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SC Wisconsin | My grandfather passed away this weekend. Lifelong farmer, lived till his late 90's with no health problem till the very end. All in all, he had the sort of run all of us hope for.
About 10 years ago, he had given me a broken down old tractor that he was getting rid of. The dealer was basically giving him scrap value, and I had great memories of driving it as a kid with him and those meant a lot to me, so I took it and fixed it back up bit by bit. It's been running again for several years, and I've been using it to do odd jobs around the place. I was pushing some snow with it this weekend, and it turns out that not more than five minutes after I shut it off he died.
To get to the odd part of the story, I tried to take my sons on a ride later that day kind of in memory of him. Hopped on, hit the starter and nothing. Engine didn't turn over or anything. First thought was a dead battery, but it's on a tender. Started poking around last night and found that the starter gear had basically shattered and jammed up the flywheel. I get that old machines break and this was just a freakishly random thing, but the timing of his death and the fact it was his old tractor certainly made me stop and think for a while... I was seriously considering if I should even consider fixing it, but realized he would call me crazy for not getting it running again.
Anyway, just thought I'd share. Not many people outside Ag get the connection that these old guys had with their tractors and this was just too odd. | |
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Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up....
