By Jim Hagarty
When you were raised on a farm, only some of your farmish ways leave you when you make your way into the concrete jungle.
One thing that sticks with you is the inventiveness you learn as you watch lifelong farmers at work, making do with whatever they happen to have lying around.
Every farmer is an inventor. Two characteristics of farming make this necessary. There is often not enough money on hand to buy the latest and greatest gadget. And there is rarely the time available to go make such a purchase, even if the bank account allowed it.
And I guess there is a third reason. The farmers I knew growing up took great delight in finding ways to solve problems that didn’t involve sitting across the desk, straw hat in hand, from a stern-faced, stingy banker.
My Dad could never afford a four-wheel-drive tractor. He had several good old tractors, but none of them were super powerful machines. For awhile, the closest thing he had to a heavy-duty tractor was a John Deere AR.
One wet fall, the ground was too soggy to harvest the corn. The John Deere bogged down in the muck as it tried to pull the harvester.
Needed was a four-wheel-drive.
As it happened, a neighbour owned an identical John Deere AR. So, with the help of that farmer and our friendly local welder, Dad borrowed the other tractor, removed its front wheels, and hooked the two tractors together, the one without the front wheels behind the one that still had them. Our welder made the alterations and he also connected up the clutches and throttles of both tractors.
Cars stopped along the road to see the strangest thing their drivers had witnessed in a while. A corn harvester being successfully drawn through a muddy field by two identical tractors joined end to end.
The experiment was never repeated. Maybe it wasn’t the raving success I remember it being.
But failures never entered into the picture. It was simply on to the next creative solution.
Last month, I was scheduled to play a concert, opening for a singer-songwriter who was a boyhood hero of mine. It was a big moment for me, kind of a dream come true.
But before the concert, the leather belt I had paid $40.00 for, broke and could not be repaired. I could have raced out to the store and bought another one.
But there’s that farmer’s son thing …
I went out to my garage to find a substitute. I wasn’t there long before I spied a black bungee cord.
And so, I walked out on the stage at the biggest musical event of my life, water bottle in one hand, guitar in the other …
And a bungee cord holding up my blue jeans.
The concert was a success. And so, apparently, was the bungee cord.
So I kept wearing it.
But the thing about bungee cords is, they stretch. After a few weeks, it had to be retired.
But I know that somewhere on my property, there exists an item, maybe made of twine, maybe made of chain link, that will make for a suitable replacement.
One thing I do know for sure.
No more $40.00 belts for me.
