Sunday, April 22, 2012

Things Woodie Told Me That I Didn't Believe

A short list:

Allis Chalmers gasoline tractors were more fuel efficient than John Deere diesels. (Woodie hated John Deeres, and had a WD-45, two D-14s a D-17 and a Gleaner combine, along with a Case 930 (maybe) Comfort King)

The EPA forced all coke oven operators out of business in the United States, and we imported most of our coke from Canada. (I don't know how much coke we import, but there have been coke ovens in operation my whole life in Middletown, where I believe Woody lived at one point in his childhood)

 That the Kentucky hay hauler sold Woodie's July first cutting hay to race horse owners.  As the neighbors called it, Woodie's elephant hay could only have been sold to guys with brood cows.  There were weed stems as big around as my finger in that stuff.

That Ohio would continue to go down the tubes unless it passed a right-to-work law to pummel unions.  With the current Republican governor and legislature, we might find out if that's true.  Or we could watch what happens with the hicks next door in Indiana, who just passed the law.  This was another theme which our lean consultant was yapping about.  I don't know if it has anything to do with lean manufacturing, but I think that dude watches a lot of Fox News, which really seems to screw up a person's bullshit detector.

That a nursing mom drinking a beer each night would increase milk production.  In truth, he attributed this to a German lady who told his mother that if she drank a beer every night she'd have enough milk to feed the baby, give some to the cat and squirt a little in her husband's coffee.  But then he followed that up by saying his mother followed the woman's advice and drank a beer every night, and they were very good-sized little kids.

Another story attributed to German neighbors (which I believe they would say) was that a person shouldn't drink cold water, because it would kill them.  He always followed it up by saying, "but they sure liked their beer cold."  I believe that story was real, but I, like Woodie, didn't believe that cold water would kill a person.

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