Drive - A Memoir 61st Installment
had
splitter wedges. The splitter wedges were road grader blades
sharpened with an oxy–acetylene cutting torch. The blades were
fashioned together in a cross and pinned in the chamber so they could
move a little. To split all winter’s firewood took only a couple of
hours. The lodge pole pine logs were cut in eighteen inch lengths.
The baler was started with a slow PTO power from the tractor and the
round pine wood blocks were dropped into the chamber, the plunger
would drive the blocks through the blades at a rate of about ten
blocks a minute. Perfect firewood at about five cords an hour.
Most
of the Old Man’s equipment and tools were salvaged then put in good
working order. If he needed a grain combine, he would buy two junk
combines and use the parts from both to make one. I can remember he
would send me crawling into the guts of a combine across the sharp
‘straw walkers’ with only inches to move about; once inside I
would wire together the broken slats. He made many more one–of–a–kind
farm implements and odd tools that he needed. We watched and learned,
and were recruited to work with him if we were too close and had
time. Sometimes, we would stay away but not very often.
When
television arrived new to the world, Vernon took a television
correspondence course in the mail and became the farm country’s ‘TV
repairman.’ He could fix anything electrical or mechanical and
spent all of his free time working on the neighbor’s stuff. He
charged some folks a fee but most of the time the labor was free.
However, he could make a little money on the mark–up on parts from
wholesale to retail, and this way the Old Man earned extra money for
our family. I would spend time in the shop learning about
electronics. Together, we built all of his test instruments, some
from scratch and others from kits; we built a tic–tac–toe
computing machine that no one could beat, and a wheeled robot out of
an anti–freeze can, motors, and relays that could follow a white
line. We rewired a radio so it would broadcast instead of receive a
signal. It worked like a little radio station and with a microphone
so we could broadcast to nearby radios.
“All
right, look at that. You don’t see welds like that everywhere!
Perfectly straight, a perfect fit and strong too. If you ‘knot
heads’ are able to break this driveline it will break somewhere
else, but not at my weld.” Vernon said, stroking his own ego.
If
patting yourself on the back and bragging was in his genes, then I am
one of my Old Man’s teens! I thought. I held the drive line in
place and said, “It does fit real well, but we need to get our work
done, so tomorrow we can bolt this in place. In a day or two more,
we’ll be
500 more words tomorrow
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