Now, concerning the drain-your-car-every-cold-night age. Wood alcohol was about the only antifreeze we had, and it would boil away easily. Also it would evaporate and it was expensive, Furthermore, after making a long drive or pulling a heavy load, you never knew whether you still had enough alcohol to protect your motor from a freeze-up. Nor did we have efficient weather forecasts telling us just how cold it was going to get before morning. Therefore, most of us didn't use alcohol. We just used water and drained it out in cold weather.
So, all cars had a handy little faucet under the radiator. And most cars had another faucet on one side of the motor. Together they made it real easy to drain the water out. By raising one side of the engine hood, I could lean across the fender and reach both faucets easily, even in the dark, as I often did.
On one particular winter night, it was about midnight when a norther hit and woke me up. I knew I should have drained the car before I went to bed But being a gambler at heart, as well as being lazy all over, I took a chance—and lost. And with a fresh norther roaring outside, there was just one thing to do, go drain the car. So, clothed in my shorts and my house shoes, and hidden behind a cloak of darkness, I hurried out to drain the car. I quickly raised one side of the hood, leaned across the cold fender, and in a jiffy I had both faucets open.
Then as I raised my weight off the fender, a sharp pain in the skin of my stomach reminded me that I was living in the age of broken fenders. When I leaned across the fender, my weight had caused the crack in the fender to open, and as I lifted my weight the fender bit me right in the stomach. I had to push my weight back down on the fender and hold its mouth open with my hands while I carefully removed my stomach.
Despite the mechanical problems we had suffered during the 1920s, by the early 1930s the automobile was a proven necessity and the farm tractor was beginning to crowd in and push the horse off the farm. So I decided to cash in on my horses before the price fell.
In the spring of 1934, when a lot of farmers were buying horses for the coming farming season, I sold all my work horses. Now, I didn't have a tractor and I couldn't afford to buy one, but I figured I could build one. I had never seen a home-made tractor—never even heard of one. But now that I had sold all my horses, I was left with no choice except to build one.
Again it was a matter of trusting my own judgment and going out on my own. Again there was no turning back; I had to go forward. I used a truck differential and a car motor. And by the time I got it all together and put plows on it, my cost was $250. I have seen tractors that others have built since then, and I helped neighbors build a few, but that first one I built beat them all. I farmed with it two years, then sold it for as much as it had cost me, and then I bought a used Farmall.
While I was dealing with horses and tractors, our kids were making history on their own. They had this little white mama dog that had never had pups and they had an old mama cat that had come from no-telling-where, and she had stopped over at our place long enough to give birth to three kittens. But while her kittens were still suckling, the old cat up and died. And the next thing we knew that little dog had adopted those three kittens and was letting them nurse. We never did know whether they got any milk for their effort, but they really put forth the effort. I had never heard of a dog being that friendly with any member of the cat family.
During the lean years, when I had time to work for the other fellow a little, I wasn't content to hoe or drive his tractor for a dollar a day. Instead, I was always looking for a way to make money easier and faster. Now, running a row binder didn't necessarily make money easier, but it made it quite a bit faster.
One fall I took my row binder and car and tractor and Ima, and we all went out and made $300 in a single month, cutting feed for neighbors. That was clear money above all operating expenses, car expenses, binder repairs, and a babysitter at home for Dennis and Anita.