Good story  !

The saddest part for me here is most of those guys are gone now. All the older family members are gone they would be in the 115 yr old range now and  Dad would have been 87 this year. The few neighbors and older ones now are late 70's and early 80's and are becoming fewer and fewer. I'm getting to be the older guy that knows a lot of the neighborhood history and happenings. I still like to seek those older fellows out and talk to them whenever I can their knowledge and experiences are amazing.  

Lost an older local independent mechanic who was the Dad of a good friend of mine last fall.  It was sad to see him decline over the years but I remember often listening to all his stories and tales of some of the things he had been through. He was a wizard with older IH tractors like the H's and M's he knew them inside and out and also knew the 300/400/500 MF series combines inside and out as well.  One of his proudest repairs was fixing a hydraulic issue on a 2+2. IH folks could not solve it but he got a repair manual and went over it and over it until he discovered a small inline check valve of some kind in one of the  hydraulic lines. Everybody told him there was not a check valve in there until he showed it to them and had a part number for it.

He also had an old 1940 H with a loader on that will still lift more than my 1845 skidloader. He set the pressure up on the hydraulic pump but would never tell how he did it out of safety concerns for others. Many asked him to do the same for theirs but he always politely refused. He also talked about the time he had to water glass piston sleeves into place in a block.

Lots of good times talking to all those guys and lots of stories I will always remember. Yes some of it may have been unapproved knowledge but most kids today don't have a lot of those opportunities or if they do are not taking advantage of the experience and knowledge that is there to be learned.

I think that is what is so neat about Ag Talk we can all share these stories and bits of history & knowledge and hopefully someone out there will read about what we write here and find it somewhat helpful or useful.

Life is too short to have to make all the mistakes on your own it's much better to avoid some of them to begin with and start a little bit higher up on the learning curve. It's how things move forward when each generation can start a little higher up on the learning curve. It's when that info is lost or not learned from that people have to start on a lower portion of the curve and relearn some hard lessons directly.