@Gordon Nichols posted:Times have certainly changed. Back when your Mom and Billy Jean were working the combine, everyone just knew enough not to get close to spinning wheels and moving belts. Somehow, a lot of us have lost that common sense.
For the record, farming has historically been (and remains) one of the country's most deadly occupations. Back when Mom and Billy Jean were working the combine, no small number of people were killed or maimed by a piece of farming equipment "gone haywire" (a colloquialism which makes the point). Everybody respected the machinery, but that doesn't mean nobody lost an arm or life to it.
Lots and lots of them did.
Also: thinking back on the sheer idiocy of several generations of farm kids learning how to drive on probably the most dangerous of all possible mechanical conveyances (an old tractor) makes me wonder how any of us actually lived into adulthood. I chipped an elbow as a 10 year old riding on the hood of a lawn tractor, holding onto the front end with one hand and flailing the other around in the air, bronco-busting style, while my uncle (a year older than me) threw the hydrostatic drive forward and backward (successfully) trying to throw me.
We called it "Cub Cadet Rodeo".