Remembering a Great Dad

I bobbed up and down on the yellow vinyl seat as the 820 John Deere tractor labored across the summer fallow field pulling the cultivator with field harrows dragging behind.  The musty smell of freshly turned earth combined with crushed weeds filled the air.  Gulls squawked as they followed along overhead watching for mice.  Going up the next hill the tractor began to lose power and even as I shifted the gears down I had to push the hydraulic lever up to raise the cultivator shovels, easing the load on the tractor to be able to make it up the hill.  The loss of power was a slipping clutch. 

It was a hot July day in 1971.  I was fourteen years old - a skinny farm kid with nerdy glasses.  Always curious about how things worked I often watched as Dad fixed the machinery on the family farm.  I remembered him describing a time before when the clutch was slipping on the tractor and he did what he called "setting the clutch" to fix it.  I knew I couldn't finish cultivating the field and I was a bit worried about not getting the job done before Dad got home.  He was away at a convention for a few days.  I knew he wouldn't be too pleased if the job wasn't done.  I drove the equipment into the yard and up next to the shop.  After digging around in the drawers in the shop I found the manual for the tractor.  I leafed through the grease marked pages and found the instructions for setting the clutch.  I took the clutch apart and followed the instructions.  After a few tries it seemed that it was fixed.  I did a test run around the yard and then went back to finish cultivating the field.  I was very proud of my achievement and couldn't wait to tell Dad what I'd done when he got home.  I really wanted him to be proud of me.

Dad didn't show much acknowledgement.  In fact, he didn't take my word for it and took the cover off the clutch to look at it.  My experience of my Dad was he was mostly very gruff and unappreciative as I was growing up.  It is only in the past few years that I began to appreciate my Dad and be able to acknowledge his greatness.  He had some quirks like we all do, his humanity was quite evident, and he was an amazing man.  When he was fourteen his father left the family, leaving him as the oldest of six children to work the farm with my Grandmother.  He left school with a grade eight education.  Even so, there wasn't much he couldn't do.  He built our house, knowing how to frame, build rafters for the gable roof, do the electrical wiring, the plumbing and with the help of my oldest brother custom built the kitchen and bathroom cabinets.  He was the "go to" man for the neighbors to bring their broken farm equipment and he was a pretty good welder.  In the early days when a group of neighbors formed a telephone cooperative Dad was involved and helped install poles and lines bringing phones to the community.  He did all of this with a grade eight education.  I never did get to ask him how he learned all of these things.  It just seemed like he was a natural expert.

Dad, October 1 is the anniversary of your passing in 1994.  When I remember you now I am grateful for everything I learned from you, from fixing tractors to doing home renovations and everything in between.