Why old men are injured

Not many young men could handle that piece of oak!

Not the ones these days….we could back in the 80’s hauling square bails lol summer and firewood all winter

Edit: And yes, I’m paying the price now for what I did in my younger years

You ain't the only one amigo. I don't bend too well anymore.

Not me. Everyday is like a vacation up in here.

My brother-in-law used to bale those square bales heavy. By the end of the day you knew you had done some work. lol

There's a joke in there somewhere.

Especially when done stacking them to the peak peak inside a 120 degree barn while breathing in all that hay dust.

We’d go down to the creek and just jump in fully clothed….we were soaked to the bone with sweat anyway. I don’t think a cool creek and cold beer ever felt better than after having the fully filled the barn and all the fields empty!

My orthopedic surgeon and neurologist love all those bales of hay I tossed up on the trailer.

Bunch of light weights!!!!! Alfalfa bales make real men, especially when your mom is ticked off about your mouth and is driving the truck at Mach 2 while you are trying to get bales up to the third row,

Only loaded a small field of square bales of hay with another person twice and they went under a shed, pretty good workout.
Worked construction in jr high and high school, mixing cement in a wheel barrel, pouring it into 5 gallon buckets and walking them about 30 + feet to dump them was a good workout..

The real ball buster for me was digging holes with a post hole digger for fence post in Oak Cliff, usually you went about 4" down then it was busting rocks the rest of the way down, in the middle of the summer that was no fun but I used the money wisely on beer for me and Boones Farm wine for the girlies

What has my bones and joints barking is a combo of a lot of things, doing a lot of stupid things as a kid and doing things like jumping off of a two story house onto the ground just because we could, sports, heavy weight lifting and being a rambunctious fart, breaking my fibula driving a drunk mini bike, breaking both my arm at different times, broke collar bone trying to tackle a corner of a townhouse while a little bit drunk and so on.

Going to have the left knee replaced now in March, pretty sure the right one will be on that list soon afterwards unless there is new medical procedure or treatment that comes along.
Fortunately for the most part I do not try and bite off more than I can chew anymore.

Almost 67 and very grateful that I do not have real problems like a lot of other folks do!.

The look on his face says he didn’t handle it for long. Probably one of those, “ I got this, oh crap” moments.

The guy I worked for, in high school, didn't use a trailer for us to put bales on. Oh no, he used a dang wheat truck. You'd have to throw those bales straight up. It was hot and humid and whatever fines were on top or the bale would come down right in your face and neck. Around your neck the would scratch the daylights out of you. Only rarely did we have to stack it in a barn which was it's own brand of misery. The dust would choke you. You'd look like a coal miner after their shift was over except it was brown dust instead of the black coal dust.

When he castrated hogs was another adventure. You'd have to go into the sty and catch the little bastages. Grab a hind leg, flip him and carry him to where he was doing the cutting. But the little bastage was upside down with his back to you and when he defecated it would get all over you, from about mid chest down to your knees. And they ALL defecated!

Do kids do this anymore?

With calves you get crapped on, pee'd on, and kicked..usually in or near the groin or knee.

Stub, everybody knows that once that mini bike starts drinking, he is nothing but bad news!

True story, at least the drunk part.

Lived in the then Glen Lake Apartments on Walnut Hill, my trust fund neighbor who was a cool dude had all kinds of toys including an Abercrombie & Fitch racing mini bike.
I had driven it a couple of times before while sober, they are small (mini) and you have to put your feet on the front wheel hub nuts.

Got dropped off at home after playing water volleyball all day consuming mass quantities of beer and he is out in the parking lot with it.
Him: Hey David do you want to drive the mini bike? Me know I am tired going in: Him are you sure I am going out of town for a couple of weeks: Me okay

It is so low to the ground you have to go around or in between the gap in the speed bumps.
Was about to go through the middle gap of a speed bump when a car came around the corner causing me to swing wide right, well I turned back left to soon and my left foot hit the edge of the speed bump, clean snap of my Fibula above my ankle.

When I was younger at 6' and 210 pounds I could throw 2, 50# bags of corn on my shoulder and carry them over rough terrain several yards, then climb a ladder with one of the bags on my shoulder and fill my feeders using a rickety old ladder and never wince.
Now at 75 and back, shoulder, and hip problems I'm doing good to carry a 40# bag ten feet!
Before back surgery I had the Doc ask me if I had ever ridden bulls, and I said, "no not that I remember,...Why?"
Do it while you can, because you live long enough, the abuse to your body eventually catches up with you!

Several years ago, the youngest daughter's husband was having a hard wrapping his head around the I was semi retired.

I tried to explain the years of breathing used refrigerant and brazing fumes and 140 degree roofs was taking toll on my body. I was not ready to retire completely but needed to get off roofs.

He just couldn't believe I hadn't been issued Personal Protection Equipment.

I laughed and I shot back, "We couldnt even spell PPE, back then."

I’ve never had a great back. Working and being not a little guy, hard headed and refusing to use common sense.

When I was young I was always in the middle of the hardest work as if it made me tougher etc.

But when I fell from the counter top and the island counter top broke my fall while building my house. It changed things.

Thanks for reminding me. Not a one up post. When I was feeding deer leases, some of them could not be fed using the feed trailer. One ranch in particular had nothing but these feeders. This was 10 years ago, at age 63, daughter #4 and I fed, by hand, 20 feeders a day for two days straight. Doesn't sound like much, but first we had to fill the bags. Then load them into the truck. Then it's stop, go over the feed pen fence, climb the ladder, open the feeder, go back to the pen fence and get the 50 lb bag from daughter #4, hoist it, climb the ladder, dump bag, climb down, get another 50 lb bag, x5, climb the ladder, close the feeder rinse and repeat.

The truck only had room to carry 100 bags. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that today. I wouldn't even try it, as a matter of fact.

For all you youngsters out there, the oldsters can often still do what they used to but get injured in the process. i used to lift weights every other day but now I seem to do better once every three days, sort of three days, three days, two days and repeat. In any event I kept getting injured all the time until I had to face reality. Not that bad, you just adapt, you pace yourself, etc. If you do that, you can still get a lot done. I walk 8 miles a day a lot.

Man It sounds like I had it easy loading the coastal square bales. We had a conveyer loader that put the bales on the trailer, all we had to do was stack them. When we put them in the barn the guy had a conveyer that he ran off the 3 point PTO so again some one had to throw the bales on the conveyer and a couple of us stacked in the barn. Me and a couple of other guys helped the farmer so we could hunt on his place. He had 700 acres and 300 of those were in coastal. This was in the 80’s and early 90’s.

Loading the bales on the trailer was called “bucking”. You learned to lift the bale by the wire from the end, get your knee under it and swing it up on the trailer. There, another guy would grab and stack them. It was all in one motion that I couldn’t do today. But, at 12 to 14 yoa, I was in better shape than I’m in now.

We had an old late 40’s flatbed 2-ton truck that the bed was about nipple high on me. We had three guys. One on the truck stacking and two bucking. We’d put it in granny and tie a rope to the steering wheel. The guys on each side had two rows to carry and buck. We went 6 or 8 rows high with a “holding” row down the middle on top. We rotated every pass through the field and the guy stacking got a little rest until the last couple rows where he had to use a hook to snag the bails being bucked up and pull them up and stack them.

We earned every penny! I started out “professionally” at 13 years old (I had helped my grandfathers for free since I was 7 or 8 so I was experienced!) making 1.5 cents a bail. Every payday (once a week) I thought I was rich….

I really miss those simpler times. I mowed lawns, hauled hay, cut and split firewood all for “spending”money….

Most of those jobs aren’t available to kids today and sadly most kids today wouldn’t think about doing “work” like that

Here is a truck similar to the one we used….and yes I drove it down country roads loaded and empty at 13 years old

Roger that. As a young teenager I loaded/hauled square bales, built fence, worked cows and goats....at 13 yrs old I spent a whole Summer working 6 days a week cutting & stacking Post Oak and burning the rest. Paid me $20/day and the wood was mine to sell. At 14 worked 6 days a week at a tire shop making $10/day for a Summer, then my friend & I started a lawn mowing business. My Jr High and early High School years we knocked on doors and pushed lawn mowers 6 days/week after school. Bought my own clothes/boots/hats/fishing gear/guns & ammo etc.....paid for my own meals at school.

Not tootin' my own horn, just agreeing with you that times are different now for sure. We didn't have all of the distractions that kids do today.

Thankfully both of my Son's are hard workers and self motivated (yes, I've pushed a little). My 11 yr old boy made me smile the other day. He woke up early and started putting work in on his own, I didn't ask him to. I asked him what he was doing, he said "Dad I'm just doing things that need to be done, I want to help you." My job is to make sure he never loses that working/self motivated mentality.

after this week's hunt, I'm officially and old man. only fell twice walking in grass where I didn't see the rock and, oops