Continued from
http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=30601.msg885008#msg885008My father and I left the farmer sitting at the table in his warm kitchen and hurried across the cobbles to where a big barn stood at the far side of the yard. We let ourselves in through the Judas gate and closed it behind us. Then we just stood still for a moment, listening to the rain drumming on the corrugated tin roof and watching the various indistinct shapes that surrounded us metamorphize into recognisable objects as our eyes became accustomed to the dim light.
This building was obviously the implement store. Everywhere I looked there was a piece of exciting machinery. Big stuff like seed drills, bailers, chain harrows, hedge flails, ploughs etc, and smaller stuff like pumps and sprayers, post hole borers, cutters, chippers and mowers, all calling out for me to climb on them. The air was thick with the smell of fuel, oil and grease. It was like some sort of mechanical pheromone. I moved forward, drawn like a moth to a flame.
Rather than call me back, my dad walked around with me for a few minutes, explaining how things worked and answering questions like “Which would win in a fight, a seed drill or a hedge flail?”
As we strolled around the barn, dad picked up an empty polythene fertiliser bag and held it upside down. Then, he turned one of the closed end corners inside out and pushed it, inverted, inside the opposite corner. This simple action had the miraculous effect of turning the fertiliser bag into a waterproof hood, complete with cape. He passed it to me and I quickly put it on. I thought it was the cleverest thing that I had ever seen.
The tractor was awesome. I can’t tell you what make it was, although with hindsight, I think it was a Fordson Major. What I can tell you is, it was big and blue and it had red wheels with huge chunky tyres. I was mightily impressed by the seat, (which was made of iron) but the bit that I loved best was the exhaust pipe. It stuck straight up through a hole in the bonnet, and it had a little lid that flipped open to let the exhaust gas out when you started the engine. The higher the revs, the wider the little lid opened, and then when you stopped the engine it closed to keep the rain out. Fantastic!
We started the tractor and drove it from the barn to where the trailer stood with its tow bar resting on a chock of wood next to our lorry in the fold yard. My dad reversed the tractor up to it while I called out “Come on, come on, steady… Left hand down a bit..” until the couplings were lined up, then my dad passed me the lynchpin, I dropped it through the eyelet, and we were ready to go. Hooray!
My granddad took one look at the tractor and declined a lift to the bottom of the field. For him it was a simple choice, on the one hand, walk a few hundred yards in the rain, on the other hand, certain death. My dad and I had no such qualms, and were soon jolting down the steeply sloping meadow. My dad allowed me to sit on his knee and hold the steering wheel. As we descended the hill, the huge chunky tyres flung big clods of earth high into the air and the little lid on the exhaust pipe stood almost completely open. It was still raining heavily, but now I had my new hood and cape to protect me. At that moment, as far as I was concerned, there wasn’t another little boy in the universe with whom I would change places.
When we got to the bottom of the hill, dad turned around and reversed up to the drainage pipes. Instead of leaving the tractor and trailer in a straight line, he deliberately parked so that the trailer was at right angles to the tractor, I asked him why and he explained that once loaded with scrap, it would be hard to get the trailer moving in the soft ground, and because it was at right angles, the tractor would already be in motion by the time it got the full weight of the trailer. I nodded, but it was actually not until many years later that I actually understood this concept.
The drainage pipes were huge. Each one about 20ft long and wide enough for me to crawl through. They must have weighed over a ton each. We had no means of lifting them, but they were made of cast iron, and cast iron will break, if you hit it hard enough. My dad asked me to pass him the sledgehammer.
Our sledgehammer wasn’t one of those piffling little 7lb jobs, it was a 28lb monster. A proper sledgehammer, worthy of the name. You could have knocked a house down with it. I found the hammer and dragged it across the wet grass to where my dad stood facing the open end of a pipe. He spit on his hands and then lifted the hammer, testing it’s weight as if to re-familiarise himself with it, then he swung it in a huge arc and brought it crashing down on the rim of the pipe. The hammer bounced, and the pipe rang like a bell, we looked closely at the place where the hammer had hit, there was a small shinny spot in the rust but apart from that, no discernable damage.
My dad hit that pipe again and again. After a dozen or so blows he removed his jacket, after a dozen more he removed his shirt. Every time he hit the pipe, it gave out the same, bell like ring. It seemed unbreakable. Then, with his strike rate falling and his breath coming in ragged gasps, he landed a blow that produced a different sound. This time, it was a dull lifeless thud. We rushed up to get a closer look, but we knew that the pipe had surrendered. Sure enough, there was a deep crack running several feet along its length. A few more blows and a large chunk broke away and fell to the ground. I couldn’t believe it, I thought my dad was superman.
In actual fact, my dad is 5ft 8in, and back then, he weighed approximately ten and a half stone.
To be continued.
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