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Bill
07-14-2002 18:23:54
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Yesa Sam I have. I also had a B JD 50 when I left home. The best times of my life was between 1955 and 1965 give or take. All m uncles and grandads was still alive ad farming. Everybody still helped one another. Threshing was all but over, but I heard about every trashing done by my dad to have been there myself. We all hayed together and knew each other, and each others family, and each others business (so we thought)( so that everybody within 3 miles or so down the road seemed like extended family, and we treated thedm as such as they did us. There was respect for one another to vairying degrees, there was respectfor the hard work the old timers did. There is no respect in farming anymore. Its a business. Its only about Dollars and cents, well about dollars anyhow. Noone farms because its what they really want to do. They farm because there is money in it against doing somthing else. Used to be that a farmers sons followed their dad into farming because the sons wnated to carry on thew vocaton of there forbears. Not anymore. Used to be a farmer was proud of a finished chore, and the more so the more work it required. Todays young farmers dont want to do anything that has to do with physical work, and truly they dont have to. They can buy a machine to do it for them. They see no respect or honor in finishing a job like that, its just another job behind them. It saddens me to see all the new farmers tryting to buy into the old days and dont know how. I feel its up to me to help them as I can, but theres no way I can tell them about the way things were, using the equipment they are trying to use now, somthing is lost. They probably get a feel, but cacant get the taste of life in the 40s and 50s 60s or earlier, and thats sad. I farm with the old stuff because some of it ive had since I was 18, also because some of it belonged to my dad, grandad, and neighbors who had died and I bought it at there sale. That stuff is pricless to me asa that is the only link I have with some of those people now dead, and the life and times I shared around that machine when they were alive and using it themselves. A guy cant buy that experience, it only goes around once, and when they and the things they used are gone, there gone forever. Sometimes I try to add a story about a particular machine that somones trying to find out somthing about. It reminds me about the experience which warms me somwhat, and when I tell it, i hope that I can send the feeling of what it was like to be there, 50 yrs ago, around that machine, around the people using it. I think thats good. Sorry about the ranting
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