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More about Warnie
Warnie was a farmer of sorts and loved his Allis Chalmers tractors. You could tell his favorite because it was the one with the most slip hooks, grab hooks, chains, brackets, and junk welded to it. He welded up a 3-point hitch, 4 row cultivator that must have weighted 4 tons and married it to the back of an Allils Chalmers WD-45 When you lifted the cultivator, it stayed on the ground and the front of the tractor raised in the air. His solution to that problem was to stack bags of feed on the steering bolster of the tractor. This is the rig he sent me out on to cultivate corn early one June day.
Even with the fenders down you have to go slow cultivation young corn – like 3 or 4 miles per hour. Allis Chalmers are the quietest tractors made at the time, and the puttering sound of the engine in the hot sun worked like a lullaby. I spent the afternoon just barely conscious enough to stay between the rows and I spent most of the afternoon drifting in and out of dreams. This couldn’t go on forever, could it? No. I came to the end of one row, snapped up the lift lever, and the front of the tractor rose majestically in the air. In my stupor I didn’t think to hit the throttle until I’d plowed clear across the end rows and deposited the front of the tractor on the fence.
Warnie was no doubt in town in the feed store office getting drunk and telling stories so I had time to get out another tractor and drag the WD-45 back to earth. I concluded that the problem was the feed sacks had rotted, sprung leaks and dribbled cow feed across his field. After acquiring a few new bags of feed and using the cultivator to erase the evidence I was back to snoozing my way across the fields. Warnie never had a clue.
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