Formal Training?

[Richard]

I took 2 semesters of typing in HS.

Two reasons:
1- I was 1 of 2 males in the class.
2- Typing teacher had a white 67 Malibu and I was trying to get her to sell it to me.

End result - no girls and no car. But I did get a skill I have used for 43+ years so far. That's fair, I guess.

Yeah, but fess up....how good were you?

Two males in my 8th grade typing class. Myself and a fairly obese guy who was SMOKING if he could type 2 words/minute.

Therefore, I was the fastest male typest in the class....and but for a cute gal Alison who sat a row or two over, I would have been the fastest person in the class at 83 WPM.

Teacher came over and stated to me "you play the piano, don't you". Answer was no, but I had taken several years of lessons. She said she can spot them in a moment because of the hand coordination.

Today I can type pretty darn fast.....but can't play chopsticks. I'd be as happy if I were a slower typer BUT, could play something on the piano.

 

[MossRoad]

Yeah, but fess up....how good were you?

Two males in my 8th grade typing class. Myself and a fairly obese guy who was SMOKING if he could type 2 words/minute.

Therefore, I was the fastest male typest in the class....and but for a cute gal Alison who sat a row or two over, I would have been the fastest person in the class at 83 WPM.

Teacher came over and stated to me "you play the piano, don't you". Answer was no, but I had taken several years of lessons. She said she can spot them in a moment because of the hand coordination.

Today I can type pretty darn fast.....but can't play chopsticks. I'd be as happy if I were a slower typer BUT, could play something on the piano.

I topped out at high 40's with 100% accuracy.

I worked with a woman at the newspaper who was ranked in the top 20 world wide. She'd go to contests. Crazy to watch her type. Her job was to enter all of the legal advertising ads in the paper. Pages and pages back then. And, she did Obits.

 

[MoKelly]

A friend of mine in high school took a typing class.

We all made fun of him.

He then started dating one of the cutest girls. Got to sit by her in typing class.

He was a dog - but a clever dog.

To this day he can’t type.

MoKelly

 

[Williy]

I took typing in HS the gal next to me with long
slender fingers was typing 120 words a minute
and I asked her if we could trade typewriters as
mine didn't go as fast as hers. I was able to type
80 words a minute for 10 minutes with no errors.
Bookkeeping & Accounting plus typing was all I
learned in the last 6 years of school. Too many
coaches and all someone had to say "what happen in such & such a game" and that's all you heard! HS in Fond du Lac, WI you could learn how to play golf, tennis, basketball baseball, archery cross country skiing, ping pong, pool, foot ball, soccer, hockey, volley ball, handball, hockey, badminton, gymnastics and I probably missed some now my question is how do they make a living with the knowledge of sports??? Also when do they have time to study or maybe the necessity of a real education is no longer taught in school??? Is this the reason kids can't read or know how to add and subtract without a calculator? A lot of kids getting out of school
could not tell you any thing about the history
of the GOOD OLE U.S.A. Example when was
the WAR of 1812? kids answer 17 something
Who fought in the civil war? United States and
France

willy

 

[ultrarunner]

Self taught but started at age 4 steering down and back hay windows... best summer ever.

Attended inner city high school and no shop classes and driver training ended just before I was old enough

Started at 12 washing cars every Saturday for a car Dealership... then I was getting keys and starting cars and then moving them around the lot and filling tanks...

The owner saw me one day and called me into the office and told me who said I could drive... I said no one, only helping out... he asked where I learned and I said haying on Grandparents farm... after silence he said don't screw up!

Logged hundreds of hours parking before I ever drove on a highway?

Put my nephew on the Dozer at 12 and he was a natural... said video games!!!

Add me to the High School typing club... It was regular typing and got an A... no mistakes and lowest WPM to make it and she was tough, no non-sense and first day said anyone not serious should leave.

Always read the manuals and apply the tips on tractors... lots of useful info.

 

[ultrarunner]

Question for those driving on the road pre 16... what did you do for insurance?

 

[grsthegreat]

Funny, i operated dozers for years before i took flying lessons. My instructor was amazed how quickly i picked up flying. Dozer work tied my hand and foot coordination to a point most people didnt have when learning to fly.

 

[bigtiller]

Question for those driving on the road pre 16... what did you do for insurance?

Dad said I had to have insurance before I bought my car and I had to pay for it. So when I was nearly 15, I paid $50 for my '53 Chevy and bought 6 months of liability insurance which left me just enough for a tank of gas.

Back in the 60's insurance was cheap. Or at least it was cheap enough that I don't remember complaining about it.

 

[MossRoad]

Question for those driving on the road pre 16... what did you do for insurance?

I got my learners permit the day after I turned 15 in February. They'd give it to you if you were already enrolled in a driver's ed course. I was, but it wasn't until June that it would start. Didn't matter. You could drive with a licensed driver over age 21 in the front seat next to you. I drove with my folks everywhere in both of our cars ( 74 VW bus and a 71 Nova. both manual transmissions) as often as possible. By the time I took driver's ed, I was very comfortable behind the wheel on the roads. The instructor gave me a waiver, which meant I didn't have to take a driver's test when I got my license. Just had to take a written test. At 16 a month and a day I got my license. At that time I'd already had about 13 months and 12,000+ miles on the road.

As for insurance, in Indiana at least, it is not required for a minor with a learner's permit as long as the owner of the car has insurance. They are automatically covered. Once they get their license, they need insurance. It was the same way for both of our children when they got their leaner's permits in 2007 and 2012 respectively.

 

[Sportsman762]

I never had formal training for operating anything. Started mowing with a dixon zero turn when I was in second grade as soon as I weighed enough to keep the seat safety switch down. I was 12 before father would let me run the Ford 8N tractor. I worked for a neighbor who had a small import company. I taught myself how to run the Clark forklift. In college I worked grounds keeping, and though I had gone to heaven driving the TC40 with hydrostatic transmission. So much easier to use. I was the only student allowed to run equipment other than the Kubota RTV 900's. A few years after that I got a job working at a farm and got to run larger equipment. It was all older stuff, no powershifts, or anything nice. Most everything had a cab, but no AC.

I still marvel at a good operator, my one friend was plowing, and I was discing, and he could lift the front of the 4 bottom plow then the back in such a way that the edge of the field was straight. I have a long way before I get there. The only formal training I have had was to drive a car.

I do watch some videos to get tips from the Pro's and read NOISH reports to understand what can go wrong. NOISH reports are never fun to read, but I think that they make you more cognoscente of the dangers that come from doing something other than being an armchair jockey on the internet.

 

[Frankenkubota]

I took 2 semesters of typing in HS.

Two reasons:
1- I was 1 of 2 males in the class.
2- Typing teacher had a white 67 Malibu and I was trying to get her to sell it to me.

End result - no girls and no car. But I did get a skill I have used for 43+ years so far. That's fair, I guess.

funny about typing.

it was 1965? and our school had a visit from a guy from bell labs, a big auditorium type of presentation. meaningless to me then but i do remember 2 things.

1. he turned off the lights and held up what turned out to be a bundle of fiber optic cables and it looked like he had a bunch of flowers, all bright and shiny on the ends. he said we would use the light to communicate...yea right.

2. he told everyone....learn to type, even you tough guys! In the future we will communicate using a keyboard...yea right!

years later i made a good part of my living because of the work of bell labs, thx.

i still can't type but....i can play the piano.....

i lost my thrill, on blueberry Hill!

 

[draku007]

30 years ago there was no youtube and sites such as this one. I defiantly think that kids should be thought farm basics and where their food comes from but if you only had a formal training 30 years ago in HS and you were to operate a machine today I can guarantee you that you will be all over the net looking for resources vs looking for your class notes

 

[Micman]

Went to the school of hard knocks and Life!

 

[sunandsand]

For the past couple of years I've been pretty deeply involved in vocational training as a part of business development in this area. Companies need employees who have at least the most basic skills - how to run a fork lift, how to type, how to back up a trailer, often how to drive stick shift. Fortunately our local community college has some very good vocational programs (HVAC, auto shop, auto body, CNC machining and a lot more) partly because of my incessant lobbying in behalf of the city and with the assistance of the local manufacturer's association.

Most of the high school level vocational courses disappeared because a) they couldn't find anyone to teach them, and b) insurance became prohibitive. Hi insurance company, I'd like you to cover a 14 year old kid learning to use an oxy-acetylene cutting torch . . . right. School board says can't get insurance, cancel the class.

When I got my Kubota, I looked around for courses on how to run it safely and skillfully. Basically nothing available here. I did find an online course about how not to get killed (probably) but it was rather skimpy and didn't address how to run the tractor WELL.

I'm learning . . . my best resource is this site, TBN. Asking a question gets useful answers from people who have been doing this a LOT longer than I have or ever will. There are some resources on YouTube but I don't like using that because it locks up my computer and tries to sell me stuff. And of course, I read the manuals.

One thing I've learned in 60+ years of fooling around with all kinds of machinery is this - the moment you say to yourself "Man, I've got this **** whipped!" right then is when it turns around and bites you.

What I'd REALLY like to see is a proper book covering both tractor safety and how to properly and safely use the various implements. It should be spiral bound so it will stay open to the page you are referring to. The print should be a decent, readable size. There should be no jargon, and a couple of pages of definitions. A few more pages (for newbies like me) should have pictures "This is a (whatever) and here is how you use it."

Maybe we should make this a collaborative effort? Collectively, we certainly have the knowledge, we just need to collect it and distill it.

Best Regards,

Mike/Florida

 

[alanb21]

I live in Southeastern Massachusetts where we actually have an agricultural technical high school complete with tractor mechanics shop. Not too bad for New England.
Alan

 

[Tractorbub]

YouTube has a few 'how to' videos on tractor operation

 

[gckshea]

Ditto /pine's comment. I'd liken the license as a cash grab by some agency in the State government, akin to the cash grab to have a boater's license, all obtainable online in Oregon. It's a joke. I'd question the actual training, since machine operation does differ in the equipment used, the terrain, the condition of the piece of equipment, weather, attachments/implements, ballast/no ballast, etc. A nice idea, but really a cash cow for a licensing bureau made up for just that....to be a bureau.

 

[Bentrim]

Somewhere in the late 50's dad set me on the seat of an 8N Ford an told me to just hold the steering wheel straight, while he picked up bales and put them on the wagon as someone else stacked them. Don't remember if I could reach the pedals or not but I doubt it. He would take over at the ends and turn the rig around. A few years later I was plowing, disking, mowing, and cultivating corn among other jobs on a JD 520, occasionally I got to run the 70D. Fast forward to abt 1967 and I worked at a dealer that the owner found out why combines weren't demonstrated, he had to buy it. So he put it to work cutting custom work. At 16 I was operating a MM 2890 combine. Yep moving down the road, cutting hills and all that it took to get the job done. Here in south eastern Pa some hills can get steep. Back then drivers had a lot more common sense than they do now as most would pull over to leave you by. I must admit that as a youngster I used to read the equipment operators manuals, really enjoyed the safety cartoons JD put in the manuals. Even as I was employed as a farm equipment mechanic I was always thinking about safety and how not to get hurt. Guess dad watched over me for a few years and taught safety. Now working with small engine I see some folks that should never operate equipment especially chain saws as they don't know how to use them and are very dangerous operating them. The best we can do is as the watch commander on Hill Street Blues used to say, "Be careful out there"

 

[keljan11]

When I was about 8, my dad bought an old D2 Caterpillar with a dozer blade. When I was able to start it with the crank start (he showed me how not to break an arm from a kick-back), I was considered old enough to start, and plow the snow on our steep driveway. It had the lever clutch steering. At 16, worked at a packing house, where the foreman said to jump on the oldest forklift, drive it around a bit, then start moving pallet stacks around. At 18, I learned how to operate a 12 ton mobile crane. Boss told me to hook onto a vessel out in the bone yard. After lifting the rear tires off the ground a few times, I figured out the boom would raise up. I was now a crane operator. At 64 yrs old, I've since learned that Pucker sense is a great teaching tool, but you got to be lucky enough to sense it before it's too late. There have been way too many deaths and injuries from doing it old school.
Be safe out there guys