"At 10, I was driving a 1948 Farmall "C" tractor pulling Peanut trailers from the fields to the drying sheds"
Sounds like work, my first 17 hour day on a time clock was when I was 14, (busboy in a restaurant).
I could not reach the breaks on the tractor. However, all that was necessary was to close the throttle, especially if you had 14,000 lbs of peanuts behind you, and it was instant stop.