You Can't Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd

Remember that old Roger Miller song "You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd"? Wait! Here's a link to it. A great song that always makes me smile.

Along those same lines, you can't drive a tractor in a cow herd when the mud's butt deep to a tall pony. It's just a little greasy out in the pasture right now and there ain't nothing much more unpleasant than calving in the mud. It's tough on the calves, tough on the cows and tough on the Jace. :-) And mud stresses mechanical things too. Things break and it's usually no fun fixing 'em.

Add into this that a dark cloud of doomed mechanical breakage, looms drearily over my Uncle's head wherever he goes. Things just "happen", and we all kind of just accept that that's the way it is. He doesn't break them on purpose, that's for certain. It's not Karma, it's not fate, it's just the way it is, pure and simple.

A part on the tractor had broken where the 3 point hooks up to it. A large heavy duty piece of cast iron... that you don't see people break... ever. He broke it. I took it off the greasy old TOD (tractor of doom) this morning and washed the grease off of it, and my son did a primo welding job on it, better than new. I got it bolted back on this afternoon and everything seems to be all hunky dunk with it now.

We've got a Kawasaki Mule (here's what a Mule is) ours has a hard top and had a windshield... "had". The windshield was a huge expanse of plexiglass that covered the whole front end and made it real bearable to ride around in the thing in bad weather while checking the cows and doing chores, without tearing up the soft pasture like a larger vehicle would. I get to the farm a couple mornings ago and roll up the garage door where we keep the Mule and get in it and notice immediately that the windshield... is not. I sorta reach out to touch it with my hand... but it's gone for real.

My Uncle steps in behind me...

Me: What happened? (pretending to touch the un-windshield)

Uncle: It broke.

Me: Ah...

Uncle: Yeah it just broke... it's over there. (pointing to the right of the Mule)

I look over thinking that it might have just busted in half or a corner broke off or something, cause it IS plexiglass. The thing is busted into little 12" chunks. Nothing bigger than 12" is left.

Me: *staring in disbelief*

Uncle: Not much left huh?

Me: Guess we don't have to look thru that scratched up thing anymore do we?

Uncle: Yup, that's the good part.

There's always a bright side.