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This video has 3 million plus hits. This was me all through junior high, high school and college doing the exact same chores. Except for one thing, we didn't get the big roll baler until I had given up this particular career. We had huge 2600-3000 bale hay stacks of 75 pound bales which is why at almost 60 years old I can still, ya know, impress a few folks with my workout regimen.
For me this was a real trip down memory lane because there isn't much to do in these big tractors going all of 3 miles an hour except to calculate how many people your farm or ranch feeds in a given year. I figured for wheat and beef ours was around 1500. JPII actually came out to Montana right before he was elected Pope and could not believe the size of Montana farms and ranches or the equipment it took to work this volume of produce. These were not the Polish farms he was used to and he left with a healthy respect for American farmers and ranchers. I personally did not meet him because I chose to stay at Carroll College and do my other job as a Resident Assistant. My mother was so not pleased. Oh well, the decision may have given me the distance I needed to maintain my marginal status as a Vatican II Catholic. In any event, this is a great video and the guys remind me alot of the people I went to High School and college with--OK and yea, I see a lot of myself in this video. And no, none of us, even back in my day, wore cowboy hats. We all wore caps advertising some weed, tractor, or fetilizer company.
My first real job was on a farm. This sounds like one of those stories that old people tell, but it is true. I would awake before dawn, hop on my bicycle and ride 12 miles to work, throw hay bales all day, ride home, then take swimming lessons or play baseball. I was one physically fit kid. My pay was $7.00 per day. That's how I spent the summers of '68 and '69.
ReplyDeleteI have to laugh when Invictus tries to paint the 60's all psychodelic neon colors, with stoned youth screwing everywhere, as though civilization was about to end at the hands of hippies.
We worked hard, were worried about our futures, the Vietnam War, (Some friends here in Canada were Americans and expected to answer the draft call.) More than anything else I remember an incredible time of optimisim, as though our generation could achive anything we desired, even to reach the moon.
I wore a flannel shirt and ball cap, just like the kids in the video, but there weren't any air-conditioned, internet connected tractor cabs in those days. But I also had tie-dyed T-shirts and wore my hair longer than my parents liked. The music of the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, and Joni Mitchell were all played on the same radio station. Ahhh, those were the days.
Can't get no atisfaction cause I hear that train a comin' to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
Peace
p2p
My brothers and I used to have to biggest whine fests over who got the tractor with the air conditioning. I never won.
DeleteI do remember we could get one radio station and it wasn't rock and roll. I swore to God if I ever heard "You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille", one more time I was going to lay in front of my own tractor.
We thought having radios was cool, except for the one station thing, but you are so right, things have gotten way more hi tech on the entertainment front in poor ole farmer Bob's tractor.
I will admit that my brother had a patch of illegal product growing in one particular hay field. One day my dad comes home with one of the pick up trucks set up for weed spraying and wants to know: "How come you kids didn't get those big weeds growing in the Sainfoin? Why did I have to go out and spray them? Can't I trust you two to do anything right?"
My brother about died and I had everything I could do not to burst out laughing.