I worked with my father in his general store for twelve years. I started when I was seven years old working a few hours now and then – gradually increasing the hours worked as I grew older. The last two years I worked there; I was working about fifty-five hours a week.
Through those years my father had a few things he always repeated to me – sayings and phrases that would prove themselves to be true to this day! One of his sayings was: “Don’t ignore general knowledge about something. You might not care anything about it right now, but you might learn something you can use later.” Another one was: “When you are talking with someone, listen carefully, because you can learn something from just about anyone, if you listen long enough.”… Now I need tell you what stirred-up all these thoughts!
When I was in sixth grade, my father gave me a book entitled “MOVER OF MEN AND MOUNTAINS” by R. G. LeTourneau. He was the father of basically all the modern earth moving equipment. As I read about his life and his passion for earth moving, as well as his mind for constantly inventing bigger, better, and faster ways of getting the jobs done – I wanted nothing more than to operate heavy equipment – bulldozers!
That constant desire to drive bulldozers stayed with me all through high school while I was working more and more in the store. I remember driving by a construction site and seeing someone on a bulldozer and just dreaming…Then the summer I graduated from high school, something unbelievable happened! There was a family in our local church who had started an earth moving business, and they agreed to let me come work for them for a week and operate a bulldozer! I was able to take a week off from the store and go do my “dream job”! Well…have you ever heard someone say, “be careful because your dream might just be a nightmare”? I couldn’t believe how DIFFICULT it was to drive a bulldozer! It was a big CAT D-7, and it was an old one, with levers everywhere it seemed. I thought maybe someone with four hands would probably do pretty good in this dozer! I tried and tried to get the ‘hang’ of a smooth grade, but never got beyond a course “washboard”. I had to admit that I was not meant to operate a bulldozer – I disqualified myself. BUT! I did walk away with some “general knowledge” that has stayed with me for forty-eight years now! The one thing I did learn – and could do on that bulldozer was push a tree over! They taught me how you come up to a tree, put the blade down into the ground a few feet away from the tree to snap the roots. Then, pick the blade up and push the tree over. With the roots broken on the side towards you it will fall right away from you.
We have a “skid steer” or “skid loader” that I many times use almost like a mini bulldozer. There are many times I’ve removed stumps or entire trees with it. This week I removed a fairly large stump-roots and all with that skid steer, and all these thoughts about how I learned to do it came back.
So, to this day when I go past a road construction site, and I see a perfectly graded slope and everything around the approach looks beautiful…I have a lot of respect for the machine operators that did the job. And even though I couldn’t “master” the controls of an old D-7, I came away with some “general knowledge” that has saved us a lot of time and money by being able to do things ourselves!
Proverbs 18:15 “The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out.” (NIV)
Till Next Time…..
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