Under the title “Putting Together a Boy” Boyd K. Packer wrote:
“One winter our sixteen-year old found in the neighborhood, under a pile of snow, a 1948 Ford tractor—sort of. He asked if he could buy it. It had stood, I think, for fifteen years without being used. It was rusted away. But he saw something there and I saw something in him seeing something there.
So, with another old tractor, we dragged it through the snowdrifts home to the shop and later to the high school shop. There the shop teacher and our son worked evening after evening to restore this tractor. Every few days it came again! “Dad, I’ve found out that we’ve got to buy this or that.” Strangely enough he could find it. He got his driver’s license midway, and so off to Heber City he was for this part or somewhere else for that part. I, too, went with him to more than one city looking through junkyards for old tractor parts.
Then as the bills mounted, someone who knew made the observation that the tractor was a very expensive investment. Perhaps a mistake. I thought he made the mistake. He thought we were putting together a tractor. I thought we were putting together a boy.
Somewhere in the middle of all this the tractor wouldn’t work, and the shop teacher couldn’t find the problem. So we made a call to a long since retired eighty-four-year-old who spent his life with tractors. He showed up one evening and pointed out this and that to help my boy, and then he was off again.
Eventually the tractor was assembled and in good working condition. A victory and a lesson for a boy.~Boyd K. Packer, from his book Memorable Stories with a Message, Deseret Book, 2000. p. 258.
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