In the winter months the pond would be frozen, and the neighbor kids would often go ice skating or play hockey there. The ducks would sometimes also be there sitting close together so a portion of the pond would melt from the heat from their bodies, and they could still swim in a small area. We had to be careful not to skate near the ducks.
When I started high school as a freshman in 1950, we were offered a new subject to choose from. It was a subject that had been taught years ago but had since been discontinued. The new subject was a general course in agriculture, which also included farm shop.
When we started our new agriculture course at Zeeland High School in 1950, farming as we had known it in the past was rapidly undergoing change. Farms were getting larger and yields from crops were beginning to be much larger. Dairy and poultry production were also increasing. On our farm we had just sold our team of horses and replaced them with a tractor. The century of the horse had ended and now a farmer used tractors and other more modern farm machinery.
The century of the family farm was disappearing.
Mr. Hilbrands encouraged us to choose a special project related to agriculture, to be completed each summer on our farms. I decided to raise a flock of 75 ducks. We had a pond on our farm that we called the “water hole”, located in a cow pasture just south of our house. Our cows would drink water there and also wade in it during some of the hot summer days.
The agriculture class also included Farm Shop. Here, we learned how to use an arc welder and other tools related to the repair of farm machinery. At age 14, I was especially fascinated with the arc welder. It soon gave me some ideas of what I could do if I owned one.
In 1949, my father had retired his 1929 Model A Ford after 20 years of service. It sat parked in our backyard with a couple of tires and a battery missing. In the summer of 1951, the Berlin Raceway opened, and soon a number of my friends from Borculo were watching the races on Saturday nights, on the ⅜ mile dirt track.
At this time, we could buy small arc welders from an ad in Popular Mechanics magazine that could be used on the standard 110-volt electricity that we had on the farm.
Our Borculo racetrack was a trail that ran behind our farm buildings between our fields. I only drove the car when my father was not home.