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When I was growing up there used to be a huge pile of scrap metal about half way between the house and the big field. That pile was a young man's gold mine of wheels, axles, bars, bolts, nuts, cranks,levers, rods, and just about every imaginable shape of cast iron block you could ever imagine. Some of it was green, some red, some yellow, some orange, and some just rusty. But the one thing it seemed that everything in that pile had in common was that someplace it was broken, bent, worn through, stripped out, or just plain worn out. But that did not stop us kids from creating some of the most ingenius "things" you've ever laid your eyes on. Most of 'em were "vehicles"....if not too heavy...for draggin to the top of the hill behind the field to use for what usually turned out to be a one-way thrill ride down the hill in a hail of flying cast iron parts and "Holy Mother of Jesus's"! If it survived the trip we'd drag it back up and here we'd go again. The side of that hill today would probably drive a metal detector nuts. But what a time we had! Years later....and I mean lots of years later....I was going through my dad's old stuff from a room in the barn and I came across the Ferguson Plow Manual. Just as a matter of interest I started looking through it. Imagine my surprise when suddenly I started seeing a lot of the bits and pieces that had gone into our "vehicles" all those years ago in the pictures of the Ferguson Plow! I had never seen one...didn't even know such a thing existed. By my recollection age daddy was already using a drag type disk plow and I just assumed they all looked like that. Points and shears and mouldboards.....landslides....coulters...weed hooks....extensions...those weren't plow parts....those were hill rider parts! Only then did it dawn on me WHY that one axle was crooked and offset on both ends and so darn hard to use with wheels! The moral of this story.....I don;t think daddy or even daddy's daddy ever put anything on that scrap pile with the sole intent or purpose of keeping us kids occupied.....but man, oh man did they ever get a cheap babysitter outta the deal! Never throw anything away..... you may need a cheap babysitter yourself one day!
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