Like Sam Cockroft, I was driving motorized vehicles on a Colorado farm at an early age. Unlike him, I lived to tell about it. The difference lies in the all-important area of parental supervision.
Cockroft is the 4-year-old boy whose body was retrieved from the banks of the South Platte River Sunday, two days after he disappeared while riding alone on a 50-cc all-terrain vehicle. Weld County Sheriff John Cooke noted that letting a little kid ride a motor vehicle on private land is legal in Colorado.
Yes, it is. But it’s also crazy.
As a parent and grandparent, I can understand the agony Sam’s parents are now enduring. I have no desire to add to their grief, but the only good that can come from this tragedy is for other parents to watch over their children as carefully as they can.
That’s certainly what my father did when, at the tender age of 6, I climbed behind the wheel of our 1934 Chevrolet farm truck in the summer of 1951. I hadn’t even ridden a two-wheel bike yet. But I was about to drive a truck.
Or steer it, anyway. My dad needed help loading the cattle feed we had raised. He put the truck in the super low gear and set the throttle, then walked alongside throwing the bundled feed into the box. Basically, I steered and he did the heavy lifting.
Perched on pillows so I could see, I couldn’t reach the truck’s clutch or brakes – and probably didn’t weigh enough to operate them if I could. But if I ran into a problem, my dad could always jump back in the cab and take over control. After gathering in the grain, the father/son team then fed the animals, with him riding in the back throwing it off to the waiting cows while I steered across the flat pasture land of eastern Colorado.
Even a 6-year-old is better able to run a motor vehicle than a 4-year-old. But my father would never have let me operate a motor vehicle unsupervised at six.
At 10, I did graduate to solo operation of a tractor. Since our old John Deere model D lacked an electric starter, dad would start it with the flywheel and help me hook up a chisel or rod weeder before turning me loose. I had ridden with him for many hours learning proper safety techniques before taking over a machine considerably slower and easier to manage than an ATV. Even then, I would have a very hairy moment on that tractor.
Tractors have most of the weight over the back wheels, which is what gives them so much traction. As a result, they can tip over if you’re foolish enough to drive them up a ditch onto a road.
Dad had carefully shown me the safe technique for leaving a field – backing out of the ditch – so I wasn’t worried that afternoon as I worked our chisel around a lagoon. But dad hadn’t thought to warn me about what could happen if I ran into a muddy spot. As I puttered along, the chisel bit deeply into the mud, bringing the tractor to a halt. Because the engine was still running, the rear wheels hoisted the front to a 45-degree angle. I was a second away from being crushed by a backflipping tractor.
The John Deere D’s clutch was a long, hand-driven rod. Frantically, I threw my 10-year-old body against it. The clutch disengaged, the front fell heavily back to earth and a very scared kid lived to reflect that, even for the careful, farming is a risky business.
I probably couldn’t have controlled that tractor at 6, and I certainly couldn’t have done so at 4 – which is why my dad never let me operate machines alone at such young ages. By 14, I was experienced enough at such work to hire out to other farmers, saving money for the college fund that would eventually free me from such drudgery.
Life on a farm was a struggle. Everybody had to pull their share, kids included, but our parents never gave us more responsibility than they felt we were able to handle. Now, when I read of parents letting little kids have unsupervised access to powerful machines, I think back to that hot summer day when I came to close to death on that old model D.
Our family had to work together for a living. But some parents are letting their kids age six or under drive solo on dangerous machines just for fun.
It only takes one mistake to turn such innocent fun into tragedy.
Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963.
