The day I almost died

When I was 16 through 18 I was dating a girl who lived on a farm. Her dad had three daughters and no sons so he ran the small farm practically by himself. However, he employed a farm hand from time to time. So once he asked me if I wanted to work on the farm and I thought it would be a great way to earn his daughter and a little extra money too.

I worked on the farm every summer, winter, and spring break and I loved it! In fact, my working relationship with him was better and lasted longer than my relationship with his daughter but that is a story for another time. Anyways, the Farmer would always have some new task for me each day. It was quite an adventure. He would ask me something like, "Have you ever driven a stick shift before?" and I would say "no" and he would say, "Ok, it's not that hard. You just push this on the left and shift over here on the right. You can see the gears by the drawing on top of the ball. Now deliver this fruit to the store in Waco." And then off I would go, trying to learn how to drive stickshift without wrecking the truck or spilling the watermelons and canteloupes stacked in the back.

He taught me how to drive a tractor the same way. I think that there was so much work to do that he thought on-the-job training was the best.

So one time it was pecan season and me and another farmhand named Jarrel had to move two tractors from a field to another one 20 miles across town. These tractors were your typical red tractor--the ones that a little kid would draw with big tires in the back and little skinny wheels in the front. Both these tractors were pulling pecan harvesters behind them. Pecan harvesters are trailers that have a conveyor belt of rubber fingers on the bottom that snatches up everything off the ground such as rocks, sticks, leaves and pecans. Then it grinds up everything that isn't pecan shaped and blows it out the side like a mower while the pecans roll down into a hopper. Essentially, you would drag these things behind a tractor underneath a pecan tree and it picks up all the pecans. They weighed just as much as a tractor so if you wanted to stop you had to start braking early and lowering the throttle and eventially you would roll to a stop. Even without a trailer, tractor brakes are something of a joke--a lever to push to make you feel like you are doing something.

The farmer gave me and Jarrel instructions: Take the following backroads to the field 20 miles away. No racing, no horseplay, put some space between you and, Barry, you follow Jarrel. I'm
going ahead in the truck and I will meet you in a couple of hours. Then the Farmer drove off. Jarrel immediately challenged me to a race.

Jarrel was a country boy to the core. He lived just down the road from the farmer and he had a bit of a wild side due to drinking. After Jarrel spent time in jail for drunk driving no one would give him a job. The Farmer felt sorry for him since he had always been a wonderful neighbor and he gave Jarrel some work on his farm. So when I saw a bit of a wild gleam in Jarrel's eye I emphatically stressed that I would not race him.

So off we go. The trip was pretty uneventful for the first 19 miles. Those of you who have ever driven behind a tractor on a major road know that the top speed is about 20mph. Right before we reached our destination we were going down a narrow dirt road. There was a large hill we had to go up and then down and then up and over a little hill and then we were there. The Farmer had warned us about the big hill (to get enough momentum to go up it).

I sped the tractor up as fast as I could and then started climbing the big hill. I reached the top and I decided to downshift the tractor to a lower gear so that the tractor would go at a measured pace down the hill.

However, by the time I put the tractor in neutral and tried to shift to a lower gear, I had already crested the hill and was on the way down. I began to gain a little momentum and I was going too fast to put it in a lower gear. Then I panicked and tried to grind the tractor back into high gear but it was too late for that too. Suddenly, I was still in neutral on a tractor that took off like a bobsled!

Down the hill I flew at an unprecedented speed. I was going so fast that the tractor was bouncing, and skimming down the road. The skinny front wheels were rattling. The steering wheel was shaking in my hands. I knew that if I applied the brakes or turned the wheel ever so slightly I would throw the tractor into a log roll that would end up where I would be thrown and crushed like so much goo under heavy machinery. However, I had to make a decision quick because I was fastly approaching Jarrel on his tractor and was about to slam into the back of it like a train.

"JARREL! JARREL!" I yelled, hoping to get his attention and get him to swerve off the road out of my way. However, I forgot that we were both on loud tractors so he kept on poking along.

There was a narrow gap on the left side of the road between his tractor and the ditch. At the last impossible second angels guided my hands to turn the wheel 2 degrees and I threaded the needle flying past him on the left. As I was passing him he looked over at me with a face I can only describe as reverence. Or perhaps utter disbelief.

I shot halfway up the next hill and when I managed to jam the tractor into high gear it lurched and immediately slowed down. "I'm going to live!" I thought, whereas seconds before I was thinking, "this is it, this is how I die."

I crested the second hill and saw the Farmer waiting at the gate to the field. He had an angry look when he saw me first instead of Jarrel. I pulled into the field and jumped off the tractor still rabbit scared and the farmer said, "It always means trouble when you arrive in a different order than when you left." Before I could explain, Jarrel jumped down and was whooping and hollering about how I made a last minute gutsy move to beat him in a race.

All I can say is that Jesus saved my life that day, and I don't mean in any eternal sense, but a real and physical sense. He still takes care of fools. I'm living proof.