Pics of installed mirror

[bugstruck]

Wow, in retrospect I don't know how we survived. I remember Dad having us out of the immediate proximity of the mower but not necessilary inside. Wasn't just on mowing in those days that what are now considered huge risks were taken. We rode in the back of pickups, on the fenders of tractors, drank water from hoses, etc. etc. . I guess most in the over 45 crowd could go on at considerable length on all the unsafe things we did back then. From the time I was 12, after Dad departed this world early, from something no risk management could have prevented, we were the mowers, equipment operators, etc. . Everything but car drivers really.

Funny how times change. I've come to the conclusion that the things we consider safe and prudent today will be considered negligent tomorrow. Not for political comment as that is forbidden here but simply an observation: Our forefathers understood what legislating safety was. They abandoned any proposition of it because they knew it was a treacherous and quite unsafe slope in it's own right. I can only suppose they thought common sense in any given era might prevail. As it is here in this thread.

So yes, I don't have kids around when I operate equipment these days but my wife thinks I'm downright ridiculous. She asks me occasionally to take my nieces and nephews for a tractor ride. That's some fun (right or wrong) the are never going to experience. Of course they will never fall out of a tree, run through the woods with deer ticks, or find themselves without of the immediate supervision of an adult like we did daily, either. There are times I wonder. Having seldom experience any, how many risks will they actually be able to manage?

 

[beenthere]

I hear you, and did the 'unsafe' things too. Some, like the grandchildren on tractor rides, and even driving, I still let them do (just don't mow with them in the yard or on the mower tractor).
I even have adapted to chain saw chaps and hard hat (I don't feel safe without them).
Not sure, but things seem to nesecitate change and adaptation over time, that must come from experience. Lots of things I did as a kid (rode on front fenders of cars at night with rifle and shotgun while driving down the country roads looking for dogs in sheep-killing packs to shoot) that I wouldn't let my kids do. Yes, they were deprived of things but are still okay.
Now, my kids won't let their kids ride a bike without a helmet on - go figure. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
What will the future hold? Hmmm?

PS I like the mirrors installed, and am considering the same on the loader uprights.

 

[Junkman]

Sure we all did things like that, and if a child was hurt or killed, the parent didn't have to face the law and be prosecuted for neglect. Today, we have to think about a lot of things differently than we did 40 or 50 years ago. Back then, there were a lot of children that were either maimed for life or killed, but it was considered part of living. Today we try to keep brain dead people alive and at the same time pass laws holding parents liable for everything that happens to the children while in there care. I remember a kid next door that was run over by his fathers tractor and killed when he fell off the tractor, and that was back in 1951. Today, the father might be prosecuted for just having the kid on the tractor without any injury to the child. We also lived quite well without ROPS and seat belts on the tractors, but today everyone suggests that every tractor should have one. When my father was born, they drank raw cows milk. Anyone care to gamble and do that now? Times and life changes. If you want to use the old argument that "we did it that way 50 years ago", then just do as you please and if your child is maimed or killed, remember that it was "the way we did it when I was a kid.". Personally, I am not inclined to worry about someone else's kids, if they don't care about them themselves. You are free to pick your poisons. While you are at it, why not teach them to smoke a few packs of cigarettes..... in the old days, almost everyone was smoking by the time that they turned 15 and no one saw anything wrong with it. Even drunk driving was an acceptable condition. Just explain to the cop "my father drove drunk all the time and he never lost his license." /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[MarkLeininger]

Your pictures were very helpful. I posted about a month ago asking if anyone had mounted mirrors but didn't get any suggestions. I like the fish eye, I think I'll do the same. Don't have a canopy.

Looks like my next project will be installing a warning siren to let my neighbors know when I'm mowing so they can get their families inside where it's safe. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[jlbota]

Got this in an email today....

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too, our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting ecoli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson [and provided comic relief] by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles.

What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot? He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of

Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked (physical abuse) there too and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (Remember why Tonka trucks were made tough .. it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent

Summers were spent behind the push lawn mower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick were my parents? Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes!

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

 

[penokee]

Good post - much truth.
penokee /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[frank_f15]

very good post! and i aggre that somethings to day are way overboard. but i do remember doing things back in my younger days that i would not consider safe today, i cringe today thinking of how we used to let our small ones stand on the front seat of the car, i just thank the good lord that nothing ever happened. so some of the new laws arnd reg are fine with me.

 

[PineRidge]

<font color="blue">my father drove drunk all the time and he never lost his license. </font>

My former father-in-law was the same way. He was an alcoholic and there wasn't anywhere the man wouldn't go drunk. Seemed like it was accepted and no-one even cared. It finally poisoned his liver but I swear he had a smirk on his face when he was laying in the casket, I heard somebody whisper that he was probably smashed again. If he was drunk it was the last time........

 

[beenthere]

Hey jlbota, I grew up with that person, maybe it was one of my brothers or the boy next door. Hmmm? Brings back memories real close to home (but never smoked). Had the rock fight behind two gravel piles. Stuck my head up to throw a rock at my buddy next door, and got cold-cocked with the rock he threw, right between the eyes. Three stitches. Whippin' besides! /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[lmiller]

Sorry, but I DID walk uphill to school And home IN THE SNOW and I ain't, almost, hit 46 /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

I wouldn't put my kid in the car seat I was in as a kid - no padding and nothing to hold it in the car.

My oldest sister fell out of the car door when going around the corner because there were no seat belts. She's fine but I wouldn't want to try it with my kid, would you??

Yeah we don't want to do a lot of things that we once thought were safe, can't do things that were once legal. If we learn that something is TRULY unsafe then we are fools to do it again.

I learned to wear a seat belt because I slid around too much on the vinyl to control the chevy on my way to the falls for the friday night... and escpecialy on the way back /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

Bottom line is we have forgotten that we don't get anywhere without taking risks and if you don't teach kids ( and adults) what the risks are you end up legislating them.

Sorry for the rant, it was tough keeping safety and politics separate
/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

lou