cowtrek
Well-known member
Jogeephus":1xg9dob0 said:
We call them Bible Toters here. I bet he's got the biggest Bible in the church, probably an elder or a deacon as well. I know the type all too well. Thankfully, as you found out, God knows the difference and he didn't allow you to lose your shirt.
Yep So true! Hit the nail right on the head. I think he's an elder now, was a deacon then. When you bump into him at the parts counter or something he's just as nice as peach pie, but doing business with that type is just bad news. The new Caddie was just icing on the cake; standing around bragging after church to anybody who'd listen and just rubbing it in. I was just a little kid but I remember all that because it put the family finances in quite a pickle. Luckily a guy had a bunch of sorghum planted on river bottomland that the morningglory vines completely sewed up. He had planted a couple thousand
acres (this was back right before the grain embargo when everybody was planting $5.00/cwt milo which would be like $15/cwt now in equivalent spending power) and it was probably 4-5000 lb/acre maize but the tie vines just took it. He called every custom cutter in the area to come cut for him. Dad pulled in with our new Ford/Claas 640, and other guys pulled in with a new Oliver, a new IH, and a new Deere combine. The other guys would slug the cylinder every 100 yards or so and spend an hour reversing the slug out with a bar and pocketknife. The Claas has an adjustment lever under the seat that you can set the concave, and when the machine started vibrating from a slug entering the cylinder he'd just shove the lever to the floor and roll it thru the cylinder onto the walkers and out the back and keep on going. Everybody else gave up by late that afternoon and quit the job, so Dad had the whole thing to himself.
I try not to hold a grudge but I don't forget even if I do forgive. I bought some seed from him a few years ago and when they quit selling Methyl Parathion in less than minibulks because of fake exterminators buying the 2.5 gallon jugs and spraying it in peoples houses in Mississippi, I tried to buy some from him since I didn't need but a few gallons and I knew he had a minibulk to spray his cotton with. This is when I saw what had to be about the stupidest thing I've ever seen somebody do. The guy's son went to A&M, he's an ag teacher by degree but came home to try farming (for a whopping two years before it became too much work) and he pulls up to the shop in the brand new leased JD highboy sprayer, gets out, climbs down, reaches under the tank, and unscrews the drain plug from the bottom of the tank. Lets the last 20 gallons of cotton poison run out on the slab in front of the shop and run across and in the grass not ten feet from his water well. I'm picking my jaw up off the ground at this point and watching cotton poison running everywhere and stammering out 'howdy do' and he turns around to yell at the dog who was over there lapping the cotton poison up off the slab. The guy in question went to A&M too and he's on the county committee and the oversight committee for the pesticide licensing! Here he is just dumping cotton poison out ten feet from his water well! I just ended up leaving pretty quickly before I said something I shouldn't. Anyway, the son went back to schoolteaching and Dad went broke. Since there aren't many custom combiners around here anymore, and the price is high, and the guy or his son never would combine their own grain (too hot and dusty here in July and August for that) since all the combines now are air conditioned he became one of those 'lease it don't grease it' type farmers. I think that's what finally broke him. That and junior talked him into buying a $70,000 15 inch row corn planter to play with when we're too far south and in too wet an area for that to pay off. Oh well.
