Thanks for the kind words.
Circumstances led me to be a loner when I was young, and I kept no friends from high school and only one from college, who suicided, (probably because I was his friend
), and then got in a field of work which was predominately female (no fool, me!
), so meeting Hev was like having a friend who was more a brother that I never had before. It stung when he died, big-time.
But such is the way of the world.
Out on the tractor again yesterday. Being old iron, and undersized, a 1949 Super-A, I have to mow in first gear, so I'll be many days cutting 17 acres. I always love to hear the governor and the engine muscling into their work when I mow uphill. Nice to see the land getting neatened-up, and now the groundhogs need to be afraid, as once again they'll be shown who's the god-d*mned bull-goose-loony around these parts.
Got to be careful with this old tractor- there is no separation of the PTO from the transmission- they are directly geared together, and when for instance you push in the clutch, expecting to brake, the weight and momentum of the blades, still connected to the transmission, not only keep you right on moving, but makes you pick up speed because you've separated the transmission from the slowing effect of the engine compression. And if you're heading downhill at the time, the whole damn train takes off like a mule that's been stung in the *ss. This is not something you want to learn the hard way.
Even Ray's 1952 Farmall 450 had corrected this, and he can even go in reverse with the brushhog still spinning and under power. I've never yet come to try and understand how it works. But if I want to mow a corner in a fenced-in pasture, I have to disengage the PTO, at which point I can shift into reverse and back up, but I then have to wait for the blades to completely stop rotating before I can put the PTO back into gear.
But I love my 1949, because I'm a 1949 too, and because Mitch rebuilt it's engine.
Lots of weedy wildflowers going under the blades too, of every hue, including one that has a flower that is as eye-soothing a white as seems possible for God to create, and for some reason it brought Murph to mind, who I have always thought had a soul and a conscience that is as pure and innocent as a fresh-fallen snow.
It sure as hell didn't remind me of Mitch.