My young family and I had moved to West Virginia for me to take a new job. We bought a 3-acre ranchette (using that description loosely) up a holler. It actually had a pretty livable house. It also had a creek running down the middle of it. That creek will get interesting in a future story.
I had hauled down a half-worn-out Farmall A tractor and a single-bottom drag plow that I owned to plow up a place for a garden. The trouble was, I didn’t have a disc. I thought I could buy a disc cheaply somewhere down there, but no such luck. Most folks in West Virginia used Ford 8Ns and such. They all had three-point hitch stuff. I was jealous.
Anyhow, I had brought with me an old, worn-out Gilson front tine tiller and started to till up what I had plowed. Did I mention that the creek bottom was full of rocks? But that garden would grow anything!
I was beating that tiller and me to death when a neighbor stopped up on the road. He watched me from up on the bank (here, I will mention it was a 10-, maybe 15-foot steep bank up to the road). I hadn’t met this guy yet. He got out of his truck, half slid down the bank and without introducing himself said, “Why don’t you let me bring my team and disc and work up that mess ya got there?”
I really can’t remember if that is what he said, but folks down there were always colorful and blunt in their speech.
I asked him how much? Fortunately, he figured I was “green” to the culture down there. He answered, “You are a neighbor now. We don’t trade money. We trade help.”
Sometimes that trading business didn’t always turn out square! I said, “Bring your team!” Really, I think he just wanted to show off his team. He finally told me his name was Don.
The next day, about mid-morning, he shows up with a beautiful team of stoutly built small horses and a well-cared-for, horse-drawn disc. The seat on the disc was the original cast iron with the manufacturer’s name cast into the seat. I wish I could remember the brand. He was sure proud of that seat!
The horses were a cross between a Percheron and a pony. He explained that, for working in small areas, you didn’t need the expense of feeding big horses.
As he was discing, my wife had made some lunch. She called us to lunch. He dropped the reins on the ground, saying Those horses won’t move. While up on the porch, something startled those horses. They took off, yes, dragging that set of discs. There was no catching them. They got to the end of the field. Making the turn at a high rate of speed, the disc flipped over. Yep, that seat got broken pretty bad! The team came back down the field, made another turn and went straight up that bank, breaking off my gas meter in the process. They were stopped when they straddled a locust fence post at the top. Good post.
Fortunately, the shut-off valve for the gas meter was intact, so I could shut off the gas. We got the horses untangled and the disc down off the hill and turned it upright. Don finished discing, walking behind the disc.
That disc did a good job working up the ground, especially, when it came back up the field upside down at a high rate of speed with what remained of the seat and the seat mount, scattering dirt clods and rocks in its wake!
Gordon Meeder
Midland, Pennsylvania
