Thanks to Kathy Nerpel for the well written story about her horse experiences. Very interesting story! I bet there are quiet readers out there who also are thinking about their own stories from the old days. WRITE them and SEND them!! We all enjoy everyone’s input.

When Kathy wrote that the sky was getting dark and they were still out riding, I remembered another one. At the time I wasn’t riding a horse, I was on a WD 9 International tractor, disking a field a mile from home. It was a hot summer day and I was probably 13 or 14 and wasn’t paying attention to the sky in the west, just beyond the treeline at the edge of the field. You get into kind of a trance from the monotony of making round after round and not seeming to accomplish much with the small equipment we had back then. I noticed that I went from being hot beyond belief to getting chilly with just a T shirt on. Of course my usual pastime was singing to myself and dreaming about—whatever. I finally noticed that I was actually getting cold and snapped out of my trance to suddenly notice that the sky was getting black just over my head and the wall of rain and hail was just about on top of me. I remember my first reaction was near panic. There were no cabs on tractors and I was about to get wet. I jumped off the tractor and pulled the pin on the disk and headed the old tractor out onto the road and put it in high gear and hoped to make it home before—too late–the big hail stones started bouncing off the hood in front of me and soon they were hitting me on the head and they hurt. The old tractor had a fast ‘road gear’ and it went about 20 miles an hour so I was cruising. The rain started coming down in buckets and it was COLD. I was already soaked when I came through the gate into the yard and water was running down my face making it hard to see. The road was getting wet and kind of slick and water was already getting into puddles. That’s when I decided I better slow the tractor down as I was going too fast. I sat down and pushed the clutch and the brake at the same time as I was turning the old beast into the spot where we parked. Just then I hit a hole and it bounced me out of the seat and of course the pedals pushed me back which let the tractor take off again wide open. I dropped into the seat and pushed the pedals again but it was too late. Sitting right in front of me was my dad’s pride and joy, his ‘new’ 600 Case diesel tractor that he just bought to replace the old WD 9. The old tractor slid into the front end of the new one and completely spun it around and steam and water shot out of the old tractor I was on, when the fan went through the radiator. In shock, I shut the old 9 off and looked up at the house to see if Dad heard the wreck. He was standing in the doorway with both hands on the frame. He just looked at me and dropped his head in disbelief. You know I seem to remember that the rain and hail just didn’t seem that bad after all when I saw the look on his face. Thanks Gary!

Dick