The barn on the farm in Lorenzo
I spent a lot of time in this barn and near this barn on the farm located about a mile from Lorenzo, Texas. I wouldn't change places with anyone who grew up anywhere else in any other way. Though I knew at a young age that I wasn't gifted or tempered to be a cotton farmer, I knew life was good and that God had a plan for my life. My mind can still recall the sounds made by a wrench falling on the barn's concrete floor. I can still call up the smell of grease and dust. I can still hear the chirp of sparrows who colonized the barn and made it their home. I can easily remember the treasures found in the old red grainery (falling down now)...treasures left over from times when crops were made with teams of mules and homes were heated with coal oil. I walk through the graveyard of old implements and remember when they were new. I look at the scrap iron pile near the grainery and remember the implements from which the scraps came. Life is good. God is still working His plan out in my life. Growing up near this barn didn't hurt me a bit. 
posted by Gerre Joiner | 8:02 AM
1 Comments:
Gerre I enjoyed reading that you were not cut out to be a farmer. I too was not cut that way and I can still remember the last time Buster had me drive a tractor. It was Christmas time and I was as home from Tech. I was on the 720 John Deere with a canvis skirt around it for heat. I was deep braking and as usuall the only way I could stay on that tractor was to make a game out of it. The game was to turn the tractor around at the end without touching the throttle. As I arrived at the end of the row I would hit the lever to raise the plow, then turn the steering wheel hard to the left and at the same time stand on the left brake. Which of course cause the tractor to pivot on that one wheel. As I was spinning around I would hit the lever to turn the plow over, the spin the steering wheel to the right, tap the right brake, to drop the front wheels into the rut then hit the lever to drop the plow into the ground and off I'd go. Looking forward to the next time I to do it again. This had gone on for a couple of hours and after one turn I was half way down a half mile row when I saw dad in his pickup barreling down the turn- row flashing his lights and waving his hat outside the pickup trying to get me to stop. Well I stopped and waited for him to walk to the tractor. The first thing he said was "have you looked behind you since you turned around?" I replied NO. "Would you mind turning around and look" When I did, I saw that the last time I turn the tractor around I had hit the flip lever the wrong way and the plow had not flipped over. It took them three years to get that ditch I had just dug leveled out to where the water would flow down the row and not turn and flow across the rows. And that is how I was never asked to plow again. There is a new song on the radio about a farm boy under Amarillo sky. One more round, one more round, one more round. My brother could climb on a tractor at 6 in the morning and climb off at 6 in the evening and be a happy as a pig in slop. Me, I knew that there had to be something happening somewehere because it wasn't happening on that tractor. Then there is the story of chasing rabbits, but that another tail.
Happy New Year.
Post a Comment
<< Home