Plowing

Storyteller’s Corner

When you live on a farm isolated from nearby neighbors, children have to come up with their own fun. My father-in-law put my husband on a tractor when he was in the second grade. Keep in mind the tractor had no cab and was much simpler to drive than todays with all their bells and whistles. My husband’s dad farmed with his brother who had two sons about the same age as my husband and his younger brother. Apparently the dads put two boys on each of the two tractors and turned them loose to plow a field.

While one boy drove, the second boy road on the fender, and the four kids met each other once in a while in the middle of the field. To pass the time and have some fun, they came up with a plan. While one drove, the second kid on the fender would gather mud from the tractor tire and made a mud ball. What ensued was a storm of clads each time the tractors passed each other. They even got off the tractors while they were moving and pulled up the wheat stubble with dirt attached. These sailed across the tractors like an arrow. That according to my husband was how he developed his throwing arm.

I have no idea how many times the boys got into the mud fights, but one day they got caught by their dads. One father wanted to stop and blister all four of them, but the other one thought it was hilarious. They never did get into trouble. My father-in-law talked about catching them nearly 20 years after the incident. The ingenuity of the young boys was amazing.