If I had been driving just a little slower and a little more carefully - my grandson wouldn't be wearing a cast these days and this tractor of mine wouldn't have spent it's own time in a surgical suite.
Well, that might be overstating it a little, but the 1958 John Deere looks as good as new and seemed to be running well when I picked it up at the shop yesterday.
The guys at Marberg Implement told me it has at least another 20 years left in it, but weren't so sure about the odds of me being able to ride her by that time. "Thanks a lot," is what I told them after they helped load the tractor on the trailer behind the truck and paid almost at much as the original sales price to correct all the damage I had done.
Today, I took her back to the 40 acres with a eight row planter. We planted 15 acres of corn; another 15 of beans; and a special 10 acres of sunflowers. It's late enough now that my friend Alan at the extension office I'd be safe planting all those crops at once.
Covering the fields, up and down and back and forth is a lonely job. It provides a lot of time for thinking.
I thought about some of my uncles today, great uncles actually, who were part of the troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy 70 years ago.
They don't talk about it much. There's only one of my uncles left, Uncle George, and the only time he told me any of his stories about the war was after a Veterans Day service several years ago. It left me with chills and a profound appreciation for what those men, kids, really did out of a sense of patriotic duty.
Uncle George and the others served their country, those who survived the work came home, kept quiet and went to work providing for and building their families.
When I turned 18, the world was a bit different. The draft had been done away with for years, but we were required to register with Selective Service in case the need to draft ever came up again. I'll admit,even doing that was kind of a gut-check moment for me.
While I have my doubts about the ability I would have had to serve; I do believe it would have been worth all of my best effort - however Uncle Sam wanted to put me to work.
On days like this, which doesn't get as much attention as Memorial Day or Veterans Day, I think about all the Uncle Georges out there who did so much to change the world for the better, did their job, came home, and did the job at home.
70 years after the invasion, not many are left - all deserve our thanks.
There's a lot of time out there on the tractor, so I think about other stuff too. I'm also thinking a lot about the Brewers chances this year, but I guess that doesn't make me a renaissance man.
Catch up on previous chapters here.
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