There are many things to be said for the standard transmission.
A smooth start on a life of driving isn’t one of them.
That whole clutch, gear, gas pedal business is pretty complex when you first run across it. Especially when stopping and starting on hills with a big herd of cattle swarming around.
Yes, winter cattle feeding was once the reason so many farm kids learned to drive at an early age. The cows had to be fed every day and it was usually a two-person job, even if one of the persons couldn’t drive very well.
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Not for our generation the tractor, the grapple and the big round bales. Nope, for us it was small square bales all the way, and sometimes all over the stack yard and all over the road. A grind of the gears and a pop to the clutch has unloaded many a load of hay before its time.
As you might imagine, a propensity to lose the hay load doesn’t make one very popular at chore time. This much I gathered pretty early in my standard transmission career.
So allow me to smoothly shift gears and tell you about our old three-quarter ton feed truck.
First gear low was just about the perfect speed for feeding cattle. Put it into gear and point it into an open field, and you could do the feeding all by yourself. The truck just lumbered along. You could climb on top of the load and throw off the bales at a leisurely pace.
After he discovered that, the old hand around the place was pretty comfortable with just that old Chevy for company at chore time.
Then we got the Ford.
It was an older model, used but not abused. So he loaded it up, took it to the field, popped it into first gear and jumped up on the load.
It was a rodeo without a horse. The truck roared around, bouncing over rocks and frozen cow patties, with our man on top frantically throwing bales left and right. He flung off the last one, jumped to the ground, ran after the truck and stopped it just before it reached the creek.
Behind him were bales from one end of the pasture to the other. One knee was blown out of his jeans and his breath made big white clouds in the winter air.
After that, cattle feeding was a two-person job again. I guess he learned that even if there’s a jerk behind the wheel, you might still need a person who’s good in the clutch.
