PLOUGHING ON REGARDLESS
My brother and a neighbor’s son, Tuck Schultz, were walking to school one morning. Orchards were ploughed back in those days, there was no irrigation, and to conserve enough moisture to grow the crop during the year, the grass had to be killed. Archie Green was ploughing close to the road as the boys walked along, and he was carefully ploughing the first furrow against the tree. A rather tedious business with a one furrow plough and one horse, getting as close to tree as possible, but not too close to damage the roots of the tree, and it was needing all of Archie’s attention, so he was quite unaware of the boys walking past. A horse is always keen to stop for a spell, and Tuck cheekily calls out “Whoa” so the horse stops dead, but Archie keeps walking and the shaft of the plough digs painfully in to his stomach. It hurts, and he turn to see who had stopped his horse, sees the lads and starts to chase them , saying “I will fix you” but Tuck calmly calls out, “Gee up”. The horse starts off again, so Archie has to run back to the plough and grab the shafts to steer it again before it does any damage to the tree, and the boys just calmly walk off to school , so, you see, they had remote control back in those days !
by Kelvyn Vickers
