This is really just a tiny glimpse of how it was for little me to a have big brother like Fred.

In the early days at the farm, the tractor was essential to cutting the grass to get the cows through the winter, to keep the fields from turning into scrub brush, to plowing the driveway, to harrowing the garden each spring.

But the old John Deere model LA tractor was constantly in need of repairs and Fred spent hours in the barn working on it.

And I would hang there with Fred watching him work on it, learning from him how to grease the joints with a grease gun, how cotter pins through holes in bolts kept the nuts from falling off.

It was a small tractor, but a real one, not one of the lawn tractors of today. The tractor was such a focal point of our lives that I will have more to say about it.

But this is just about how Fred, at 14 years old, related to little Jonnie, hanging out in the barn with him. He would teach me things, ask me to hand him things while he was wrapped around some part of the great old green machine.

And sometimes he would realize that the tool he needed was back at the house, probably in the furnace closet. And he would ask me to run down to the house and get that tool, and always add the same phrase of encouragement, “Quick, like a bunny!”

And I would run quick like a bunny to the house, to the furnace closet, and find the right tool, and then run quick like a bunny back to hand the tool to Fred, who might still be under the tractor, waiting for it.

Fred and me in the barn, working on the tractor. My life never really got better than those times.

While there is much more to write about that old tractor, and much much more to write about Fred, it is that phrase, “Quick, like a bunny” that brings tears to my eyes as I write this.