Cash for Clunkers..The Sound of Good Motors Going Bad

.NOT a clunker

Carpe Diem has a post today with links to YouTube videos of dealership mechanics destroying perfectly good vehicles in the name of environmentalism....because that is what getting all those "gas guzzlers" off the road is, an expensive, funded by you and me, sop to a bunch of ivory tower environmentalists who never had to settle for a not so great vehicle just to get around in. Many of the poor, innocent, trucks they are ruining by running them without oil are far better than the ones we in our family drive. Nice trucks with an easy hundred thousand miles left in them. He is an economist. I am just a farmer. But the idea of killing good trucks about kills me and I don't think he was too crazy about it either.

Bad enough to crush them. To destroy tangible wealth like that.
But if you can listen to those motors running themselves to death with whatever that glop they pour into them is, you are stronger than I am.

I used to drive tractor for the boss...a lot. Back when the 5088 had a functional transmission I chopped almost all the haylage and some of the corn. Hundreds of loads a year and hundreds of hours alone in the cab, watching the rows of hay rolling up, watching swallows diving for the insects I stirred up, sometimes sharing the field with foxes, coyotes, deer and hawks.
And listening.

When you drive tractor doing crop work you learn to listen, constantly and carefully, with a certain part of your mind for every sound the tractor, chopper and the wagon you are pulling behind might make. The least, tiny, wrong noise from the engine or a bearing or a gathering chain or any moving part and you stop and investigate. Even today, when I hear them chopping when the wind is right, or hear the Case 930 coming down into the barn yard with the spreader, I subconsciously listen to the chugging of the diesel, making sure it sounds smooth and right and powerful. To listen to engines deliberately being driven until they were ruined literally made me feel queasy. Alan wanted to look at more of them and I told him he had to do it later when I wasn't on the computer.

We talked about how we would happily have driven several of the nice pieces of machinery we saw ruined...that they were in better shape than ours.

Then Alan said, "I couldn't do that to my truck."
I had to agree. I have had a few issues with the Durango, but there is no way I would let someone ruin it like that.

It doesn't bother the government at all though. They create no wealth and have no problem disposing of it in the name of theoretical pollution abatement plans. Golly I am glad I didn't vote for anybody in power in Washington right now.