RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30745, 8 May 1965, Page 42

RANDOM REMINDER

MAN AND MACHINE

Mention here recently of the oddities of the non-mechanically-inclined has prompted a country reader to tell us the extraordinary story of a farmer who just has no feeling whatsoever for reciprocating parts, the inventive genius of the mechanical engineer and the beauty of the machine. In fact, his father would not have the dirty noisy things on the place; and his son carried on the tradition, only calling in the contractors when the last Clydesdales turned up their hooves. The neighbours were amazed, then, when a very second-hand tractor appeared on the farm and they saw the farmer, holding it in like a fresh, fourhorse team, jerking and bouncing along behind his hedges. It was not a reliable tractor; sometimes

it failed to start, it made unplanned gateways in the neat hedges and on one notable occasion a heavy application of brake failed to prevent the machine from demolishing the back wall of its stable. After that, it just would not start. But the farmer, recalling listening to long discussions about the value of lifting the head or dropping the sump from engines, decided to remove the head, in order, as he put it, to let the air in. That evening there was a freak hailstorm which not only covered the ground two inches thick, smashed down crops and ravaged orchards; it filled the tractor’s exposed cylinders completely. But the farmer was happy next morning. A well-washed interior, he thought, would be even

better than a well-aired one. He replaced the head, flattened two batteries and himself trying to start it and was finally forced to call in a mechanic. The man was thorough. He searched the water jacket for leaks, checked the tank to see if there was water there, scratched bis head thoughtfully and asked himself and the world at large how on earth there was water everywhere. The farmer told him. The farmer says the mechanic told him a thing or two. too. In fact, he doubted whether he’d been so insulted ever before. But be has promised never to wash an engine again. Indeed, he has promised never to touch an engine again while this mechanic is still living in the district