After I reached the age of fourteen, I would spend most summers working for Uncle Oscar. Most of that time, I did general farm labor which included milking, feeding, plowing, and hauling hay. There were a number of memorable experiences which I have retained in my agglomeration of recollections about farming.

One of those experiences occurred during the summer following a wheat harvest. I don’t recall the exact year, but I recall that I was somewhere near the age of fifteen or sixteen.

On this particular occasion, I was plowing in the same field with Bub Murdock. We were each pulling a set of tandem disks, which is a kind of plow which has a dual pair of disk sets, connected together in a tandem, hence a tandem disk plow. I was driving Dad’s Ford tractor. Bub was driving Uncle Oscar’s International Harvester Model "Super M" Farmall. We were plowing the large field on the south side of the Washita River, immediately across from Grandpa Flick’s house.

Those fields below Grandpa’s house were prone to experience many overflows from the Washita River. The river makes a huge half moon shaped curve in the bottom. The river flows in a general easterly direction with these crooks and bends of the stream meandering circuitously in different directions. The perennial overflows from the river often left large deposits of sand near the bank of the river. The sand was always deposited in uneven ridges, leaving it rather difficult to make early passes in a field to be plowed. Such was the case in this experience.

Plowing in sand can be hazardous. The danger of plowing in sand is two-fold. First, one can easily bury the drive wheels of the tractor in the sand and quickly become stuck. The other danger is the risk of turning a tractor over. The Model M Farmall is particularly dangerous because its tricycle configuration increases the potential of sticking the drive wheels in the sand, creating a situation in which the tractor will rear up and flip over backward. One had to be particularly careful when plowing in sand with a tricycle type model M Farmall.

I was leading the first pass in a counter clockwise fashion around the field. We had gone about half way around and ran into some of this deposited sand. Bub was following me at a distance of about six hundred yards. We were at the west edge of the large field. We ran into a large deposit of sand. I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to what Bub was doing, rather I was concentrating on making certain that I made a good first-pass around the field while not getting stuck in the sand.

I recall successfully maneuvering through the first deposit of sand and was concentrating on the next deposit a few yards ahead of me. I was keeping my attention focused primarily forward, but looked back just at the moment that Bub’s tractor began to slip in the sand. The tractor was pulling down and he was on a rather steep incline. The narrow front wheels of the tractor were on the top side of the incline. This was the most dangerous position to be in. As the drive wheels began to slip, the plow dug into the sand. The tractor came to a sudden standstill with the drive wheels continuing to turn. Almost immediately the drive wheels caught in the sand and the tractor began to rear up.

The thing a driver must do when faced with a situation such as this is disengage the clutch and bring the drive wheels to a stop. From my perspective, Bub must have been too startled to reach for the clutch before the tractor began to rear up to go into the flip. The only thing I saw was the front end of the tractor rearing up and going into the flip and Bub hightailing it off over the drive wheel to the left. Certainly, by the narrowest of margins, Bub escaped being crushed to death by the tractor. The tractor flipped over backward onto the plow and came to rest upside down.

Here’s a case of what one sees as not being exactly the way it was. From what I had observed, it was a simple case of self preservation when Bub neglected to disengage the clutch. But I had not seen all of the action. Bub wrote me his account of what happened. Here are his words:

I did put my foot on the clutch on the first rearing of the tractor and the front end of the tractor hit the ground with such a jolt that it knocked my foot off the clutch. When the tractor hit the ground there was a bounce from the wheels and the reengaged clutch caused the second rearing to be a such a speed that I believed that I had better abandoned ship. I always had trouble getting off that tractor. I would get my left foot caught around the gear shift. But not this time. All I remember was my right foot hitting the ground and thinking that I had better be as fast as I could go. On the next step I heard the tractor hit the ground behind me. What a relief.

I vividly recall the feeling of horror in seeing how close Bub came to death in that experience. If he had not quickly jumped and had he not jumped sideway, it would most certainly have been curtains for my cousin.

I recall that Uncle Oscar, Dad, and Grandpa took several tractors, which they had borrowed and brought the tractor back to its upright position. I recall that someone took a movie picture of the process of getting the tractor upright again. I don’t recall who took the pictures, I think it was Aunt Sue. Close calls are part of life. We all experience them from time to time. Close calls make us more acutely aware of how precious life really is. I recall being much more careful about driving tractors in sand following that experience.