That picture brings up bad bad memory from my youth Sky.....
When brother and I were about 15-16, (1965) my father contracted a good friend of his to bring his old Alis Chalmers cable blade dozer here and do some work. We lived 50 miles away, and the deal was the operator would come by the house each morning (except Sunday) and pick us up and we'd ride up here with and help him. The dozer wasn't big enough to push large white oaks over without a lot of digging around the rootball, so we had an old 8n For with a Dearborn FEL and brushfork on the loader. Brother and I would drive up to a big tree, with a long 3/4" or 1" cable and hook, attach the cable to the tree as high as the loader would go--one driving and the other hooking up. We'd then attach the other end of the cable to the pin in the dozer's drawbar. He'd get that tree rocking back and forth and it would come down, more often than not, splintering off right above the ground.
One day he was rocking one down near the river, the ground was sand, and his tracks were slipping. He settled that dozer right down on a stump between the 2 big crossmembers in the back. Couldn't go fwd because of the tension on the cable from the bent over tree and couldn't go backwards because of the cross members. We couldn't pull the pin out of the crossbar--too much tension.
Ended up cutting the tree down with a crosscut saw. (Dad didn't own a chainsaw in those days--- "too expensive, won't hurt you boys to use that crosscut saw none".)
No greasegun adjustment on that old thing--a big bolt and nut adjustment, but it had long ago reached it's limit and he had cut a bunch of 1/4" thick "c" shaped shims to drive in behind the nut. About every 4th shoe was missing off the track too. Still couldn't get off the stump and he kept swiveling around and next thing you know, threw one of those old worn out tracks. Trudge back to the truck to get a big hyd jack, crawl under and start jacking it up and jack goes down into the ground--back to the truck and get a big piece af plate to put under the jack. Jack it up, both of us get under there with that same crosscut saw and go to work on the stump. It's August in East Texas, down in the woods, hot as heck and not a breeze blowing. Finally got the stump cut down, dam luck that dozer didn't settle down on top of us. Then got that worn out track pulled back on. We didn't accomplish much that day and was worn out puppies when we finally got home that night.
