Chapter 7

Talk about different! In my first life Daddy hated dogs. He loved puppies, when they grew past the puppy stage he took them to the vet and they never came back. We must have gone through 15 puppies before I found out what he was doing ... He had them put to sleep ... because they were growing up. After I found it out ... I never asked for another pup.

The stories he used to tell about cats still give me the willies ... he hated cats worse than dogs. Things like tying two tails together ... dousing them in turpentine and throwing the pair over a clothesline ... and worse.

He hated guns in my first life ... so the idea of Daddy hunting pheasant in Grannie's fields ... impossible.

But in this life he not only hunted ... he kept a Cocker Spaniel.

In my first life he died in 1959 ... people wouldn't listen ... they wouldn't listen when I told them about the puppies ... or the things he did to cats.

"Charles wouldn't do that. Your father was an honorable man," the townspeople would reply.

Don't talk to me about honor ... he was a lawyer.

Maybe it was me who was dead and I was in a reincarnation cycle. I have to keep coming back until I get the father I should have had. That can't be right. Maybe it's him that's coming back and ... makes my head ache thinking about it.

During the War, farm equipment was hard to find, so the Dunsmore junk included doodlebugs.

A doodlebug is a homebuilt tractor. Take an obsolete pickup or car ... add a second transmission behind the original and the vehicle slows down. Add more transmissions and there is enough converted power to plow a field.

Reverse everything. Make the drive wheels run in front ... build a set of long forklift like teeth on a power takeoff lifting mechanism and a farmer can scoop up many hay bales without having to pitch each bale on a truck to haul to the barn or haystack. Build a second frame out the front ... the front is now the back ... mount a seat ... turn the steering box around and the driver can steer from the seat. The hay lift doesn't have to.have highway steering geometry ... it's running on grass. Ingenious!!

If the engine wears out put in another one. Chain it down with a log boomer ... as long as the power input fits in the pilot bearing and the clutch disk splines line up it works. The transmission doesn't have to bolt to the bellhousing ... let it roll to the side ... the floor shifter will stop it from turning over. Necessity is the mother of invention.

After I bought the farm ... and all the junk ... Daddy had to ask me for permission to hunt. First, I had him set up the Permission To Hunt contract, then I charged him a dollar for his Hunt release.

It's only fair. When I bought the junk from Mr. Dunsmore, daddy charged me a buck to act as my attorney.

While I was 12 ... and Grace was 12 and beginning to look like she was headed for 25 by next summer, the Dunsmore kids were still piling rocks by hand. My adult brain in my young body took a look at them stooping and gathering the rocks ... not a few of the rocks had graduated to the boulder stage and I thought... 'There has to be an easier way. I have all this farm junk and there are four broken hay lifts.

'I could take this one ... the belt still works and replace the transmission with that one with the broken belt ... combine the two ... trail it behind the wagon ... which is being pulled by the Ford 8N and put this hopper on it. Toss the rocks in the hopper ... the rocks fall on the belt ... the belt ... it's a foot wide rubberized canvas affair ... the belt carries the the rocks up the conveyer and dumps them in the wagon.'

And it worked. The wagon filled up with rocks ... just as fast as the Dunsmore kids used to do it ... and they didn't have to lift them so high.

"This is good, David," Don said. "Figure out a way to pile the rocks on the pile next to the shed."

I took the other two hay conveyers ... made a really long lift and the rocks were tossed from the wagon to the conveyer and onto the pile. They used to use a wheelbarrow to do it. This lift was thirty-five feet long and piled the rocks 20 feet high. It took three years worth of rocks ... but I had one hell of a pile of rocks when Dunsmore decided to put the land in Soil Bank and that stopped the steady supply of rocks...