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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Agreement/Disagreement (01/19/12)
One cloudy morning in the fall, my husband and I went out to a field to plow. The ground was a little sticky, but it was a field of sod, and we thought it should plow okay.

I was on a little Ford tractor, which had the brakes on the floor board. My husband took the little Alice Chalmers, which had hand brakes.

Plowing was not quite as simple as I had thought, as the sticky ground kept building up on the plow shears, and I needed to get off to clean them. I was off of the tractor quite often to perform this task.

My feet kept dragging mud unto the floor board.

When one drives a tractor, the corners are turned by turning the steering wheel, but also stepping on the left or right brake, which would bring the tractor sharply around.

I approached the end of the field, tripped my plow, and pressed my foot on the left brake, thinking I would make my sharp turn, but my foot slipped off of the brake and my tractor went a few inches under the top barbed wire of the fence. It had popped just over the radiator cover.

Well, it had popped over just fine, so I put the tractor into reverse, and backed out. You guessed it-the cover and top of the radiator popped off as I backed up, and water began to spew out of the top of the radiator.

My husband saw me stopped, and drove his tractor over to see what was wrong. He surveyed the situation, and I asked him what I should do. Well, after he got through telling me how stupid I was to back out with the wire over the radiator cap, he said “I don’t care what you do, just drive it,” and he slammed his tractor into gear and left!

Well, I turned around and dropped the plow in the ground, and started back across the field. The tractor and I were both spouting water.

About the time I reached the end, I noticed my husband was off his tractor near the gate. I looked at my watch-it was 11:30 a.m. I decided that he must be going up to the house for me to get dinner. (Farmers eat dinner at noon) I didn’t want any more confrontation, so I tripped my plow and headed for the gate.

I said, “are you going up for dinner?’ He replied, “No, I just knocked one of the front wheels off the tractor. “Well, what are we going to do then?” I asked. “Well, we better go home and fix them both.”
“What happened?” “My hand slipped off of the brake, and I hit a fence post.” I looked through my water filled eyes, and then I see one of the front wheels lying beside the tractor. I could not resist saying, “Well, that is what happened to me too!” (Not really the thing to say, in the middle of disaster.)

We worked on the tractors, finally ate our dinner, but it took several days for all of the repairs to be completed.
God was teaching us that disagreement should not end up in harsh words.

Well, this had been an eventful day, but in future years, my husband related this in a Sunday school class which he was teaching, with the emphasis on being careful about our reactions to others or the same difficulties are apt to fall on the offender.

Through the years, we have learned that one is much happier in caring and agreement than in harshness over human error, and in some areas, to agree to just disagree.
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This article has been read 965 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
C D Swanson 
01/27/12
Good story, strong emotions spewing. And a great tale of obvious disagreements. I liked the ending, how the husband learned from his 'behavior' and used it as an example for bible class. Nicely done.

God Bless~
Dannie Hawley 
01/27/12
I loved your article. As I read I was waiting for your husband to realize what happened to you could have happened to anyone. God took care of it better than I could have, of course, and your rendering of the account was well done.
Dannie Hawley 
01/27/12
I loved your article. As I read I was waiting for your husband to realize what happened to you could have happened to anyone. God took care of it better than I could have, of course, and your rendering of the account was well done.
Dimple Suit
01/28/12
Gotta love God's sense of humor when He points out the errors of our ways. Great story, well told, and a lesson from which we can all benefit.
Jenna Dawn
01/30/12
Your story shares a nice lesson in being kind to each other even in the midst of a disagreement.

Your story would come alive if you did more showing and less telling. This link has a good article on the subject. http://www.dailywritingtips.com/show-dont-tell/

Also, you might want to read up on the appropriate way to write dialogue. When a new person is speaking you need to start a new paragraph for one.

I like the lesson learned in your story. Nice job. :)
Shann Hall-LochmannVanBennekom 
01/31/12
I really enjoyed the ending. It hit home with me and is a great piece of wisdom.

Be careful how many times you repeat words. In the second paragraph you repeat the words almost right under each other. Work on different structure sentences. Instead of using passive verbs like I was on the Ford. Change it up by Bouncing along on the little Ford, I stretched to pull the hand brake back. The second sentence paints a picture.

I liked how you described farm life. You took me make to my days as a youth living out in farmland. Nice job of showing the topic in a different way.