Farm Story: Singin' on the Tractor

My dad was a hard working man. He held a full time job at Associated Food Stores as well as running a farm with his brother and father. He got up at Two o'clock in the morning to work at Associated and generally came back home at around noon. After lunch (he LOVED bread torn up and soaked in milk, along with home bottled peaches or pears) he would lie on the floor and take a snooze for perhaps an hour before he started work on the farm. We had cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and a few horses on our seventeen acres. Uncle Thurm and Grandpa Mackay had another dozen or so acres a mile down the road from us, and it seemed that they planted a couple other properties in the Granger area.

I loved it when dad would be getting the tractor ready to plow, cut, rake harrow or bale one of the fields and he would holler, "Con, you wanna go with me today?" He would ask me if I wanted to accompany him if he knew it wouldn't be a long, greueling afternoon in the fields and when the weather was nice. When I was little he would tuck me in front of him on the big tractor seat. As I got older I would lean/stand next to him on the fender of the tractor. I would scramble onto the tractor and experience the sights and aroma of earth as he worked. The nicest part of being with dad on the tractor however, was his singing.

Roscoe had a lovely tenor voice with a vibrato that was 'just right'. He sang often at church, special occasions and funerals. Best of all, he sang while he worked. He sang hymns, old favorites, and just any old thing at the top of his lungs and I relaxed and listened as we bumped along the field. Sometimes I joined in. Even when I wasn't with him on the tractor I loved hearing him sing while he was 'choring around' as he called it, and I grew to appreciate music at an early age through my dad's simple love of it.