Frank Loveless was born in 1901.  He grew up in Spade, Texas, which is less than a wide spot in the road; it’s just a junction were farm roads intersect.  When Frank was a 16 years old, he was working his father’s cotton field with a horse-drawn plow when a tractor salesman appeared.  The vendor was driving a truck and towing a trailer on which was perched a brand new McCormick tractor.  He backed the newfangled thing off the trailer and asked Frank if he’d like to give it a go.

Frank had never driven a tractor.  I’m not sure he’d ever driven a car.  He climbed up on the contraption and started down the row of cotton he’d been working with his horse-drawn rig.  When he got to the end of the turn-row, he pulled back hard on the steering wheel and yelled “Whoa!”

The tractor, obviously hard of hearing, continued on its course, crashed through the barbed wire fence and came to rest in a ditch.  Steam gushed from the punctured radiator.

The salesman managed to the tractor back on the trailer and drove away.  Frank went back to his horse-drawn plow.  So much for technology.

Frank Loveless was my grandfather.

Although I’m not exactly a Luddite, it’s clear that I am not genetically predisposed to technological innovation.   My son Adam has been blogging for years.  He must get it from his mother’s side of the family.  It was Adam who convinced me to enter the blogosphere,  and I do so with considerable trepidation.

For one thing, I’m not sure I have to time to keep this up.  For another, I have serious doubts that anything I would write would be worth reading.  Most of all, I fear that, having expended my full allotment of words on a weekly sermon, I won’t have any left for a blog.  Or at least no words worth posting.

Oh well, I’ll give it a go.  I can always go back to the horse.