Who remembers when

[firefighter jim]

Speaking of remembering, who remembers this song?

YouTube - The Earls, Remember Then, 1962

I don't remember what I had for dinner last night but that tune does ring a bell! 12 years old when that song came out!

 

[nspec]

I can remember as a kid, sitting on the tractor while my Uncle loaded the manure spreader in the morning. It was a big spreader, like 400-500 bushels, two axle New Holland. It usually took 3 loads to get everything cleaned out every morning. Anyway, it was winter, the tractor was still running....I ended up throwing the valve to open the lift gate and dumped an entire load of very liquid manure back onto the slab. I look back on it as a good memory - not so good at the time!

I sure wish my kids would get the chance to do the stuff that I got to do. Great way to grow up.

 

[dapper]

Great thread.
And it was all just 60 years ago. Amazing how far we have come...
Horses were gone by the time I came along, and I will always remember Dad saying how great it was to have a tractor. Didn't have to feed, clean out after, hitch up or chase down. Just add gas and go. Said he would never go back...:laughing:
Also remember butchering day. 8-10 hogs and 2-3 neighbor families. Always cold so meat chilled out, and cut better. Had the sausage grinder with crank, but Dad and Gramp's would jack up one wheel of the old Ford truck,and with some binder twine tie the handle to the wheel. Al that was left was to feed the grinder. :thumbsup: Sausage casings were from sheep for some reason, and also remember the sausage being put in cloth bags. Had forgotten that. Don't know why, but we ate much more of the bagged sausage than the cased.
We also dipped our hogs in hot water and scraped the hide. Still have the "hog scrapers" that were made by our neighbor the blacksmith.
After i was grown my dad use to butcher with folks that skinned the hog's instead of scrapping. Got use to doing this and it was, to me, much quicker. Also, if you have ever had the cracklings from a skinned hog verses a scraped hog, you will never go back.... Can remember dads cry of "don't press the cracklings to dry". A little salt and man what a meal. :laughing: Dad's favorite was the tongue sandwich. Cooked in the rendering lard and a little mustard and he was in heaven. THEY ate the brains with scrambled eggs.... We seem to eat everything but the squeal.
Last time I worked with dad to butcher, we had a lot of new neighbors trying to learn. One unlucky sole poured hot lard into plastic buckets. What a mess! Dad said NEVER again,and we didn't. Boy I sure miss Dad and the skinned cracklings.
Could ramble for a while on this, but one thing I notice is how much we were all alike no matter what part of the country we were in. Times were just different then.

 

[firefighter jim]

Amish in our area still use horses. Pretty neat seeing a team of horses pulling a plow in the fields.............

 

[Scotty370]

Thanks to tcreeley for bumping this thread forward about 5 Months, can't believe I missed it! I also, have many memories as a "Seasoned Citizen"! Calcium Choride was spread on our dirt roads just in front of houses about a hundred yard in each direction to keep the dust down. The 'oil-deal' that was mentioned, was the result of the discovery of PCB's in much of the oil used to cool Electric Transformers, and was found to be carsinogentic. (sp) The power companies hired trucking tanker trucks to haul it South for proper disposal. What trucking firms did, was to get to the Carolina borders, and open the valves, spraying it on many of the road shoulders!!! I too witnessed the 'Chicken-Harvest', and have personally witnessed a "Running around like a Chicken, with it's head cut off" senerio!! (and they do!). Too many memories to mention! Someday I'll have to tell you about my old 'mentor' fishing partner running liquor across the Niagara River during prohibition................~Scotty

 

[Heavy Metal Doctor]

Working around cows, you were bound to get cow sh*t on you, but someone would start a cow sh*t fight, and if you ain't been in one, you can just imagine, crap every where. It really did look like the sh*t hit the fan. After it was over, we used the fire hoses to wash down everything. Also, the juice from the silage leaking out the bottom of the silo would make a grown man gag.

I almost mentioned that in the first post -- I had 2 older brothers to work with....around hogs and cows......someone allways "fell" (pushed) in the ****!:laughing:
Mom allways had the hose ready at the back door and you'd better use it on yourself before she grabs it, or everything gets washed!

For some reason I allways liked the silage juice smell....we even had a drunk cow wandering around the feedlot / silos once that we guessed must have been drinking it.

 

[J_J]

I know there are some older then me guys on here, but no one has mentioned picking cotton or tobacco. Young kid I was, pulling that 12 ft sack for the picked cotton. We would pick cotton all day it seems, bloody fingers, hot sun, not a fun job. Then there was tobacco, running the mule pulled drags, cropping the bottom of the tobacco stalk and load the drags, run it to the stringers, and then load it into the drying barns. What were the words to tell the mule to turn, gee ,haw, or something like that. I can almost remember the mule looking back at me and thinking you stupid ***, get it right or quit. I never did get it right, and just used the lines. Fire up the burners for the heating process, and when it was cured, download it from the barn, separate it off the sticks, and then grade and tie it up in small bundles and stack a large load on a burlap sheet in a circular pattern, and tie it up for market, where the buyers from the tobacco company would come around and grade the tobacco, and price it. That is the time you collected money for all the work you had done. The worse part about a lot of all that work, was that my old man would keep our money, you see, I really did not belong to him anymore, I was just visiting for a couple of weeks as I still belonged to the orphanage. Several summers, I worked on my uncles farm from daybreak to sunset. I swore then that I would never be a farmer.
However I did get into lawn cutting and landscaping later on in life, but I worked my own hours and was my own boss.

How many of you remember brush brooms that you brushed the yard with. That is what we used instead of rakes.

Whoa Back Buck

Whoa Back Buck

(chorus)
Whoa back Buck---gee by the lamb,
Who made the back band---whoa *******.

18, 19--20 years ago,
Took my gal to the country store,
Took my gal to the country store,
Buy m' pretty little gal little calico.

Me and my gal walkin' down the road,
Her knees knock together playin' "Sugar In The Gourd",
Sugar in the gourd and the gourd in the ground,
If you want a little sugar got to roll the gourd around.

My old man's good old man
Washed his face in a frying pan,
Combed his hair with a wagon wheel,
And died with a toothache in his heel.

Papa loved mama---mama loved men,(three times)
Mama's in the graveyard and papa's in the pen.

I gee to the mule but the mule wouldn't gee, (3 times)
So I hit him side the head with the single tree.

I haw to the mule wouldn't haw, (3 times)
So I broke his back with my mother-in-law.

(The above are the verses Art Thieme used to sing.)
Also recorded by Guy Carawan & Leadbelly.

I finally looked up meaning of Gee and Haw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CliffC/Gee_and_haw

 

[Snaker]

I remember pulling an old ground driven 4 wheel manure spreader with a 8n Ford as a kid. The Ford would steer fairly straight on its own and I would do a tight rope walk across the hitch while moving. You always had to shut off the beaters and go a little farther before shutting off the carriage to get that last little bit out. The old man caught me once and just about took my head off.

Those things didn't have the weight over the rear drive wheels like the 2 wheelers. Even with tire chains on, the rear wheels would slide on frozen ground or snow. I remember many times having to get a pitch fork and throw the top half of the load off by hand till the spreader wheels would start turning again.

When the snow got too deep, we would stop using the manure hand carriage in the barn and began using wheel barrows and making a winter pile behind the barn. We built it up like a modern day parking garage. We would shape a ramp onto the pile with fresh manure and let it freeze. When that level was full, we would make another ramp up to the next level.

Todays kids gripe about clearing snow off the sidewalk. We were also clearing snow off the flippin manure pile by hand.