DRIVING THE TRACTOR
This picture was taken in 1953. I was six years old but an experienced tractor driver. Dad had me cultivating corn when I was five. Some background.
We were farming in rural southern Wisconsin near Stoughton when this picture was taken. A cash crop for all of us in the area was tobacco. The tobacco we produced was used for cigar rapper, a tougher, and more course leaf. Tobacco was almost all hand work and where most women and children spent their summers, in the tobacco field. At the end of the growing season the tobacco was cut by hand, and then each plant speared onto a lath through the stalk. About six or seven plants to a lath. The laths were then loaded by hand onto a special wagon which had two parallel bars to hang them on. Then they were transported to the tobacco shed where they were unloaded by hand and hung on parallel bars all the way to the top of the shed to dry. These were handed up the bars by men standing on the bars handing them to the top, a human chain.
I was obviously too small to handle the laths laden with tobacco, but, being an “Experienced Tractor Driver” could be productive. I hauled the loads from the field to the shed. Notice that my younger brother Mike, age three, is riding on the wagon. The wagon has no floor, only a frame.
My experience was gained the previous summer when Dad put me on the tractor with a mason jar of water to cultivate corn all day long. My “Emergency Procedures” if I got all mixed up, was to push in the clutch and drop the cultivator. That would stop the tractor. (This information proved to be accurate and needed on occasion.) This was also important because I could not reach the clutch AND the brakes. It was one or the other. I had to get sideways on the seat and stretch my leg down to the brakes on the right side, OR, get sideways on the left side to reach the clutch on the left.
This experience of tractor driving became useful later in life. When I was ten and started driving the pickup truck I already understood the functions of brakes, clutches, gears, etc.
Kerry G. Denson
January 2009
