HOLD'ER NEWT...

HOLD’ER NEWT …

“HOLD’ER NEWT, SHE’S A HEADIN’ FER THE BUCKWHEAT!”, Caleman said. Caleman was my cousin Lynn Taber’s father, and at that time he was probably in his mid seventies. I was about 8 or 10. We were cultivating corn on the Taber’s Allis Chalmers D14 tractor with a 4 row mounted cultivator. Cultivating is a job that most kids today will never get to try, since it has largely been replaced by spraying. In days past, though, almost all corn was cultivated at least once during the summer to get rid of the weeds that grew between the rows. It was very effective but it took skill and got very hypnotic! In our part of the woods, it was done in low gear because the terrain was hilly and the rocks were plentiful.
Caleman’s warning was by way of telling me that I was about to “plow some corn”, meaning take out some corn plants with the cultivator, which of course wouldn’t have been good. I got the tractor back into the center of the rows, but I had to know who Newt was, and there was no buckwheat anywhere close by. It happened that the rows we were doing at the time were not straight and I had to concentrate pretty hard to keep on them till we came to the end. At the end, Caleman told me to stop and he climbed off and headed for his car, telling me to be careful and stay awake. I was forgetful even then, so it was later that day before I finally found out the origin of that comment.
It seems that back in the days before tractors, Caleman had a team of draft horses named Newt and Nat, and he used to cultivate corn with them, as well as other jobs. I can’t remember what job they were doing , but Caleman said that if the implement started to drift off it’s intended course, all he had to say was “Hold’er Newt, she’s headed fer the buckwheat”, and Newt would compensate for the drift all by himself.
I’ve always remembered the phrase, and I use it myself whenever I get into a situation where the machine is going somewhere besides where I want it to, and It always reminds me of Caleman, who lived a long life, but passed away many years ago.
As for the D14, it still lives on the same farm.