Progress, or is it progress?

I was born in 1950, so there were still ranchers back then who still did their work the old way. They relied totally on horses to feed their cattle and to work the land. Dad still had a couple work horses, but they weren't his main way of feeding. Dad relied on some fairly new C International tractors and a Cub International as well. Dad didn't have a shed to store the tractors in so they sat outside all year long.

When the temp dipped down to zero to 20 or 30 below the oil in those old tractors would get so thick they wouldn't want to turn over and start. No one seemed to know about changing the oil from say 30 weight down to say 10 weight or even 10w30. To get the tractor to start, Dad would wrap a burlap bag around a stick, put some pine tar on the burlap and then set it on fire. Dad would then hold this under the oil pan to warm up the motor. I can remember Dad coming in to warm up froze almost stiff. When I turned 10, Dad was almost 60. What I wonder at times is whether Dad didn't wish for a couple of good work horses!

The horses would have been ready to go no matter the temp. Oh they may have shown some displeasure at working when temp was 20 below but they would have anyway. Putting the harness on would have taken, say, 30 minutes to harness up a pair of horses and get them ready. A two-horse team could have done about what an International C tractor could do. A C International was rated at about 23 horsepower or a double-bottom 14-inch plow.

One of the benefits of using a team of horses was to be able to steer by voice command. A command of "gee" and the horses would turn right and a command of "haw" they'd turn left. "Whoa" and they'd stop. There were several commands to start but one was "gid-up". Many were broke where you could tell them to tighten up the slack by saying something like "tighten it up" or "step up". You could have talked to that old tractor all you want, and it would have sat there at 20 below and never moved.

I used to work for a carpenter back in Nebraska who built houses. He laid the brick, poured the concrete, built the kitchen cabinets, etc. The only thing he hired was finishing the sheet rock. Ted was good about buying top quality tools, and he had tools for about everything. But there were some things Ted insisted on doing the old way. One task was sawing off the bottom of interior doors. Ted insisted in sawing them off by hand.

We'd measure how much to saw off and mark the door. Then lay it on a pair of sawhorses and Ted would begin. His favorite was a Disston hand saw. So one at a time we'd help Ted saw off the doors. We could have done it with a fine blade circular saw but this was one job that Ted really enjoyed.

And later on when I was doing construction work while in college working on my degree in religion, I was constantly watching yard sales for good straight Disston saws. Found several, too, and they were straight and sharp. So on a regular basis, I'd break out my Disston hand saw and go to work. There was something satisfying about doing it the way the old timers did it.

When we moved to Scott City, I heard about an older gentleman who lived on the east edge of Scott City who sharpened saws, so I took my Disston hand saws out to, I believe, Homer Stamp. He knew good hand saws and he treated them with respect. If Dad had been alive, I'd have had Dad sharpen them. I've watched him sharpen a few.

Some of the old ways have been replaced with fancy new inventions, but there is still something about the old ways that appeal to me.