Teenagers are often known for their sometimes lack of sound judgment. I was no exception. I was engaged in a telephone conversation with a long time friend a few days ago and we were reminiscing about some of the miscalculations of judgment each of us had managed to display during our teen years. We were both sons of farmers whose dads had put us to work at an early age on the farm. A couple of these so-called judgment lapses that came to mind as we were reminiscing, were the time he slid a D4 Cat off a snow bank and flipped it onto its top, slinging him about 40 feet away in the process; and when I mired Dad’s International TD 14 crawler a foot and half deep in mud.
A rather steep bank that sloped to the east, bordered one field of our dry farm. Being an east slope, the snow lay there longer in the spring than on other parts of the field, which, through its melting, caused subsurface seepage of moisture into an area of four to five acres. This caused a bit of deception for anyone working the field in that area, because on the surface, the soil looked as dry as the rest of the field, but the “dry” was barely surface deep.
On this particular spring day, Dad sent me out to work that field. I knew about that area, and when I reached the spot in question, I stopped the tractor and decided to do a bit of reconnaissance on foot to check out the situation. Next to the snow bank, I saw little rivulets of water running out onto the land from this melting snow, and then disappear. The rest of the area looked dry. My conclusion was, that if I give this melting snow a little girth I might be able to work most of this area in with the rest of the field, thus eliminating the need to come back several days later to work it and plant it.
I climbed back aboard the crawler and proceeded to skirt around the dangerous area keeping to what I thought was safe territory, but it wasn’t long before disaster struck. The first thing I noticed was that the spring tooth harrows I was pulling were building up with mud, and were slowly sinking down below the surface. Mud was building on the tractor tracks, because they were now spinning. I threw the clutch and stopped the tractor, but too late. I was in deep trouble in more ways than one. I sat there thinking, “What do I do now? Do I try to unhook and walk the tractor out of here by itself to get it onto dry ground where I can snake the equipment out backwards, or do I go get help?” Hoping to conceal my judgment error from Dad, I opted for the former. Bad decision.
I was able to wiggle the tractor back and forth allowing enough slack to get the pin out of the drawbar. Yay! Things are looking up. My plan was to move the tractor forward a few feet, angle it, and back out around the harrows. It was here that my troubles really began. Anyone who has had any experience with a crawler tractor, knows that one revolution of a spinning track in muddy conditions, causes said crawler to instantly sink a foot or more deeper into the mire; especially one that weighs in excess of 10 tons. I inched forward and started my turn when the driving track started to spin and fell deeper into the mire. I threw the clutch and put the tractor in reverse.
I thought if I could use the other track in reverse to continue the turn, I could position the tractor enough to get me past the harrows and I could back out onto dry ground again. That only exacerbated the problem. The other track began to spin, and it sank. Both tracks had now dug down to where the drawbar was below ground surface and water was seeping in around the tracks. I was stuck, and when you’ve got a track tractor stuck, you’re stuck.
There was nothing to do now, but take the bad news to Dad. He didn’t say a word. That was worse than a chewing out. His brother had a dry farm bordering ours, and he also owned a TD14; so, it was go get his tractor and crew, a choker cable, all the chains on the place, some railroad ties, and proceed to get the proverbial “ox out of the mire.” First order of business was to snake the spring tooth harrows back out of the way, and onto dry ground. We then dug down far enough to put the ends of the ties against the rear of the tractor tracks, and with the help of the other cat, we were able to help my tractor crawl up onto the ties. We frog-leaped these ties beneath the mired tractor while the other crawler gave aid. Eventually, I, and my very muddy tractor were on firm enough ground to make it on our own.
We hooked back up to my spring tooth harrows, and after the loss of nearly a whole day’s work for both outfits, I was back in business, but with a somewhat disgusted father in the bargain.
