(Please notice the building in the lower left corner of the picture. This is the chicken house)
Buildings on the farm didn’t move around but our chicken house did. Listen to my story.
I never sought out trouble but a few times it just found me. However there is a “life’s lesson” in this story. Day was drawing down. Time for chores to be done had come for me. I’m the main chore guy, with Bill in Baltimore and Wayne in Japan and dad still at the sawmill, wherever that was because it had not been moved to the farm at the time. On the way to the barn to do chores, like putting hay down to the cows, caring for the young calves and not forget the best hay and a gallon of oats for “Old Chuck,” (a horse) the only retire on the Gibby farm. Then there was corn for the hogs and corn for the chickens. As I passed the chicken house the bulldozer, only a few yards to my left caught my attention. We were in the process of excavating for another forty-foot addition on to the original forty by thirty six foot hen house. It was dad’s plan to double the hatching-egg output with this addition. Floyd had been leveling ground for this new addition but the job wasn’t complete.
I had a wonderful idea. I would start the dozer and move some of the earth to make way for the hen house extension. “Everybody would be so proud of me,” I thought! I knew how to start the engine and I knew how to work the controls, well, maybe. I had been driving the farm tractor since age ten and this couldn’t be much more difficult, right.
After starting the engine I began to move forward toward the existing structure. Closer and closer it came to the building. I pushed on the clutch with my left foot but it didn’t stop. I pushed harder and it still didn’t stop. “Wham,” the dozer blade hit he building, and the machine didn’t stop, it just did what dozers do; keep going. Suddenly it hit me; “That’s not the clutch, it’s the left brake stupid, push the hand clutch, stupid.” Wow it stopped just before a major demolition took place. I put it in reverse and eased back from the building and shut the machine down. My heart sank as I got down to survey the damage. I had pushed the entire north side of the building two feet to the east. I decided that was enough of making them proud of me for one day, but what am I going to do about the hen house which looked like its been somewhere but didn’t get quiet back home. I had broken two of the wide pine boards on the corner but I must find a way to get the north side of the building back two feet to the proper place on the foundation. I came up with an idea that would work. I took the bulldozer around to the other end of the building and pushed it back in place. The boards went back together, I parked the dozier back in its place and went on to do my chores which if I had done in the first place I wouldn’t be in trouble.
No one will ever know I thought, as I walked away from the scene. “Maybe I will tell Floyd later,” I reasoned, because he will understand and break it to dad easy. I walked softly for several days, until one-day dad said, “Why are those boards broken on the end of the chicken house?” I told the whole sorry story and after blinking a few times (blinking his eyes was body language for displeasure), he said, “Well if you are going to learn how to operate the bulldozer, wait until someone I here with you.”
Dad was easy on me but I was deserving of a much harsher judgment, because I did not tell him what I had done immediately.
A couple “life lessons” are here to be learned. First, I acted without permission and second, the damage I caused was unconfessed but it was discovered just the same. On the first count we are to do right at all times. However, we all sin and do wrong and should judge ourselves and confess to our loving and forgiving Heavenly Father. In time, He who knows all things will discover our sins to us and bring us face to face with Him. Oh, how much better it is if we bring it to Him before He brings it to us.
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