The comfort of a tractor
Posted By Mike Gfeller on September 9, 2012
I don’t know what it is about a tractor that is comforting. Maybe a person has to grow up around tractors. You know, have an uncle or a grandfather that drove one when they were a kid. Maybe they even went so far as to attend a tractor pull. I’ve been to a few.
My grandfather grew up in a farming community. While he broke horses to ride (and yes, zebras – see my photo albums for more detail on that) and didn’t really do much traditional farming, he lived on a farm and had chickens and horses and maybe a few cows here and there. He also had tractors and as he got older decided to get into the hobby his oldest son had already started: collecting old John Deere tractors. At least, initially just John Deere’s. Later he purchased an Allis-Chalmers and maybe even an International Harvester or two. I think at their high point, between my uncle and my grandfather they had over 30 big tractors and a few small garden tractors as well. Probably 25 of those being John Deere.
My grandfather passed away almost 4 years ago, and in May 2010 we had a sale about sixty miles southeast of Kansas City in the little town of Garden City, Missouri. On the sale bill were a few garden tractors, though none of them running. My uncle had all the larger tractors, and used a couple of the smaller ones to mow. One of the John Deere tractors had a mower belly on it, and was probably about 30 years old. It wasn’t especially collectible or worth much, but I wanted one of my grandfather’s tractors. This particular tractor he used for pulling my oldest son, his first grandson, around his yard in a wagon that he hitched to the back. My uncle agreed to give it to me and so I rented a Uhaul trailer and hauled it back to Frisco, Texas. I initially had high hopes for it. I have a rather large yard for this area and fancied mowing the yard myself with the tractor rather than pay someone to mow it. My wife reminded me that the edging of such a large yard was included in the price of mowing. I immediately noticed her good sense on the matter, and so the tractor went into the garage, but not before I drove it around the yard for about 30 minutes.
Old timers have a deliberate way of doing things, and my grandfather and uncle were no exception. I may even relay part of this wrong, but when you put the key in the ignition and started the engine, sometimes nothing would happen. That’s because the gear had a few missing teeth and so it didn’t always catch. To remedy this, all you had to do was to take a wrench that fit the nut on the bottom of the engine compartment, turn this gear slightly with the wrench, and turn the key again. Worked every time, but that necessitated a place to store the wrench that wouldn’t get in the way. So my grandfather had hung a wire from the steering column fashioned in such a way to hold the wrench so it was there when you needed it. The wrench hangs there today. Same wrench.
Another problem in using the tractor was that the gate wasn’t large enough to allow the tractor through. I was already into this tractor the cost of renting the Uhaul, and my wife didn’t see the necessity of spending a lot of money on a wider gate if I wasn’t going to be doing the mowing anyway. She was right. The tractor went into the garage for the next two years.
You can’t change where you come from, and my uncle had blackberries growing in his yard. Now, thornless blackberries are new to this world, like LED TV’s. Anyone who has lived out in the country know two things about blackberries. They will get you and you will get chiggers trying to get to the berries. You put a little sulfur in your socks, wear flannel shirts, sweat, and maybe you’ll have enough blackberries in your bucket to make a cobbler. I told my wife I wanted blackberries. She said what she always says when I say something like that, which is “Whatever. It’s your deal.” Translation: I’m not touching them or going near them. So about 5 years ago I plant blackberries. And for the next 5 years, every time I walked near the fence those blackberries got me. Snagged shirts, drew blood, and whatever other mischief they could cause they did. The rabbits that ate my flowers used them as shelter. The birds that ate the blackberries nested in them, and the birds ate the blackberries so fast that I was never able to get more than one or two of them at a time. Not enough to make a cobbler. So this year I decided they needed to go.
In the meantime, heavy winds during the spring had taken down much of my fence. On a lark, I asked the fence guy how much it would cost me to put in a larger gate while he was performing the rest of the work. About $100 he said. I could live with that, so I had a new gate put in that I could drive my tractor through. I hadn’t determined a used for it yet, but at least it was now possible to get it back there.
Cutting down a blackberry bush is no easy task. First, there were young birds nesting that I had to deal with. Essentially I let them get old enough to leave the nest, then I resumed my efforts. I got my share of scratches, but I managed to cut it down pretty well. The problem was what came next? I now had a huge pile of fresh blackberry branches on the ground in my backyard, but if you’ve ever tried putting blackberries in a trashbag, you will know it is pretty much impossible. The branches snag and prevent you from advancing them into the bag. Rosebushes are bad. Blackberries are worse. I decided perhaps I would call the company that does the mowing to see if they could take care of it. Well, I did what everyone who knows me expects that I would do. I promptly forgot. So a month later I go out into my backyard and see dried up blackberries, which are arguably worse than fresh blackberry branches because they are less flexible. I had no idea what I was going to do. Then I thought of the tractor. The tractor tires were too thick for the thorns to penetrate. Check. Riding on the tractor over the top of the blackberries would keep my legs from getting torn up. Check. I didn’t have to touch the blackberries. Check. I thought of all the things that could go wrong and could come up with nothing. I would use my grandfather’s tractor and I would mow over these blackberries and mulch the yard with them.
I put the key into the tractor and clicked. But no whirring sound, nothing. The battery was dead. $50 later I am heading back from Lowe’s with a new battery and replacing my old one. It cranks right up. I open my gate and drive my tractor through, like Caesar entering Rome with his armies for the first time. I turn on the hydraulic system, set the mower height, and spend the next 20 minutes driving over and over the blackberries until there is literally nothing left. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it was 100 degrees outside. And I thought about my grandfather the whole time. I thought probably that the last time the tractor had been driven twenty minutes it was likely him driving it. His sweat would have still been on the steering wheel mingling with mine. But I wasn’t sad about it. It was a part of the thing that holds families together and keeps traditions intact from generation to generation. I was driving his tractor, utilizing it in a way that would have made him proud. He would always tell me to “Use my head for something other than a hatrack, boy.” And so I did.
Life is a lot simpler when viewed from atop a tractor.
-Mike
Totally understand mowing with the tractor—