NORTH COUNTRY RIDER |
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Copyright 2008 World Publishing Company. All rights reserved. |
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Words of the West: Seeing an old friend at the fair
JOHN TAYLOR/North Country Rider
It wouldn’t hold up too well in a barrel racing, but this old Farmall Cub could hold its own in the harrow events.
My first ride wasn’t on a horse. It was on a tractor.
My dad’s 1948 Farmall Cub. And from the time I was about 6, I’d ride shotgun on the tow bar at the back, standing up as the earnest little engine whined and puffed its way up from the barn and around our pastures.
I’d hop off to hitch or unhitch trailers, open or close gates, shoo the dog away from the hay rake. I know, I know: These days, my dad would probably be hauled off to Guantanamo Bay for letting a kid do stuff like that without a helmet and plenty of Kevlar, but what the hell.
Somewhere in there — I was probably 7 or 8, I guess — Dad started letting me (in really limited, aggravatingly supervised doses) drive it myself.
What a feeling — no pedaling on hills like my stupid bike!
Anyway, there it was. When my mom couldn’t see us from the house, I’d get to putt along on that little Cub, helping my dad haul hay, or sometimes harrowing fields (plowing or raking remained beyond me until junior high or so).
It was something Dad and I had in common, and it made me feel like a grownup.
It must’ve made him feel like something good, too, because he spent hours tinkering with that tractor, repainting regularly in official International Harvester colors. He worked for IH, so he knew what made the Cub tick.
After he retired, he got so bored once that he took the whole thing apart, and cleaned, painted, oiled, adjusted and straightened every last little piece.
It must’ve helped: the Cub never seemed to age. Like my dad, the faithful little red tractor was always there.
You can’t repaint fathers, though. And nobody really knows what makes them tick.
So after mine wore out and my mother had sold the farm, his tools and the Cub, I had nothing but memories when it came to tractors.
But I ran into an old friend at the fair a few months back — a little red one that was almost a carbon copy of my dad’s old pride and joy.
I felt like hugging it. Asking it how it had been, what it had been up to lately.
Instead, I just snapped a picture.
Think I’ll keep it in my wallet, or set it up on the shelf with all the other old family photos.
susan lagsdin commented, on October 22, 2008 at 5:15 p.m.:
John -- I really like how you evoke those gone days that we can all warm to in some way. This was a nice heartfluttering read, with layers of something stronger.
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