounded the table. There next to the table leg was a basket. Inside the container was the whole head of the pig. Seeing it look up at me freaked me out. For the first time ever, I wanted to hurry our visit and head home.
Back in our own kitchen, we found Dad cooking supper for the family. He was a great cook, but to my chagrin, that day Dad had decided to make us pork chops.
