View From The Front Porch-Stan Hitchcock Well, there is an early snow in the Smokies this morning. My friends Chuck and Nancy Lowrance tell me about three inches on their ground and more falling. Up on top of Mount LeConte, they already have twelve inches overnight. All we got here in Middle Tennessee is cold and windy, but within 50 miles they got snow on the Cumberland Plateau. Early Winter, and they predict a very cold one for the Deep South. Back in my growing up days, in the Ozarks, snow was alright, but when we got the dad blamed ice storms it was really rough.. I remember…….. It was the year 1950, early December and colder than a well pump handle when you stick your tongue on it. There had been no snow in the Ozarks yet that year, just cold, dreary days and colder nights that left frost a half inch thick on the windshields and farm equipment. That Friday night, late, a drizzle started and immediately froze on everything not under shelter, by Saturday morning there was ice about 2 inches thick on the trees, grass, buildings and equipment parked outside the shed where we usually kept them under cover, but this one sneaked up on us. In those days, before weather radar was as close as our computers and television, we, in the country, did not have television and the word computer was not in our vocabulary yet and the radio weather was sporadic at best. So, when we woke to the ice structures on all the trees and everything else in sight, we knew we had to get feed to our cattle. We were running about 100 head of white face cattle, about 40 horses and other assorted farm animals and while the grass was still pretty good in the permanent pastures, the ice prevented the cattle from getting to it. I was 14 years old, in 1950, and my job on the farm was hauling the corn silage out to the fields and pitching it into the feeders. A fairly simple operation that I did, mostly without a whole lot of thought, my 14 year old mind on a lot of other seemingly more important ventures. When I looked out my bedroom window and saw the ice, I started dressing for the cold days work, long johns, wool socks, levis, sweat shirt, heavy jacket and watch cap, work boots and cotton work gloves. I headed out for the barns, silos and equipment sheds across the road from our house. Well, stepping out the door I found out just how slick it was….almost slipping and falling on the steps, finally having to go down the concrete steps off the side porch, on the seat of my pants and then slipping and sliding over to the barns. I got the ice cleared off the seat of the WD45 Allis Chalmers tractor, got it started, and then started around the barn to go hook it up to the silage wagon. However, I underestimated just how treacherous this ice was. As I went around the corner of the barn, which was on a small slope, the tractor started sliding sideways, then one of the big back wheels caught on a rock and instantly the tractor flipped over and I was pinned under the seat. Those old WD45 Allis Chalmers had an engine that just wouldn’t quit…as I soon found out. I was laying on the ice, under the tractor, the seat pinning one of my legs and my head was under one of the big back wheels, which kept turning because the engine just wouldn’t quit. Those wheels had big lugs on the tires and they whopped me in the head with every turn of the axle, which was about like getting hit in the head with a rubber baseball bat. Through the fog of my 14 year old, tire bashed brain, I realized that I was lying in something real wet and soaking…then the gas smell hit me…the gas tank, upside down and leaking had created a nice pond of gasoline all around me on the ice. Just then, my dad, who had been inside the barn working with a sick horse, heard the commotion and came sliding out to help me. He took in the sight of me lying there getting my brains bashed out, the tractor motor still running and the gas pond I was stuck in…he reached down and got a’hold of the tractor frame and just lifted that huge weight off my leg long enough for me to slither backwards out of the gas and from under that catastrophe waiting to happen, put the tractor back down and reached under to shut the switch off and kill the engine. I stood there, shivering in the cold, almost overcome with the gas bath fumes and the excitement. I ended up with just skin knocked off my forehead from the spinning tire, and a good sized piece of me torn loose by the tractor seat…but, Thank God, I lived to have many more adventures in the years to come. A couple of years after I left the farm for the Navy, my brother Danny was driving a tractor and it turned over on top of him also, pinning him under it. Different this time, the tractor gas leaked out, hit the hot manifold, and burst into flame. He was burning up, when my dad, and his brother Bud, grabbed the burning metal and again lifted the tractor weight off my brother enough for him to roll out from under, clothes burning and the smell of burning flesh heavy in the air. They rolled Danny in the grass and put out the fire, but his legs were horribly burned and he spent many days in the hospital, and many months in recuperation…but, he too has lived to have many more adventures. Dad and Uncle Bud both had pretty bad burns on their hands and arms, but, one dad, with strength from God, was able to save two boys from a very painful death. Fathers are like that. They’ll go through the fire for their family. My dad had three sons, me being the oldest, five years later my brother Danny and my brother Sam, 15 years after me, and all of us, in our young years, brought our share of worry to him, but he never gave up on any of us. He was always there, stalwart in his belief that we could be anything we wanted to be, could accomplish the impossible if we just stuck it out. The three of us, in our own separate ways, have continued on, accomplishing the impossible on several fronts, all three of us entrepreneurs in different fields. Our Heavenly Father is just like that. He has pulled me out of the fires and troubled times again and again. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters, He restores my soul”…..and, He gave my dad the strength of a giant, to reach down and pull a WD-45 Tractor off me and another tractor off my brother when it was burning. Everything in life will either weaken you, or make you stronger, depending on how you handle the situation. But, just know, when you make the wrong choice, it is going to hurt, but also know, He is always there to wrap you in His arms and make the hurt go away. Lessons learned the hard way are really hard to forget, and you seldom make those same mistakes again. stan
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 16:10:21 +0000
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