Faster, Faster - Oops

Living on a farm in Minnesota offers a boy all kinds of things to do. As for me, I was not limited at all. I could go over to the neighbors and hang with them. I could go upstairs in the hay loft and check out the special spot our cat always had her litter of kittens. I could go to the woods and shoot the twenty-two.
The only time I lacked freedom was when assigned to do farm work. Oh, yeah, that was almost constantly, wasn't it? I remember this one time that I was bored silly. I would carefully cultivate a few rows of corn exactly as I had been instructed. But the boredom caused me to snap. When I would come to the end of the corn row, instead of lifting the cultivator, I left the cultivator down and pushed very hard on one of the brakes. In case you are interested, tractors have directional brakes. You can step on either brakes to the left or right. Or you can step right in the middle for both sides.
So, with the cultivator down and only one brake applied, the non applied wheel would be overwhelmed and not able to make the tractor move. The tire would keep turning, but the tractor stayed where it was. In a short time, this tire would kick out all the dirt within it's reach and be spinning freely. So, then I would apply the opposite break and do it again. This time I would stop the digging as close to completely stuck as I could. A few times I got very close to really making the tractor stuck.
That is what I was hoping for. It was really exciting to be nearly stuck and work hard at regaining mobility. Some times I would have to get under the machine and shove some of the displaced dirt back into the big hole. I do not remember ever getting it stuck, stuck.
A close call would have broken the monotony enough to return to dutifully cultivating corn. Until you have been on a tractor all day, you have no idea how boring this is.
Another thing I did was discover the governor of the tractor. There is a throttle for the tractor within hands reach of the driver, right? Well it does not go straight to the carburetor. It first goes to the governor. The governor senses how fast the engine is turning and constantly adjusts the carburetor to maintain the engine speed. The manufacturer determined what the maximum rpm should be. There was a stop at this speed on the throttle.
One day while bored, I became very aware of this principle. See, if I stepped on the brakes, the governor would advance the carburetor enough to maintain the same speed. You see where I am going with this? Why couldn't I perform the function of the governor? I stopped the tractor and stood beside the engine with it running. Sure enough, I could advance the carburetor by moving this one lever toward the driver.
At this time I did not have any string with me. The next trip home, I found a piece of twine and carefully tied one end to the lever and the other end near the driver. I headed off to the field. When I got about a quarter mile away, I reached over and put that tractor into 'Steve Overdrive'. Man, o' man, was I moving along now. I went from the usual twelve miles per hour to at least sixteen, I suspect. I was enjoying this so much, that I did not see the dust cloud from my dad coming. He passed me and slid to a stop in the middle of the road. I stopped too. He walked to the side of the tractor, pulled out his knife, cut the string, tossed it to me, got in the car and left.
I never did that again!
My dad understood this phenomenon about cultivating and me. Only a few years ago, I was telling him about some of this, and he was already aware of what I was telling. He even reminded me of some things I had done without me first confessing. It seems he knew about it all the time.
Kayak Bandit