Mystic Minute- Oct 1st This is the testimonial of a true miracle that I was blessed to be a part of. Tom Mathey is the writer. It is not in the book, but will be in the next one. " The day was Thursday June 17th, 1999. I was working around home and wearing a tee shirt I had bought the year before. The shirt was grey and had a picture on it of an Allis Chalmers WC tractor. I had bought the shirts with the pictures, one for my dad and one for myself, because when I was a boy in the early sixties my dad had bought a 1938 Allis Chalmers WC. As the years went by he went on to collect a few more tractors, so the shirts meant something to us. On this particular day I was going to be recording at my friends Mark Archambault’s studio. As I was getting ready to go I was going to change into another shirt. However, the Holy Spirit prompted me to keep that shirt on, and so I did (no big deal). I headed out in my ‘86 Toyota pickup truck to the studio, which was in their home, for my 7:00 time slot. The radio had signaled the top of the hour just as I was pulling into the short country side street that served them and four other neighbors. Their house was the first on the left side and toward the highway, and they had a large garage across their driveway with a school bus parked in front by the street, they were refurbishing this for ministry. As I was coming in off the highway and heading for their drive, I saw the neighbor on the left just past them out in his front yard on his Allis Chalmers WD, a model newer, and glancing down at my shirt I thought , I’ll go talk to him a minute. I parked on the left side of the school bus, got out and as I came around the back of the truck I told Mark’s wife, who was on the porch, I would be just a minute. As I came around to the side of the bus from the back, to my horror, the tractor had flipped over on top of the neighbor. I turned back to the house and yelled “Get Help”. I ran over to the tractor saying a prayer, the man, Joe, was still alive, but trapped under the steering wheel. As a boy I remember my dad telling stories about farmers who had been trapped and killed by these tractors flipping over backwards. The tractors I am talking about have what is called a final drive. With a tractor that has a final drive the rear-end of the tractor is higher than the centerline of the wheel hubs because the power goes from the rear end through the final drive and down to the wheels. So if you strap a load you want to pull, in this case a tree stump, to the rear-end, there comes a point where if the load won’t move, the force will lift the front of the tractor and flip it over long wise. This is exactly what happened here. As I was getting to the tractor I saw that the one shoe had been yanked off by the throw. Joe was trapped by the crumpled steering wheel over his waist, his legs were toward the gas tank and his head toward the seat. The rear wheels were about eight inches in the air evenly, which meant the full weight of this iron monster was on the steering wheel which had him pinned. Quietly he called “Somebody help me.” I answered I am here. Having grown up around these tractors I knew the weight that was involved here. Earlier that year my dad, brother, and I loaded two wheels in to a trailer by hand, they alone are heavy not to mention all the iron in between. I grabbed toward the rear of what would be the left wheel by the tire treads and began to lift with all my might. There was no movement, but I couldn’t stop lifting because a man was trapped here. Shortly Mark and his wife arrived. Mark joined me by grabbing the front of the tire I was lifting on. His wife, I think, had gone under the tractor to see where she could push. There was no movement. At this point my strength was starting to give, and in an effort to help, I shoved a knee under a tread. I thought if the load shifts it will shear my knee cap off, but a man was dying under here so I had to do something. To this day I don’t understand it, but she came out from underneath and said “Wow, that was something, the whole tractor just lifted.” Joe was now behind the tractor on the ground, how he got there I don’t know. Now my background is in engineering by trade and to put it simple, with both wheels eight inches in the air the following would have to logically have happened. The wheel we were lifting would have to go up eight inches for the other wheel to touch the ground, forget about ground compacting and wheel compression. Because the steering wheel sitting on Joe was in the middle of the tractor, the tire we were lifting would have to go up another twelve inches to get the steering wheel up six inches for Joe to possibly get free. If Mark and I had lifted that wheel twenty inches I would tell you so, but remember, I had stuffed a knee under a tread because my strength was fading. Mark and I released our hold on the wheel and, with his wife, we went back to Joe. He said “I think I will be ok now.” I said “you just stay there now. You don’t know what is busted up on the inside.” There was a mother and her small children, I seem to remember two, maybe there was a third, who lived in the last house on the lane. They came over hearing the commotion. Some were crying or screaming, I didn’t focus too much on that, I just remember they were there. Someone had called the emergency crew and because they live in the countryside close to the county line we knew it was going to be awhile before any medical help would arrive. Joe was not hurt or bleeding anywhere but his foot where the shoe had come off was scraped. He was coherent and calm, which was good. Remember this all took place in the front lawn of Joe’s house where he was trying to pull out the stump of a small tree he had cut off. Well, I remember that after Joe was free, I saw his wife looking out the front picture window of their house with a gaze like she did not understanding what she was seeing, Later Mark told me she was suffering from Alzheimer’s. In an odd way it may have been better, whatever the case she was not alarmed by what was going on and at the time that seemed good. I had checked the tractor out for safety, and saw that the front top of the radiator was banged up from the flip and was leaking some anti-freeze, not much though. It seems to me the fuel system was not leaking, that was my larger concern, and the battery was intact. The sheriff arrived about fifteen to twenty minutes after seven o’clock and asked what happened. I explained all we had seen and done. The poor officer could not accept the miracle that was being explained to him. I don’t know what he put down in his final report, but I think it would be interesting to see. I remember that he kept asking questions to reach a logical solution, but only a miracle could explain what we just went through. Five or ten minutes later the fire trucks and paramedics arrived the checked out Joe, loaded him up and took him away. Later the neighbor across the way came home and was angry when he heard the news. “Joe should have waited for me” he said. Later he came over with a piece of equipment and righted Joe’s tractor. After the rescue crews left, we made our way into Mark’s home to do some recording, the reason I came. But we were all in a shock of a sorts. I remember thinking over and over again what just happened here. That night when I got home I told Dawn, my wife, about what happened; I was still in somewhat of a wonder struck awe. When I took my shirt off to go to bed I exclaimed “Look at this.” On my right arm there were two rectangular bruises, one on my forearm and one on my bicep left from lifting on the tractor tire treads. The next day I called Mark to see if he heard any word on Joe’s condition. He told me that Joe was home already. I called Joe and asked how he was, he said “All I got was some bruising they let me go home. Guess I was lucky.” I said “No Joe you were blessed.” He paused and said “Yes, I guess your right.” My lesson learned was about the reward of obedience. You may not know how the obedience in a little thing is going to matter, but what you do know is that to obey matters, period. It seemed like a simple thing God is calling you to do, like for me, not changing the shirt I was wearing, but His blessings follow obedience. May we all mature to be like Jesus who said “I always do the will of my father.” Yours truly, Tom Mathey
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 04:06:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015