The Passing of a Legend
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Hello, folks. Welcome back to the Straightforward Farming Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Reid, alongside Nick McCormick. Finally. We're back. We're back. We're back. It's been September 1st since we've released the last podcast. Yeah, too long. We've really dropped the ball on this one, but...

Life happens. We've been busy, and it's just the way it goes. Sorry we didn't deliver, but we're back now, and we'll try harder. Yep. If you guys actually pay us for this, you might get a little more effort out of us, but since you don't, you get what you get. We're doing the best we can. Yep. Like the wife tells the kids, you get what you get, and you don't throw a fit. Yeah, exactly.

Yep, so still in the drought bell here. Can't buy a rain. Supposed to get anywhere from a half inch to an inch and a half of rain tonight. We've had just right at a tenth. Yeah, maybe. And it's pretty well over. Yeah. Yep, but... I suppose when it turns on, it'll turn on and it'll be wet then. Yeah, I suppose. But yeah, we made it through harvest unscathed, both of us. Yeah. It was actually a pretty decent harvest. Yeah, wasn't bad. Things went pretty well.

It yields were better than expected. Yep. It hadn't rained since a long time ago. I can't remember the last rain we had over an inch. This is one of them falls that needs to quit, though, because people are just doing dumb shit. Yeah. Now they're just making stuff up to do. They are. It's getting out of hand. It just needs to come a rain and put it to bed. Yeah. I don't think that's in the cards yet. No, not yet, apparently.

Nope. So what do you want to talk about tonight? Everybody's probably traveling for Thanksgiving. Yeah, I should be on the road here by the time we release this one. So, yeah, tis the season, I guess. Yep, for clarification, today's what, the 20th? The 20th, yeah. Oh, my calendar's still in July, so that's... 20th of November. Yep, sure enough. This year has about gone away. 2023 can go away and not come back. I'm fine with that. Yeah, yep, I hear you there.

Hadn't been all bad, but it definitely hadn't been all good. I'm ready to move on. Yep, I hear you there. Yeah. I mean, anything too exciting, really. Nothing revolutionary in the farm world that I stumbled across anyway. Everything was pretty well status quo. Yeah, I think so. It was.

We both got to run the Amazon CS. Yeah. Pretty good tool. Neat experience. Good guys. Good company. Yep. I'm not going to sit here and tell anybody that that's the end-all, be-all tool. Everybody has to go get one. I'm not saying that, but it's definitely got its purpose. Yeah, it did what I was looking for it to do, and yeah, I was pleased. Yeah. Yeah. It does take a horse to pull that thing, though. That it does. That it does. The old Fent did not like it. You know, the dirt I was in...

You can't have enough horsepower in that stuff. Yeah. You could put a 620 quad track on a four-bottom plow and be tough there. Yeah, I hear you there. But we got it done. Yep. Yeah, that's probably some of the muckiest dirt around there where you was at. That shit's like chiseling concrete. Yeah, it's just... Black clay is what it is. Yeah, it'll grow a hell of a crop in the right condition, but man, it is not fun to work.

No, that it's not. You guys got a few four-wheeler rides in throughout the fall. I was gone, so I don't know what the hell I was doing, but it's been a while since I've rode. Yeah, it's been a while for me, too. I got a few of them in, but not near as many as I probably should have. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Took the boys deer hunting over the weekend. They had some success. Henry shot a six-point buck yesterday. They were scratching the boon and crocket the further we got into this. And he had a couple tags to burn, so he popped a small six, which is good for him. First full-rack buck he'd ever shot. He'd shot a few spikes in the past. Shot a half-rack one year, so...

But he's still got another buck tag left, so hopefully here second season he can plow into something good. Lower your standards and prove your odds, Tony. That's exactly right. That's what it is. Yep. Yeah, I have no standards when it comes to deer hunting. I shoot whatever. If it's brown, it's down. Yep. I hate them all. They all run in front of cars. Yep. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Not the brightest animal in the world. No, they're not. Nope. They are truly a ditch rat. Yes. I always get a chuckle out of it like,

You look to the north of my house, anytime at deer season, 12 deer standing out there. Look to the south of my house, a little bit west,

10 deer stand out there deer season nope nope gone they're done they're hiding out yep they must get the calendar yep so you got any projects lined up for the winter anything cool gonna rebuild a truck a tractor a four-wheeler anything well i need to do some work on the four-wheeler no doubt we'll get to that eventually i suppose but uh nothing super cool it's just general maintenance i'm gonna stick a clutch in it while i'm there yeah

Maybe reflash it, get a little more boom, boom. The boy's all hopped up. He's wanting a dirt bike now. I'm like, why do you want a dirt bike? It's not that I necessarily care, but it's like, A, be content. You've only had this four-wheeler that you've had for six months or whatever it's been. But B, we get this massive snow possibly this winter. We're all going to go riding, and you're going to be sitting around a dirt bike not really doing much. Sitting on the porch watching us go around the house. Yeah, I get that.

No, I need to do some stuff to that. I told myself I was going to buy another one, but I'm out of places to put them, and I don't really need another one. It's more of a want than a need. Sounds to me like you need to build a shed then. Well, I do need to build a shed. There's no doubt about that. Then you've got more room for toys, see? Yeah. I've already determined that I've acquired more stuff in life than I can really maintain or afford. The maintaining is the hard part. Oh, my gosh. You just charge batteries, change oil, and air up tires. It's a full-time job. Oh, it is. It's terrible.

Yeah. Cleaned everything out of the garage the other day for Thanksgiving.

Yeah, how's that going? Got the whole family coming? You're like the Clark Griswold here. You got the whole family coming in? The whole family coming in. Yep, hopefully they're all listening to this so they can hear us bitch about it. Everybody will be here. Yeah, so it takes a lot of space. I think we're supposed to do a podcast maybe with some of your family or something. That's what I hear. We'll see. Yep. We shall see. If you're listening, I hope you're coming prepared, floated for bear. Yeah. We're going to put you on the stand under the spotlight. Not for the faint of heart. That's right. Yeah. We'll make it work. But now they're like,

Cool thing. I mean, it's not super cool, but I've got a redo tractor that my dad was working on before he passed. So he had started it and then got sick or whatever. So I guess I'll probably take him that one to the next level. Eventually it's going to be a couple of year. Yeah. And it's a 1466. It's going to be a couple of year project before I get it where I want it to be.

But it's going to be pretty badass when I get it done. Which, to me, that's some pretty cool sentimental value that, you know, this was the last tractor dad and I worked on together. Yeah. You know, that's almost as cool as the first tractor dad ever bought or whatever. Yeah, no doubt. Knowing this one, the last ones he ever touched, and that's pretty neat. So, yeah, I'm anxious to see how that turns out. Don't spare nothing on it. No, I'm not going to. Just throw the kitchen sink at it. It's going to be. That'd actually make a really good TikTok series once you start. It would. Yeah, it's going to end up being.

It's not my favorite one of all the 14s we have, but it probably will be in the end. Yeah. You know, but I'm not going to hold back on it. It's going to have more power than it needs, more rubber than it needs, and more paint than it needs, but that's where it's going to be. Yep. I don't blame you. Yeah. Yep. Like my old 4010, don't mean shit to anybody else on this planet, but it does me. Yeah. That's kind of where I'm at on it. So we'll get it there. It's just going to be a slow process. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be cool.

I'd like to see it once it gets started. Yeah. Because, hell, I remember that tractor sitting around here for the last couple years. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Just kind of a nothing. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't do much with it, and then finally decided we should and did a little something to it. Yeah. I guess, was that just a tractor he'd bought to just fix it and sell it? Yeah. Local guy here.

had just bought it and then his grandpa passed and he wanted to buy his grandpa's tractor so we bought it from him so he could buy his grandpa's tractor and we just let it sit there for forever you need the front end rebuilt and all that and we did that last summer i think and uh yeah i'm gonna get the other stuff fixed on it and uh put it knee deep in some bigger rubber than it needs and yeah and make sure it's got more power than it should have and have you cool parade track and uh yeah

Yeah. Go do dumb shit with it. Yeah, exactly. That's where I'm at. Why not? Why not? Yeah. Same reason a dog does what it does. That's right. That's exactly right.

Yeah. So are you relieved you don't have to go to Minnesota, the only state that didn't vote for Ronald Reagan? You kind of tore up. You don't have to go up there for the holidays. So they're not done harvesting up there because they're trying to jack around with corn and they shouldn't be growing corn. I don't grow sugar beets. They should stick to what they're good at and they should be growing sugar beets. They'd had them done by now, but they're jacking around with corn.

And so I offered to go up for help. I'm only two stipulations where I wouldn't drive a Freightliner and I won't drive a John Deere. And that's when they said, well, just keep it at your house then. I'm like, well, okay. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. I would drive either one just to help, just to help the family out getting done. But I offered more than once, but it's still at my house. So.

You know, one of those deals, but it'll be fine. So now I'm sure the wife's got you running around like a madman cleaning the house because, you know, everybody comes over and looks under the bed. Yeah, we got all these better than the last time we hosted where we tore a bunch of wallpaper down and did a bunch of painting. This time it's just been general cleaning and so on and so forth. How many years between do you host? Like, do you host it every fourth year? Every fifth. Every fifth. Every fifth year. Yeah, every fifth year. So...

Yeah, should be a rock star good time. It'll be fun. How many of them live in Minnesota? Three? Three. So three of the five years you've got to go to Minnesota then. Well, so they finally switched it around. I guess it's not every fifth year I host it. It's every other year. We broke it up to where it's every other year. Gotcha. To Canada and back. Yep. Which...

You know, it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't Tulane all the way there and the fact that I can literally be in the panhandle of Florida in less time. Yeah. Which makes it really hard to look at the map and say, hey, it's going to snow. Let's drive to Minnesota versus, hey, it's winter. Let's drive to Destin, Florida. You know. Yeah. Hey, whatever. Agreed. It is what it is.

Yeah, you said you basically drive to Lake Superior and make a left? Yeah, and then drive to your damn near out of Minnesota, turn north. When you get to Canada, you've gone too far. Turn around. Go back a half mile. Half mile and you're there. Yeah. You're all good. Yep. I don't know how the hell people live up there. I guess when you've lived there your whole life and you don't know any better. I mean, we have enough winter here. We don't even have winter anymore.

anymore, but it's still too much for me. It's still too much for me. I used to make fun of people that went to Florida in the winter from here, and I'm like, now I'm a little envious. That's my goal. I'm like a half inch away from just moving to Florida permanently. I'm done with it. I'm not far behind you. It's like, me and cold weather, I don't like hot weather either, though. This fall has actually been perfect for me. It hadn't been hot. It hadn't been cold. It's been beautiful. It has. Unless you need water in your well or stuff like that, but otherwise, it's been good.

Yeah. Yeah. And if you go to Minnesota, then you're going to be real close to Ryan Kelly. Then you're going to have to hear about 4440s and Peterbilt. Yeah. Yep. That's WI Titan 2, the guy that was on our podcast. You know what happens, Tony? If you're around the cold for too long, it starts to affect the brain. It does. It does. I'm just telling you, if the 4440 is the best tractor ever made in his eyes, it doesn't say much for the rest of them. Like, damn. Yeah.

I hope Ryan's listening. I'm sure he'll tune in at some point in time. I'm sure I'll get a phone call out of this deal. But for the record, I think 4440s suck. So, you know. Yep. He's like, well, at least the door opens it, correct? I'm like, I don't know. The door's in the front, and I have big feet. I can't get through the opening at the bottom. You've got to turn around the step and back into that thing. I mean, sure, on a 1466 with a cab, you've got to go down the hallway and take a left, but there's plenty of room to do that. Yeah.

Not so much on those. I'll take my 50 series international over that any day, but he's going to tell me I'm wrong, and that's fine. We can agree to disagree. It is what it is. Yeah, I had a big party here in the shop a week or two ago, whatever it was. Yeah, it was a great time. I talked to everybody here for like, I didn't talk to anybody for any period of time. I just talked to everybody for two minutes and made my rounds. Yeah, it was a good time. It was a good time. Yeah, good to see everybody. Yeah, it was. Didn't get to talk to them long enough, but yeah, it was a good time.

Yeah, we need to do shit like that more often. Yeah, no doubt. We need to start at about 1 in the afternoon, though. The days are short once the sun went down. Everybody kind of broke off into groups, and it was what it was, but it was a good time. That was one of the only bonfires of my life that I've ever sat around and the smoke went straight up. Ain't that the truth. There was a smoky part to it. You got 90% of the people on one side of the fire, and this guy's over here choking and gagging, trying to get out of the smoke, but that night you could stand anywhere out of the fire and the smoke went straight up. Yeah, that it did.

Wasn't a drop of wind. Yep. That was the night of the time change, and we set the clocks back and then still stayed there until 530 in the morning. Yeah. You guys are troopers on that. Normally, that would have been my jam, but I did not pull that off that night. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't make it happen. If I had a place to actually host it, I would just open it up to TikTok. Just be like, just anybody that wants to come.

Calm down. But I don't know that I really want to do that here. No, you got to have a little bigger facility for that probably to pull that off. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Yeah. So I don't know that that'll ever happen, but it's wishful thinking. Yeah, no doubt. Maybe we'll have to pick the farm show or Bowling Green or something like that and open it up. Yeah. Yep. So what else is new? Anything?

nothing super exciting just uh that's how i am in fact i haven't really even made that many tech talks lately just because there ain't been a whole lot going on i mean there hasn't been just just trying to get through life you know just just pushing through and and uh like i said i told said earlier there you know my dad passed away towards the end of october and so just trying to get through all that and so on so forth and it's i mean it

I'm not going to say it's been easy, but you know, it is what it is. It's life. But, uh, you know, just dealing with all this stuff, like it's just going through, you know, insurance paperwork and hospital bills and so on and so forth. Just, it's a ton of shit, you know, people coming in to say, Hey, which is great, but it just all takes time. Next thing you know, it's, it's five o'clock and you haven't got shit done and

Now you're going to reach the point where something as simple as just shut his cell phone off. I've got to have a death certificate for this and 900 forms just to do dumb stuff. Absolutely. It's a little death by a thousand cuts on just getting all that shit taken care of. Just trying to get all that shit wrapped up and muddled through. Not super fun, but not that he didn't have his stuff in order. It still just takes time. Yeah, it does. You just...

Got to go with the flow, I guess. I've been fortunate my parents are still alive and in pretty good health, but your dad was too in August. Yeah, in August he was fine. So, I mean, you just never know. Like I said, it makes you think about things a little bit differently. Sure. You don't...

you don't fully understand where some of your friends were at that have lost a parent or both parents until it happens to you and then you're like oh now i see the look in your eye yeah i know what you're saying yeah you know you don't have to you don't have to verbalize it like you can just tell yep so now i'm in this club that i didn't really want to be in but here i am like i said it's part of life you just got to deal with it but yeah and luckily your dad lived you know a good life you know it's fine like i said i'm

Taking it in stride as best I can, but it just changes your view of stuff. It's hard to work without your right hand. It is. When you've been doing it your entire life. It's like all that stuff. We're showing you that it asked you in for this or whatever.

Well, I'd like to do it like that. Now I can do it that way. And I'm like, no, I just really have the ass to it. Yeah, I get it. You know, like little things. Like I said, I still park the stuff the way he would want it parked, even though that's not where I would have put it. Yeah. Just because, well, that's where he would have wanted it. You know, just little things, you know, just. Well, how many times in a day do you just need somebody to hold something for you while you're. Yeah, it's just, yeah, just different. You know, you can get through, you know, plenty of people push on through that. I mean, happens to everybody eventually, but. Yep.

But that doesn't necessarily make it any easier. No. No, it'd be tough. I mean, and I guess at the end of the day, you do want to be thankful from their standpoint. You know, in my eyes, children should always bury their parents. A parent should never have to bury a child. Yeah, absolutely. So that would be tough. Yeah. You know, I had the blessing of working with my dad literally every day forever, you know, which is a blessing, a huge blessing.

But by the same token, it makes it that much harder too, right? Sure. Like, you know, not that necessarily, you know, you want to be estranged with your father, but I'm like, if you moved two states away, you saw him three or four times a year, yeah, it sucks. But they weren't part of your daily life. Like, in my situation, it was every day. Yeah. And if you weren't farming, you were in the shop and vice versa. I mean, it was just, you know, joined at the hip. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. Okay. Why did you do this? Why go do that? Like, you know.

Like I said, I give a million dollars for an ass kicking right now. Sure. Yeah. It's just, you know, it's been fine, but everybody tells you that. You know, you hide it as best you can. You go on. But now you fully understand where some of your friends were that have lost a parent previously. Yeah. Yeah.

and it's maybe changed my view on, I mean, one of the first things I did was send some texts out to some of my buddies like, Hey man, sorry I wasn't as good a friend as I should have been at the time. Didn't know any better. My fault, my bad. You know, um, one thing I will say, I was very fortunate to have time with my dad towards the end. I'm like, there's something you want to say to your dad. Say it now. Cause you just never know, you know? Yeah, for sure. So I said, I was fortunate. Like we got along great. We did everything together. Um,

And we still had a few, you know, weeks in there of having those conversations, so on and so forth. Not everybody gets that. So, yeah, you might want to get those in if you can, you know. They're tough. They're hard. But go ahead and pull the trigger on some of that, you know. I've always thought, too, and who knows, things change.

But, man, how can you have your immediate family? I'm talking parents, kids, and all this who don't speak. I don't get that. Yeah, I don't get that at all. Something could happen tomorrow and I may be in that position. I don't know. But I get it if it's some neighbor screwed you up. You know, whatever. But when it's your close family. When it's your blood family, like close family. I mean, I'm not saying my dad and I never got into it. We absolutely did over the years. We hadn't got into it for a long, long time of any kind.

time period you know maybe there's 20 minutes where we're like you know but it was always you know right back to it at the end of the day you know back in the day you know we might we might be fussy with each other for a little bit but not super long but i'm like hey i've got friends that you know haven't spoke to their dad for a couple years this that and the other my advice is swallow your pride even though you know you're right like because everybody thinks they're right right that's that's where the argument started because everybody thinks they're right

just pretend you're wrong to yourself if you have to and go ahead and have the conversation with them and, and let it go. Yep. They're right. You're wrong. That's fine. In the end, it ain't gonna matter. Just, just, uh, you had so many good times. Like why let this one little argument run 40 years of, of being friends, you know what I mean? That, you know, I, I was in a unique spot in the fact that

Not only was my dad, my dad, but he was also one of my great friends. Yeah. And not everybody has that. I get that. You know, he was a coworker. He was a friend. He was my dad, you know, and he filled all those roles very well. You know, like he, he knew when to be whichever one he needed to be, you know, but, uh, you know, I,

You think back over the ass-chewings you got over this or the ass-kicking you got over that. It's like, well, I needed that. I could probably use one right now. It's like I don't hold any of that against him. I didn't hold it against him before. So the fact that he passed away didn't change any of that. It was actually very beneficial. Not everybody views it that way, especially in today's world. But good ass-chewing doesn't hurt anybody once in a while. But I'm just telling you.

Get the chance. Go ahead and say something. Just make sure you get it out there on where you're at with your parents in general. Well, and even the ones that don't speak. I mean, I guess I'm not trying to speak out of turn here because I'm not in that current situation. But I guess make peace with yourself. Go apologize to your dad. And if he chooses to still be an ass about it, that's on him. That's on him. Then you did what you could do. And you can sleep at night knowing you tried. And everybody gets that chance. And...

You're going to regret that later. You're definitely going to regret that later. It's the little things too. Stuff you don't even think about until it happens. There was a week in there I couldn't turn on country radio, which I generally don't listen to the radio that much anymore. You can't turn the radio on on the off chance that Grandpa's Never Die comes on. You just can't do it. That's a great song and there are several great songs about stuff like that.

You just can't turn it on. That's going to hit you in a way that you don't know until it happens to you. There's a lot of little things. Like I said, it's so much as parking a truck a certain way or this, that, and the other. It's just the way he would have wanted it. That's the way I – and for the most part, I'm a pleaser regardless what I come off as because I'm an asshole. But generally speaking, when it came to my dad, I always tried to do it the way he wanted it done.

Because it was just easier that way. It was easier than catching grief for it later. And he was 99.9% right on why he wanted it done. Like, once in a while, I thought I was right. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't, but it's pretty rare. So, still to this day, I just do it the way he wanted it done because, well, that's, you know, a lot of it was his stuff. Or, you know, he was in charge. Like, I always had that respect for my dad. Like, you know, the weird part is, it's like,

So I'm going to, if I'm going to travel, if I'm going to drive over here, if I'm going to drive to wherever, well, if I blew a tire and my spare is flat, he was the guy that called, right? Like he had a solution for everything. Like I never once presented a problem to my dad that he couldn't solve for me, you know, somewhere or another. Like, so you always had that. Now in the back of your head, you're like, well, shit, not that I don't have other people to call, but like,

It's just a different scenario. You knew you could get on him. He was going to answer the phone. He never left me high and dry. Like, not one time ever, you know, left me high and dry. Even if we were into it, like, we still solved the situation, whatever it was, you know. We tore the wheels off a tillage tool. You know, this field needs work again. And, you know, how are we going to get that done and get something else done? Like, something in the shop, whatever it was. Like, we found a way to solve it together. And now I'm like, well, shit.

Now it's just on me. Not that I can't do it. It's just your natural reaction after working with somebody for 40-some years who's in charge. Now I don't have that option. And I have noticed coming into the shop, your dad was good later on in life.

I mean, he might have knew the answer and might have had the ultimate say, but he did. He would always ask your opinion, you know. For sure. You get too much of this shit that's one-sided. Well, I'm just doing it this way. He wasn't stalling. No. I mean, back in the day, he was. Right. But in the last 20 years, it's like, well, you know, what do you think on this? And, like, if I was really firm on how I wanted to do it, he's like, yeah, we'll try it that way. You know, he was good about that. I can't complain about any of that.

He valued my opinion at some level. So I can't really complain about any of that. But like I said, you just never know. So go ahead and get it out there. Be nice to your dad. For God's sakes, don't pick a needless argument over it. Fortunately, we hadn't had one of those in quite some time. But I think back at some of the stupid shit that we

differed on yeah i guess i'll say like totally not worth it yeah you know at the other day you know we still loved each other so we moved past it pretty quick but not everybody else people get hung up on that you want to dig in because by god you're right and they're wrong yep you see a lot of that oh you see a ton of it you know and it's just i'm just telling if you're listening it ain't worth it just just pretend you're wrong for a minute and just let them win like it's the

The victory, you know, is not worth it in the long run. Yep. Yeah, your dad, he was one of them, though. And some people have that knack. You know, I could beat on someone with a sledgehammer for 45 minutes and it wouldn't even budge, and he could walk up there with a ball-peen hammer and peck it once and it'd come right off. He did that to me a thousand times. So the only saving grace on that was, like,

Like I said, he did that to me over and over and over again. You'd be fighting something. He'd walk up there. No big deal. So this fall we had to take this pulley off the combine. And I was talking to my brother. He's like, man, I've been screwing with this, this, that, and the other. This thing won't come off. I've heated it. I've done this, that, and the other. I'm like, hold on a second. Dad had shown me a little trick. He's like,

what do you need now? I'm like, no, I got it. He's like, are you kidding me? I've been messing with that forever. I'm like, yeah, no big deal. It fell right off. No problem at all. You know, it was, so I'm like, ah, that was just him smiling down on me and helping me out a little bit. But, uh,

Yeah, the old air hammer. Got it right out of there. Took like, burp. It was gone. It was done. I'd be heating on that thing and beating on that thing for an hour. I'm like, yeah. Sometimes that's all it takes. Well, sometimes it's just your dumb luck, too. In fact, he probably knocked it loose and just finally just give up. And the fact that I come in late to the game was probably why it worked. But I'm going to take the credit and roll on. Sure, absolutely.

I've ran into that now with my boy. You know, out here in the shop, he'll be jacking with his four-wheeler or whatever and something that he can't get or whatever. Walk over, just boom. If you ask my wife, for some reason, the stars align perfectly with her and I. She'll fight something forever. And I'll walk in, and within three seconds, I've got it. And I mean, it just pisses her off to no end. It's sheer dumb luck on every bit of it. For the most part, yes. Something about me and her, when she can't get it, I will always get it within three seconds.

Yeah, you got to take those victories when you can get them. Yeah, you do. Yep. Yeah, you got to take them when you can get them. Yeah, that you do. It's...

No, but like I say, at least you got to have that much time with your dad. Yeah, absolutely. I can't complain there. I got more time with my dad than almost anybody in America. You know, if you add up the hours, I got more time with him than anybody with the exclusion of my mom. Yep. You know, I had more time with him than anybody. Yeah, my mom and dad are still alive, live six miles from me or less. I mean, no, we get along great, but...

I don't see him and talk to him like I should. You don't see him every day. Yeah. You know, I saw mine for eight hours a day, which, you know, was phenomenal looking back. But, but yeah, yeah. It's funny how some people got the knack. Like I was just thinking of that the other day. Like I can't count the number of times that dad got his finger smashed, hit with a hammer, something, you know, like, and just went right on, like no big deal.

I hit mine with a hammer. I'm like, oh, son of a, you know, I'm disabled for six months. He was like, yeah, there's blood squirting out of that. I got two hands. It's fine. Moving right along, you know. It's like, I'll never be that tough. Agreed. Toughest guy I ever knew. There was a lot of knowledge died that day. That's for sure. That's for sure. When it come to old international tractors, man. Anything, really. But yes, for sure, international tractors. Like, toughest thing I ever had to do.

was watch my dad get old. Yeah. You know, and that, that all happened pretty quick. You know, he got old fast. Yeah. In about a month. I mean, he wasn't young before that, obviously, but he was still, still running the shop. Like, but he went from being who he was to working in a shop, running the shop, this, that, and the other, still helping on the farm to, holy shit, I need you to carry me to bed in the blink of an eye. Yeah. You know, and, uh, but, you know,

Taking care of your parents when they're at that age, like, I'm not going to say it was fun the last month or two, but I still wouldn't trade it. Like, I owed him that a thousand times over, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Like, I would do it again in a heartbeat. You know, yeah, was there sleepless nights, and did I enjoy sleeping on the couch just sitting there watching him? No. I mean, it wasn't fun.

How many sleepless nights did they have when you was a baby? You know what I mean? Absolutely. Way more than a month. Like I said earlier, he never left me high and dry. Like, I wasn't about to leave him, you know, because he slept better if I was there. That's fine. I'll stay. You know, I'm good. You know, you get down, I'll pick you up. You know, nobody else, not being mean, but nobody else in my family can physically pick him up. Right. You know, that fells on me.

Because I'm big and fat. So I can pick him up, you know, is what it is. You know, that's just, you know, where it was at. And that's perfectly fine. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'd do it again in another thousand days if that's what it took. Yep. You know. But fortunately for him, it went fast. Unfortunately for me, it went fast. Yeah. You know. Yeah. But. Yep. You know, it is what it is. But. And stuff like that is.

which I'll be the first to admit, I'm going to be a terrible empty nester. I love having my kids around. I'm not one of these helicopter parents. We've talked about this a thousand times. I let my kids, I don't let them run wild. I don't mean it like that, but I just let them do stuff, you know, where a lot of people don't do that. But I,

I just, I like to have my kids around. I hope my, I hope none of my kids ever move far away. Cause look at your mom and dad in this situation. They had one son, six miles, one way, one, six miles the other way. Yeah. It wasn't no big deal. If you had to stay there for a few weeks. Yeah. Wasn't like you were driving to the boot heel of Missouri and now it's all dicked up with my family, you know? Yeah. We're, we were pretty lucky in that regard as well. And it's like, I know what you're saying. Like, I like my kids. I just assumed they were,

fairly close to me you know yeah i don't expect my kids to live at home forever but i just hope they don't move two states away yeah and if they do fine yeah so be it i'll make it i'll make it work agree but by the same token i just soon they were they were close enough i could hang out with them and then their kids and whatever absolutely you know it worked out well kids had school off that day the day passed so everybody got to see him talk to him one last time

Which was good. Yeah, I mean, what's that worth? Because a lot of people never get that chance. You know, I've had several friends whose parents got killed in a car wreck or a tractor accident or something. They don't get that chance. So I was very fortunate in every regard, really. It truthfully went as good as it could go. Like if you draw it out on a map, you know, would I wish a few things were a little different? Yeah. You know, we shouldn't have to put up with part of it, and I won't get into the medical side of it.

of the, you know, ridiculousness that got into, because we all know that that sucks. Thanks a lot, Brock. But anyway, overall, I get no complaints. You know, it's just, it's tough to move on, you know, but you have to, you know, didn't, you know, when my grandpa passed, I'm sure it hurt my dad. I didn't notice. Yeah. You know, cause he was tough. I mean, like I said, he was toughest guy I knew. Like he just kept on, kept keeping on.

So I'm just trying to do the same thing, which is tough to do. But I'm pushing. Yeah, and he didn't work beside his dad every day like you did. Yeah, he did years ago, but he hadn't for the last 20 years. So it is what it is. Like I said, I always figured he'd have a massive heart attack and die or get cancer, which he ended up with cancer. But I'm super blessed in the fact that he had a little bit of time in there where we knew it was coming.

So we could, that prompts you to have the conversations that you weren't going to have otherwise. Yep. You know, agreed. My dad wasn't a touchy feely guy for the most part, you know, so you kind of got to get them back in a corner a little bit to have those conversations. We talked about plenty of stuff over the years. You know, what I realized over the course of this whole deal is my dad and I talked about stuff that him and mom had never talked about him and no one else had ever talked about. Like literally it was just being him and had those conversations at some level, which was,

a blessing and a curse depending on the topic but uh you know look back and say yeah that's pretty neat yeah so for sure you know it is what it is but yep he had a good run yeah there you did bottom line don't be an to your parents even if you know you're right and they're wrong go ahead and pretend you're wrong and move on because you'll regret that someday whether that's tomorrow two weeks from now 10 years from now

Just let it go. That's my advice for today. I mean, I look at some of that. It's like it's your own parents, for God's sakes. I mean, and most of that shit always boils down to money or something so piddly in the realm of things that don't amount to a pinch of shit. Yeah, it doesn't generally. I mean, it generally doesn't. Like I said, my dad and I were fortunate in the fact that it really didn't matter what ever happened. We come back around pretty quick, you know. But part of that comes from the fact that I had so much respect for him.

But I generally wanted to do it his way. Once in a while, I would dig my heels in, but not very often. Yeah. Because usually if I looked around long enough, I'm like, well, damn, he is right. I should just shut up and do it his way. Sure. You know, there's some wisdom with age, you know. But, yeah. And once in a while, it's like, well, they're trying to do it the old school way, which isn't the most efficient way. And that was probably my biggest frustration in the last however many years. Like, we can be more efficient than this. Right. On whatever. Right.

Not that his way was really wrong, though. I mean, he was still going to get the job done. It's just, you know, so it is what it is. And I think a lot of that comes back to the fact that we've talked before that him and my dad, all of them from that era, they weren't micromanagers. You know, you start into it this way, and he wasn't standing over your shoulder the whole time holding your hand. My dad was not a micromanager. No, my dad wasn't either. He had a general set of rules, and here's what you do, and he just let you –

Fail or succeed on your own. Now, failure had a... There's some repercussions of that, no doubt. But he just lets you go. And that... We just don't do that much anymore. I mean, I try with my kids, but it's like at some point in time, you just get frustrated. Well, hell, I can just do it myself faster. You can, but...

But that doesn't teach them anything. Exactly. You know? And honestly, dad was just too busy to micromanage it. Like, he had too much shit going on. That's how my dad was. He just wasn't going to deal with it. Yeah. I told you to do this, and I meant it. Get it done. Get it done. And for the most part, he didn't care how you got it. If it took you...

It might have been something that he was leaving for work so he'd tell mom, tell the boys to do this. So he had all day to do it. If you chose to do it the hardest way possible and took you all day, he didn't care as long as it was done when he got home. Exactly. If this pile of wood needs moved from the woods to the house...

You could have borrowed a truck from a neighbor, got a four-wheeler, pulled a sled, or you could carry them up one stick at a time. As long as that pile was there when you got back. He just wanted the end result. He just needed the wood there when he got home. And that was on you. He would tell you when he got home, well, I wouldn't have done it that way. I'd have done it like this. Generally, he was right. My dad was king of the 20-20 back vision. Well, I was dumb. I wouldn't have done it that way. He was really good at that after the fact.

But in his defense, like he had told you beforehand how he would have done it. Right. You just chose not to follow that as your fault. And I've always said that's why half of these businesses nowadays have such piss poor people working for them. When you're going to hold somebody's hand all day, nobody has to thank for themselves. They don't have to do anything. And I just don't roll that away. If I have to stand there and show you and just bitch over your shoulder about it, then I'll do it myself. You're not saving me anything. No. No.

No, absolutely not. I remember when I was a little kid, dad had a huge pet peeve if you laid your bike down. If you didn't put the kickstand down and park it out of his way with the kickstand down, that was a huge big deal to him. Which, later on, having kids, totally understand now. Exactly. And his go-to was, I'm going to cut it up with a torch. By God, you only got to come in one time where he's got the torch fired up. Yeah.

You'll park your bike correctly after that. Like, when he's got flames going, he's got goggles on, he's got gloves, he is ready to cut that thing in half. You'll park that thing correctly from there on out. To this day, a bike laying on the ground sets me off when I'm not ready to go.

like no end like the thing has a kickstand why aren't we using it's funny how you pick up the quirks from your dad like one of mine is even though contrary to popular belief on tiktok when i talk about we're doing all this shit for earth day when somebody is not in a room and the light is still on oh my gosh drives me up a wall yeah and i mean my dad was a stickler on that i mean he could see through the newspaper clear upstairs that there was a light on and nobody was in the room but i'm the same way now it drives me nuts oh my gosh yep

My wife's dad always told them to quit, you know, just quit flicking the lights on and off. Just leave them on. Drives me up the wall. I told my wife, if I ever build a house, there'll be one switch. It'll kick every light there is on because that's the only way you guys can manage it. Drives me up the wall. Yeah, I am with you there. And jumping around the house like dad's go-to was. Keep jumping around, you're going to end up in the basement. I've seen the floor, Joyce. There's not a chance in hell we're going to end up in the basement.

But the basement of their old house wasn't nice. I sure as hell didn't want to end up down there. In his mind, we were going to fall through, so we didn't jump around much. Now, that was just him not wanting the noise. Right. You know? Yeah.

But, yeah, my kids aren't as scared of that fact. No, my basement's okay. I try to, for the most part, to parent like my dad did. I don't take any bullshit off the kids. Prime example, my wife, God bless her. She's not a helicopter person, but she's a helpful person. Anytime she can do something to help, that's just instinct to her.

And one day last week, your daughter might even have been involved in this. There was some stupid project out of school, some science deal. So her and Henry had to run a dollar general late at night to get pipe cleaners or some bullshit. I don't know what it was. I was busy.

So then the next morning I was out in the shop and she comes out. Can you run these pipe cleaners at school? Henry forgot them. I said, nope, that ain't my fucking problem. He forgot them. That's all. Quit bailing them out. Yeah. Let him take the fucking F and next time you won't forget them. And I don't know what ended up coming the deal. She didn't tell me, but it was something she had always a whole big ordeal. So I'm assuming somebody got pipe cleaners. I think Kelly Kevin got them. Yeah. On a similar note to that, though, I saw a great tech talk on this the other day. I should have sent it to you.

We was talking about letting your kids do dangerous things safely. Yep. And that really hit home. Like I did a ton of stupid shit, but for the most part, I followed like the rules of doing stupid shit. Like I'm going to ride a four wheeler, add a helmet on so on and so forth. Like if you're going to do dumb stuff and not even dumb, but somewhat dangerous stuff, which let's face it, the most fun you'll have in life is,

It's not reading a book. It's not sitting around here doing nothing. The really, really, really, the truly fun stuff, the shit you talk about 30 years later that you got by with was shit that probably could have got you into some trouble or got you hurt, right? You know the old adage is if you can't get killed doing it, it's not that much fun. There's some truth in that. I did a ton of that stupid shit, but I always try to approach it from the way my dad would have approached it.

Which would have been the most common sense way you can do really fun stuff that's kind of dumb, but not get hurt doing it. Like, doing really dangerous shit and not getting hurt is what makes it fun. Exactly. You know? Yeah.

nobody had a great time getting hurt doing it no but if you get by with it you don't get hurt then it's super fun and that's the shit you talk about later so you always try to approach it from that so that's my other piece of parenting advice for today let them do dumb shit safely agreed totally agree doesn't matter if it's fireworks or whatever like fireworks are only dangerous if you throw caution to the wind right you know if you're doing them safely that's fine you know

Take your pick, four-wheeler ride and whatever. As long as you take some precautions, there's still a chance you're going to hurt. You might get hurt.

Whatever. But that's what makes for great stories and great life. I feel bad for people that go through life and never actually live. I'm the same way. How many stories do you have from high school that said, God damn, we got my buddy's Trans Am and we ran 30 miles an hour to Sturgeon. We went on the edge. We ran 140 around the subway curve backwards. Maybe you shouldn't have done it, Blank.

Does anybody own a vehicle they haven't topped out? Because that's basically wrong. Exactly. You know, the fact that you don't know it shuts off at 105 in today's world, that's sad. You should work on that. I agree. You know? I agree. Just little things. Like I say, you know, you got to work through some of that. That's where the fun's at. Yeah, it is. You just got to push past it. Yeah. Not that I'm encouraging them to do some of that, but...

Nobody tells you remember that night that we just sat at home and we quietly watched a movie while we, when we scrolled through Facebook. Oh, wasn't that the greatest night ever? No, they didn't make for shit of a story. Nobody's talking about that 30 years later. You remember the time that,

Billy Jim Bob got his 79 Ford buried in the river, and we had to take a 4586 and the biggest log chain anybody could find. Broke two tow straps, one went through the tailgate. That's the shit that makes cool stories. At some level, you've got to do dumb shit to have fun in life. My boy has learned more in the last six months, mechanical-wise, from that stupid four-wheeler. I mean, he's tore that thing apart down to the frame and put it back together and put a clutch. I mean, he's done all sorts of shit that he would have never known how to do. I ain't touched one bolt on that thing. He's done it all. Yeah. Because...

The farm machinery, he's watched. I don't expect him to put a feeder house chain in a 96. You know, there's some that he physically can't do, and some that it's like, this is a little too expensive to get it wrong. So you've got to take the bull by the horns there. You can gladly stand here and watch. Put a chain on a four-wheeler. He knows how to put a master link in. Absolutely.

Survey America and ask it and tell me how many 14 year olds can put a master link in a chain. When I went to the four-wheeler dealership to buy the master link, he didn't even know what I was talking about. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we went round and round. Yeah, we went round and round for 10 minutes and he kept bringing all this shit. I'm like, a master link to put a chain together. And finally I had to get a picture out and show him. I'm like, you're the fucking parts guy. You don't know what a master link for a chain is? Yeah. Yeah.

Let me guess. He wasn't 40 years old. No, he was about 24, 25. Yeah. But you work at a four-wheeler place. Probably couldn't read cursive. No. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was unbelievable. So what do you think if you'd have been 24 years old and you didn't know what a master link for a chain was? What do you think your old man would have done on that deal? Yeah, I'd have been a Tony Lama right to the crack of the ass is what that would have been. Yeah. I don't think he would have liked that. No, not so much.

But you can't blame these kids. They've never been around it. No, nobody's ever let them have any freedom to figure it out. Yeah. Probably play Super Mario like a madman, though. Yeah, for sure. Exactly. Yep. Not a life skill. Yep. I can tell you one thing. This shop that I built, and this is no Taj Mahal of shops. I mean, by today's standards, you know, nice place. But it's actually one of the best things I've ever done. I mean, honestly, for my kids' sake, they just...

They're always in it doing something, and they're not in front of the TV. They're at least doing something. Yeah. I don't care what they're putting a chain back on a bike. There's a skill there, you know. Agreed. Yeah. We've touched on this numerous times, but it's just a different world today, unfortunately. Yeah, it's...

It's plum scary. Yeah, that it is. Like, who's going to change the old narrow out on a 96 Buick? Exactly. You know, we're running out of people that can do that, unfortunately. If you were going to do a home project today as far as a carpenter goes, who would you call? I mean, I don't really know of anybody around here. We're getting pretty thin. That either A, has the skill, or B, I wouldn't be literally two years down the line on the deal. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I wish I could carpenter better than I can, and I am. I can't carpenter. Oh, I bet I'm worse than you. I'm not into carpentry. Yeah, not my thing. If I'm doing it, it's going to be out of steel. We're going to weld it in there. That's one skill I did not get from my dad. He was one of the best carpenters around and can't do it. Yeah, I will say if there's one thing I could do better than my dad, it's weld. Yeah. I'm not saying I'm the world's best welder by any means, but...

you know, he was okay with a stick. We switched to a mid gosh eons ago. Like he, he very rarely make welded when I bought the TIG welder for myself. He tried it one time. He's like, yeah, this is your baby. I'm like, I know that's why I bought it. You know, and I taught myself how to do it and that's fine. I'm not saying I'm Jesse James and can, you know, make it perfect, but I can make it hold and it'll be fine. But, uh,

Yeah. If I'm making it, it's going to be out of metal. It sure is going to be out of wood. Yeah. Carpentry is a hell of a skill. It is, but I can't do it. For one, you've got to be able to put up with the disaster that is the materials world. I bought this 2x4, but it's 1.5x3.5. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I agree. I agree. If I buy 2-inch steel, it's 2 inches wide. Yeah. It just is, you know.

Hopefully nobody from the carpet industry ever gets over in the metal supply industry. Yeah. I can't put up with that type of shit, Tony. Carpentry, you've got to look too far ahead. You've got to do this here because 19 steps from now, this piece has to come back in here, and it's like, I just can't see that far ahead. Well, the solution to carpentry is caulk it. Yeah, we've got a gap there. Caulk that. Yeah, spray foam and caulk. Spray foam and caulk. That's how we fix it all. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm assuming the whole Epcot Center is just built out of spray foam and caulk. Blow a bubble up here, caulk the shit out of it, it'll be fine. Yeah, that's truly an art that I didn't get. My grandpa was a great carpenter. I've always said my kids ought to be damn good carpenters. Their grandpas go in every direction. We're phenomenal carpenters. They ain't going to get it from me, I can tell you that. Maybe it's gifted generation. It must have. It must be like heart disease or something. Some of that, my dad was like, yeah, there's people that do that for a living.

I've got a skill set over here. I'll rebuild Russo master pumps and, and, uh, make horsepower and overhaul.

and somebody else can build the shit out of wood yep so i never really tried to pick it up that i'm not scared when that's something that i don't know how to do i have no problem calling somebody who does i'm not going to do one of these deals where you half-ass it together now well i can't finish it and you know not doing that not my jam no yeah i just let the people that do what they do do it correctly and i'll go do something else that i can muddle through yeah it

Because I'm not saying I'm good at anything. Yeah, and it's even that way on mechanics. I'm not going to bring you a tractor in pieces that I've already tore apart and start dragging shit out of the back of my truck. I'm either going to take you the whole tractor or none of the tractor. Yeah, Dad was always willing to tie into that. I'm like, no, I'm good there. Like, if I didn't take it apart, eh, I'm probably not putting it together. Yep. I think I'm all good there. Yep. I guess that's one good thing I can say. I probably got the last 4010 diesel that your dad worked on. That's for sure. That's for sure. You do. You do, in fact, have that one. Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny, though, looking back, you know, I always remember him as a mountain of a man, you know, back in the day. When you went to the shop, always had a cigar, not lit, hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Yeah. He was ready to roll. Didn't have time to talk to nobody. Yeah, he wasn't afraid to tie into anything. Yeah. Well, we can fix that. We've got other shit to do. No, no, we can fix that. Okay.

I remember over the years, you know, some of the shit that you'd see him drag home tractor-wise. You know, in 806, it was just demolished. You're like, what in the hell are you going to do with this? Help, no time, he'd have her going. When he was, well, probably my age, honestly, or younger, it's like, oh, we've got a 306-cylinder Ford here. Let's put a turbo on it. When I was a kid, he had a 76 Ford Emron Black.

So it had already been repainted in the early 80s with a 400 on LP and with a turbo. No shit. Yeah. I've never heard of it. Loaned it to a buddy of his through five rods to the side of it. Really? Yeah. He put a turbo on everything. That was his Saturday afternoon hobby. I'll put a turbo on something. Like, man, you know what this thing needs? It needs a boost. I'll put a turbo on it. Like he had a...

What's that, an M or a 450 with a turbo on it? Like off a Corvair or something like, okay. He was truly one guy you couldn't get enough horsepower. He didn't matter if it was a microwave, a hairdryer. Whatever we can do to turn this thing up to make it better than it was, yeah, that's where we're at. And I appreciate that now. I mean, I appreciated it a long time ago. I remember one time we bought a 5288 International.

And it wasn't super far from here. So rather than haul it, he just dropped me off, told me to drive it home. There's a pretty big hill in the river bottom. I was driving it up and I had to shift down going up the hill. I got home. Dad's like, what's wrong? I'm like, this thing's a pile of shit. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I had to shift down going up a hill.

He's like, I have spoiled you with horse fire. I'm like, that's true. You have. But I'm like, if I had a 10 millimeter wrench, I'd have turned it up halfway up the hill. Like this was miserable. Yeah. This thing is nowhere close. We had a 52 at that time. Like this thing is nowhere close to our 52 88. He's like, yeah, probably not. I'm like, yeah, it will be before it leaves. Yeah. You know, I'm like, this is ridiculous. I remember we were kids. I'm talking like six, seventh grade. I remember you telling numerous times your dad had, you know, he'd buy a 12 56, whatever, bring it home.

run it two rounds of the field oh thank you got enough power ripped side shields off turn it up right there we've turned more than one up in the field it's like yeah it won't do it it will do it now you know i remember years ago i shouldn't even tell this story but years ago you had to take my so let me back up i had borrowed that expedition 2000 i think it was a 2000 model expedition and i had borrowed it for some reason and i was clipping along faster than i should have been but

About the time that it shifted into overdrive was about the time it hit the speed limiter. I thought I blew it up because everything just kind of stalled out. And I looked down. I'm like, oh, I'm still good. Maxed it out. Okay. Yeah. Okay. No big deal. So like two weeks later, something happens. My grandma has to go to the hospital. Dad takes her. He gets, I talked to him. I'm talking about the next days again. I took grandma to the hospital, so on and so forth. He's like, hey, you got to do something about this expedition. I'm like, what's wrong with it? He's like,

Well, it tops out at 105.

He's like, that ain't worth a shit when you're in a hurry. I think it's 3 o'clock in the morning. She's only got minutes to live. Like, I got to get somewhere. He's like, order a programmer for that thing. Get rid of that shit. I'm like, just stuff like that. Like, not every dad's doing that, you know, or whatever. This is coming from the guy who backed home, what, 12 miles? Yes, yes. Transmission went out in Fords. He just backed home. Literally 12 miles down the highway. Yeah, down the highway, around the curve, backed home.

You don't have to call anybody. I'll just back home. That's fine. No big deal. Well, she was a pretty good backer. I remember years and years and years ago. I don't remember the deal. One of his buddies was gone but needed some wheat cut. I think we cut the wheat. I think. And it was like not a very big patch. Like maybe he'd been cutting wheat and had to leave for whatever reason. A pre-planned vacation, whatever it was. Doesn't matter. So it was two wagons.

worth of wheat and they were you know 400 500 bushel wagons whatever it was he said just you know do whatever you gotta do with them i'll get them when i get back it wasn't gonna be a big time lapse and there wasn't supposed to rain so on and so forth and dad backed him in the shed together and that guy was like the hell did you do yeah i backed him in the shed like you told me

Well, I just pulled him through here, there. He just swung in this shed. He's got a lean-to shed. So you could have just swung him in, parked some other shit out of the way, whatever. Nope, dad backed them both in. Took him a little bit, but not bad. And he was like, I can't back for shit. I could have never got that done. You know, just stuff like that. And my grandpa was probably better at backing that stuff than my dad was. I don't know if that's necessarily translated to my brother and I. I can back a wagon, but...

It's not going to be as good as when he did it, I can tell you that. I can do decent on wagons. If I'm on a tractor, trucks, it's like, it's still got enough turn radius. Well, a tractor, you can stomp the brake. You can get it in there, you know. And those guys did that every night for, you know, 50 nights in a row a year. You know, like, that was the deal. So, I don't have the experience either, but...

Yeah, I wouldn't want to go back to farming with wagons. That just does not turn me on in the least. No, I remember getting some of those first big wagons and thinking we were really cutting a fat hog in the ass. Oh, yeah. Holy cow. I wouldn't want to go back to it now. I've still got a couple. We don't use them for much, though. Nope. Now it's basically to set by the auger to dump the grain cart in them and keep running. And now I just try to position the hopper to do it, and I'll just run it up there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I seen your video on Tik TOK with all the remote shit on a 1466. People like that. That was quite the, yeah, I need to do another video on that. So my brother came up with that deal and, uh, it's actually for dad. Unfortunately, I never got to use it, but, but, uh, that was his birthday gift, I think. But, uh,

yeah my brother came up with all that it works slicker than shit like that yep you could what start the tractor turn the pt you start the tractor well we just leave it on yeah yep but you can start it rev it up and down shut it off off from the remote he didn't have a ton in it um it works good needless to say i think there'll be a few more of those show up on the farm now like because your brother's good on that shit he hauled the grain this fall and and uh

Well, even the day that Kelly and I harvested by ourselves, my brother was gone, had something to do with his son. And I talked to my wife and her on the grain cart. And we just had the hopper bottom over top of the auger. It was right there at the farm. Okay, we're going to shell this off. Just run up here, dump it in the truck, let the auger run. I'm like, if it's empty when you get there, click it twice, bump it down just a little bit. That way it's always got grain in it, you know. Yep.

I thought I had it timed out pretty good. She had to click it once or twice to slow it down just a touch. All good to go. It kept up. We just rolled around there, hit the button. Like when my brother was running in there, he'd just pull up with the truck because we're a different farm. Started up, hit the button, kicks everything on, dump it in there, load in. It catches it. You're good.

shut it off drive off same thing when you get back like it is super handy rather than getting up and down or going over there right on so forth like it i mean literally that's over twice as many you know what i mean you get out of the truck you can walk all the way around or depending on which way you're headed i guess but climb up on there and i mean my dad had a bad hip and a bad ankle so crawling up and down getting in and out of the truck was a pain in the ass for him so and walking over the tractor all that like so as many steps as i could save him

It was just a benefit for everybody. But it actually did work really, really, really slick. That was pretty neat. A lot of people on TikTok wanted more info on that deal. Was that some sort of kit that he bought or built? No, no, he built it. I've seen a guy...

Probably two years ago on TikTok had something like that on a John Deere. They make a kit for it, but it's uber expensive. The one that this guy had, it was more of like a pedestal stand that you put kind of over where the truck would pull up by. Then you just got out and had all that shit just on a box there to run. It didn't have a remote or nothing. Yeah. This one is basically an actuator on a throttle rod because it's a metal rod on a 14. So it's basically an actuator with an electric box hooked to it.

You know, wireless, of course. And, yeah, works out really, really, really slick. Yeah, looked like it was pretty neat. Yeah. Yeah, come out pretty well. And you realize, you know, nowadays there's a lot of them tractors on augers. Yeah. You know, back when we were kids, them were the horses. They were doing work, and you had an M or something on them. Yeah, we could just walk right up there. Yeah. But now it's a little bit bigger deal, and, yeah, it worked out well. It worked out really well.

That's off to him for that. Yeah. He's your brother's good at that kind of shit. He can always piece that shit together and he's good. Yeah. When it comes to all that stuff, he he'll put the time in and figure it out and make it work. Yeah. Takes it as a challenge. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I need to do a video on that. Get the old Heston on there too. We started earlier. Get the old Heston tractor on there. Yeah. I need to do some on those. Just haven't done it to the laundry list of things I haven't done, but

Yeah, time gets away from you. Yeah, don't take long. You know, this fall I really didn't even do any videos, and I should have, you know. Yeah. You know, I should have done some. I just didn't, you know. Harvest went pretty smooth, and we got most of the gas on. That went smooth, and...

Was your family good at taking pictures? Like my family never was. And now we're okay back in the day, but digital age has killed that. You know, I kicked myself in the ass. Like when I was a sophomore in college, I remember when I was a freshman and you'd have an event and there'd be a photo there and they would take pictures and there'd be a book the next week or whatever. And you'd mark down what you wanted and put your money in the envelope and, and you get the pictures. Yeah.

They went digital the next year, my sophomore year, they went digital. I didn't want to put my credit card in over the system or whatever, you know, cause I'm, I'm scared. So I don't, I don't do that. So I literally have no pictures from my sophomore year to my senior year. Yeah. And I really, really, really kicked myself in the ass for that. Like there's a thousand good times in there. I literally didn't buy a single picture from my sophomore year to my senior year. And that was dumb.

nowadays i think all that stuff gets lost you take it on your cell phone and then two years later you get a new phone and you lose some of that stuff you're like well it wasn't that deal next time yeah this phone still works i'll turn it on i'll get them sometime then next thing you know it won't turn on i got three of them laying at my house now it won't turn on yeah and and those are just gone you know it uh

Mom was pretty good back in the day for some of that, but then you're looking at them, some get lost, so on and so forth. But, yeah, take the picture. That's for sure. Do what you can there. That's one thing I regret. Like, I've been farming with my dad my whole life. There's zero pictures of my brother and my dad and I farming together. None. You know, I've got a few of us pulling together. I've got none of us farming together. And that breaks my heart. You know, it's like...

There were several times where we, 10 seconds is all it would have took, you know, but we didn't do it. Well, a lot of that stuff is stuff that you forgot about. Yeah. You know, a certain tractor here that it still don't mean as nobody was like, you know, it just sparks that memory. Oh, hell. I remember we had that for a couple of years and, you know, either hated this about it or love this about it or whatever. Did this field and it was whatever it was, you know, we just, we just didn't take the picture, you know, usually mom was at home and that was who took the pictures and,

You know, I look back now, it's like, here's a picture of dad with his, well, it's not, dad's not even in the picture, but it's like his 60-some Chevy and the 69 Dodge Charger, the same color, more or less, sitting there along the street back when they lived in town. It's like...

That's awesome. I've had how many vehicles? I've got no pictures of any. Yeah, same here. I just never took the time. I don't have pictures of any vehicle I've ever had. I mean, I really don't. You know, I think I missed out. There's a picture somewhere. I've got to find it. Of dad with a 69 Charger and his best friend at the time with a 69 Charger. They both bought the same day. Neither one of them knew the other one was getting one. They're the same color, but the same car, the same day. Somewhere that picture exists, but I can't find it. Really? It's around the house somewhere, but...

You know, just little stuff like that. Like, you know, I just don't have it. You know, I just don't do that stuff now. Yeah. You know, we've had how many tractors? You know, there's an old 1066 that's set in the other. Like, I'll never get it back. I remember it was dad's way, way, way back. There's a picture of him and Heath with it. I'd love to have it back now. I have no idea what tractor it was. I mean, I know it was a 10, but. Yeah, no way to track the exact number from it. Like, I have no idea where it went.

you know i just don't know you know and most of the stuff we had after that there's not even a picture of it you know just doesn't doesn't exist yeah my family was never big on pictures and i would give anything to have pictures from when i was a kid of grandpa and i farming together you know that 40 10 what it looked like when i was a kid which back then was i mean it was an okay tractor it wasn't yeah showroom floor but it wasn't i mean it was in a hell of a lot worse shape when i got it of course it had 30 more years on it too yeah absolutely yeah but

Yeah, that and the old 4230 with a year-round cab and M&W kit on it too, which is kind of a rare bird, which I still know where that tractor's at, and I'm going to try to buy that thing. I have no use for it, but it'd be just like this tractor because I want it. I mean, Dad had a ton of cool shit back in through the days. We had a plethora of pickups over the years. We got pictures of none of that shit, and that really breaks my heart now to not.

You know, I want those pictures. Like your old 250R4 with it. You got pictures of that? Not a single one. I'm thinking of the countless hours of fun you had on that thing. Thousands of hours of fun on that thing. No idea. You know, like to this day, like I want another one. I really just want that one. But if I find one, I'm like, well, that one's red. Mine was blue. I really want a blue one. I prefer red. I'm a red guy. Yeah.

But I want a blue one because that's what I had. Yep. You know, I'd buy one either way, but I really want a blue one, you know? Yeah. I totally get it. Which it's almost going the other way. Now. I mean, can you still buy a disposable camera at Walmart? Maybe you can. I don't know. I don't know. I assume you can. I've still got film. This is no shit. I've still got film. So the house I lived in in college had this big mailbox deal at the top of the stairs and everybody had their own mailbox. And I always kept a camera in my mailbox. Yeah.

My grandma bought it for me when I was in high school and I always kept this camera in there and I still got like three rolls of film from that camera that I'd never got developed. Is that right?

Yeah, you ought to do it. Yeah.

Probably some indecent exposure. Whatever it is. Probably some rough stuff on there, but I need to get that developed. I am glad. When I went on weed harvest in 1998, the day after I graduated high school,

mom or somebody sent a whole bag of disposable camera you know back that's what you had you didn't have fancy and i mean i took pictures all summer i've got a whole album you i got a 96 10 combine set in my shop now and we were running 9600 which is older yeah which was the biggest and the best yeah it's like why would you ever need anything bigger or nicer than this yeah and i mean i do i got a whole album full of that shit the first year i went to bowling green on my own was in 1997.

And I bought four disposable cameras before I went. I do still have most of those pictures. And they're not great pictures. They're from far away. But I took a picture of a bunch of tractors that day. I'm like...

90% of those tractors don't even exist anymore. I mean, for sure, the guy that had them then doesn't have them now. Yeah. You know, there's a ton of them right on the starting line. I was sitting there and I clicked, clicked, clicked, clicked, clicked, and walked around the pits, clicked that. Of course, then I could be a little more incognito than now. But, you know, a ton of pictures from that stuff.

They don't mean anything to anybody else. But I flipped through them like, oh, I remember that year. Like went out there with three buddies, had a great time, took pictures of this, stayed here, stayed there, did whatever. It was a great time. Bowling Green 2024, you and I are going to set a new trend with disposable cameras and start taking pictures. Could you imagine the looks you'll get? So this actually plays into that. So last year, my daughter and I are horse riding in the Shawnee National Forest.

And I told my wife the Christmas before that, I'm like, I would like a digital camera. She's like, what? I'm like, well, I'm always scared. I'm going to drop my phone to say you never do anything with your phone. Like those pictures on your phone, but you don't do anything with them. I'm like, and I'm worried about dropping it, carrying on so on and so forth. I'm like, I would like a Kodak easy share essentially. Yeah. So she got me one.

So we're at this monumental place in the, in the forest, big rocks, whatever my daughter, you know, I'm like right up in front of that. And I wheel out this Kodak easy share for my pocket. I clicked the power button on, you know, the little, the little thing extends so I can zoom this set together. And there was a gal, one of my buddies, wives is like, did you just pull out a digital camera? I'm like, absolutely. She's like, I haven't seen one of those in a decade. I'm like, actually, this one's like three months old. She was like, really? They still sell those.

So fast forward, I still don't do anything with the pictures. So like a month ago, my daughter and I are down there again, and we're at this unique place that we've never been before, big rock cliffs, so on and so forth. I wheel that bad boy out because I find it in my vest. It's been there the whole time, but I don't wear that thing on a regular basis. I'm patting around. I'm like, shit, I've got a camera with me. Hold on a second. So I wheel this bad boy out. I take some pictures. I am too stupid to be able to scroll back and

while I'm riding a horse to figure out what's on it before. It was still charged up. It was still good. So I got to go back and figure out what's on it from before that I haven't developed from the last time. But I got to get those off of there. You want to shock this lady, you should do like my grandma. She died in 2013 at the age of 96. And to the day she died, she used the great big giant Polaroid to spit the picture out the front. That's the best way to do it because then you have the picture. Exactly. Then you're good to go. We got to bring that back. We bring back the Polaroid in a better...

like better quality. My brother and I used to laugh, like with today's technology, we're like, we need to kick this really old school, get everybody in the bar like, oh, let's take a selfie, but have one of the old style cameras where it makes the giant flash with the whole ball. Do it right in the bar.

Absolutely. My aunt used to film everything and take pictures and stuff at every family event. Basically carrying a 40 million power spotlight around. That's how my father always records everything. We go out there tomorrow, he's going to record it. Yeah. Had it all. Yeah. Bring that back. Yeah. Yeah. But hell, I'm the same way. As far as actual printed pictures, my wife's probably got, says, see, Henry's 14, soon to be 15. Yeah.

She's probably got actual printed pictures from the time he was, basically it was until the time Cora was born. I don't know if we have a single picture of Josie printed anywhere. Yeah, absolutely. My wife was really good for a while. She started email accounts for both kids and sent all the pictures to their email. Now, whether or not anybody can get into that email at this point in time, but all those pictures are there somewhere. Yep. Allegedly. But I have no idea how to get into it. Yeah. It's kind of sad. I can't even tell what the address is.

A lot of these kids are going to miss some of their childhood. I mean, my parents had a few pictures. I mean, it wasn't tons, but I mean, enough. I mean, you know. You got to bring the Polaroids back. That's a good point. I want new Polaroid cameras that print them off better. Yep. That's the movement I'm starting. Which I never watched my grandma load one of them. What kind of film does that shit? I mean...

It was some sort of cartridge deal, I think. It must have been because hers always had the four or five great big flash bulbs that you stuck in the top and then it spit the picture out the front. Yeah, just shake it. Shake it like a Polaroid picture. Yeah. Today's kids will never know. No, they won't. They're missing out. Yeah, it's amazing how fast technology has come just in our lifetimes. Yeah, yeah. We've got a bunch of old pulling videos and stuff on, what is it, 35 millimeter or whatever? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we sent it all in and had it digitized, but they did a really weird job of it. Like, they didn't separate any of it, so it's pulling the family stuff to pulling the family stuff. Like, it's so helter-skelter. Like, they were labeled going into it, but they're not labeled coming out of it. Now it's all on a USB, and, yeah, you never know where you're going to be. Watching the little pull and stuff is pretty neat. That'd be a hell of a TikTok channel.

You know what I mean? There's no sound, but it's still pretty cool. You see these guys, which back then was a super hot tractor, but he's going down the track with an 806 with no fenders, maybe a helmet on if he's lucky. Open face helmet. Three-half mile an hour. Got a fat hog in the ass. Yeah. I just thought it was the most badass tractor on the planet. Well, it was at the time. It was, yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's my other piece of advice.

Take the time to take the picture. I'm not good about it, but boy, I need to be better about it. But yeah, because the flip side is that it's like, I'm ready to delete Snapchat, which I never, ever, ever post on Snapchat. I probably had it for five years and I've literally posted twice on Snapchat. I just never post. But...

Is it like a rule that if you go to a concert, you have to post it on Snapchat? It's like, dude, if I wanted to see fucking Cody Johnson in concert, I went to the fucking concert. I don't need to watch it on Snapchat. It's like they snapped the entire concert. It's like, I don't need to see this shit. It's just like fireworks. And the video doesn't do it justice. They just don't. But yeah, nah.

I need to be better about it. The flip side of that is, is anytime we go on vacation or go somewhere cool or whatever, I always tell the wife, don't watch the whole vacation through your phone. Watch it with your own eyes, you know? I don't know. I rolled it. To me, that's always the last thing that I worry about is taking a picture or video of it. I don't care. Yeah.

I have videoed very little of that, and then you try to go back and watch it. It's like the same thing. Like, next time I go, I don't even get my phone out. Yeah. Like, I've seen Kid Rock a few times. I videoed some the first time. Like, no, I'll just watch it all the second time and remember it. Because like you say, you don't do any justice on video as to what it is in person. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And some of that only means something to you anyway. Yeah.

I see all these people like the times we've been in Alaska and been in Yellowstone. You've got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of a bear attacking an elk, and they're watching it through a cell phone lens. I'm like, forget it. Just watch with your own eyes. Because like you say, that don't mean anything to anybody but you standing there. I can watch that all day long on YouTube. So just enjoy the moment. Absolutely. Absolutely. Times have changed. That's for sure.

But, well, we've come full circle on this one, too. Everybody's traveling for the holidays. I felt like we should have done, like, a really, really, really long one, but I just don't think it's there tonight. Yeah. Maybe we'll shoot another one. Who knows? Well, we could. We probably ought to wrap this one up so our listeners can... Yeah.

Can I get a little taste of what they've been missing? Sorry, guys. We'll try to be better in the future. We've said that like a thousand times. We might have to do with a good rant podcast. We've done something where we just... We do need a good rant podcast. Just right out the gate where we just get... We'll just dive into it and just dive in and tear people limb from limb. Yeah. Yeah, because...

I've had enough taxes and all that other shit, but we've got to save that for another one. But nonetheless, you don't have to go to Minnesota, the only state that didn't vote for Ronald Reagan. Yeah, exactly. For the holidays, they're all coming to you, and we're going to do some podcasts with some of your family. That's what I hear, so that should be super interesting. Yeah, and I don't really know the details. I have no idea. I don't either. Your brother-in-laws, your nieces, your nephews. I don't know. I have no idea. I was just told that I need to be available for that, so...

But this is my crystal ball prediction, and I hope they're all listening on the way here because this is my crystal ball prediction. This was actually because our wives have a podcast, my wife and Nick's wife. So I think it was their idea, but I think the crystal ball prediction that I have is –

You and I are going to have to do this because we're more chatty. Yeah. But then all the women are going to get involved and we're not going to get to talk at all. Yeah. I'd say that's accurate. We're going to pick the topic, start the sentence, and then get talked over. Yep. I'd say that's very, very, very accurate.

Yeah. Well, you guys, you'll dive into it better. I'm like, yeah, for about 30 seconds, then you guys will take over. Yeah. But you guys won't dive into it unless we do. Yeah. I'd say that's accurate. Yep, exactly. So we're going to bring this up if that's the case and we're podcasting with them. We're going to call them out on this. Call it two nights ago. Here you go. You heard it right here first on the Straight Forward Party Podcast. Yep. Yep. It should be coming soon. Yep. So anyway...

Yeah, we didn't mean to bore you guys with this one, but it has been since September 1st. Yeah. Since we've dropped... We'll try to make it a prayer war this winter. Yeah, we're going to get some stuff moved out to the shed here and...

and maybe try to do things a little bit different. Things are slowing down a little bit now. I've actually been busy for two months. I really have. So we'll get things moving along here and try to get some quality content. Be a little more consistent through the winter. We'll try to get one once a month instead of once every three months. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Travel safe. We'll see you next time.