The memories came flooding back as my
brother and I examined the 65-year-old Allis-Chalmers WD farm tractor
on display at the Rock River Thresheree.
It had been a long time since I had
seen one of those, but everything was just as I remembered from the
pair of WDs we used on our farm. The choke and the starter underneath
the steering column. The hand crank on the front. The toolbox
attached to the inside of the left fender, which served as a perfect
seat for a young passenger.
One thing not present that I vividly
recalled was the smell of my dad's tractor. The steering wheel
contained an aroma that is difficult to describe, almost like a
combination of burnt rubber and oil. And suddenly, that odor from 35
years ago was fresh in my mind.
People are surprised when they find
out that my childhood was spent on a dairy farm. My life since high
school certainly doesn't reflect that background. Advertising sales,
writing and community theater are a far cry from driving manure
spreaders and carrying milk pails. Neckties were rarely worn with
green seed corn caps.
It was a life that I have come to
appreciate far more now than when it was my daily reality. As the
baby of the family, my siblings were all a decade or so older and
were out of the house when I was still young. In effect, I was an
only child, and a pretty spoiled and bratty one at that.
When my siblings went to school, our
neighborhood was still dominated by family farms. By my childhood,
things were starting to change. Subdivisions were creeping in, and my
closest school friends were not the offspring of farmers. Their lives
were different. They took summer vacations and their hardest chores
seemed to be picking up their room or drying the dishes. Meanwhile,
farm kids were expected to help in the barn and in the fields. Rather
than truly understanding the sacrifices my parents made to keep a
roof over our head, resentment crept in. I am not proud of my
behavior or attitude in those days; it's a regret that haunts me.
So my trip to the Thresheree was more
than just a day spent for entertainment. It was a day to reconnect
both with my farming past and with my older brother, with whom my ten
year gap seems not nearly as long as it used to.
Naturally, the tractors that caught
our attention first were the ones similar to those we grew up with:
the Allis-Chalmers, the IH 560, the old Farmall. My brother pointed
out a John Deere model B my uncle once owned, a 2-cylinder nicknamed
the “Johnny Popper” because of its distinctive sound.
We marveled at older, early 20th
Century models that were astonishingly large, resembling steam
railroad locomotives more than farm machinery.
Always present in our minds with these
beasts, old or new, is the danger factor. We both knew about that all
too well. While working in the hay fields with my father one day, he
barely escaped serious injury – or possibly death - when his pants
leg got caught in the power take off shaft between the tractor and
the baler. The machinery ripped off his pants, leaving him straddling
the shaft in his underwear, boots, and unbelievably, the belt around
his waist. Bolting from the hay wagon to the tractor to kill the
ignition was the fastest dash in the history of my life.
That was just one chain in the acres
of information my brother and I shared that day. He inquired about my
memories and offered his. We compared notes and told stories the
other hadn't heard before. It was almost like we grew up on the farm
in different eras, like a TV show that changes characters over time.
He was Trapper John, I was B.J. Hunnicutt.
Sitting and watching a parade of antique tractors go by, a Simon and Garfunkel lyric came to mind.
“Old friends/sat on their park
bench like bookends...”
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