On August 10, 1957, my father-in-law-to-be bought a tractor. For years he mowed fields, hauled firewood, pushed snow, and even used it to dig out a basement with a drag scoop. I can still see him driving down into the hole he had made, lowering the scoop and coming up the other side with another load of gravel, front wheels high in the air till I thought he would tip right over backward. He loved that old tractor. We jokingly said he kissed it goodnight every evening before going to bed, but in reality, it might not have been a joke. I don't ever remember him actually posing for a photo with his wife or kids, but we have a bunch of pictures of him with his beloved 8N.
When he died, the tractor sat forlorn in his garage till a couple years ago when Linda's mom told her to "get it out of there." I think everyone knew the tractor would one day be hers. Of his six daughters, Linda was the closest he ever came to having a son. When he would get home from work in the late afternoon, she'd be sitting on the front step, baseball glove in hand, waiting for him to throw her some hard pitches. He did, too. He was one of the physically strongest men I've ever known, and he cut her no slack when he pitched that baseball. She says it almost brought her to tears, but she never complained. She loved him and glowed in his attention.
She tells the story of the time they were cultivating the sweet corn in the field across the road. He rigged up an old horse-drawn cultivator to the drawbar, grabbed the cultivator handles, and had her do the driving. All went well for awhile. Lloyd was a short, stocky man, and Linda was a young girl enjoying the privilege of driving her dad's tractor. Coming to the end of the row, they got everything turned around, and she put it in gear for the second pass, and started off. There was just one problem. Inadvertently, she put it into fourth gear instead of first, and they were making pretty good time down the row, with her dad bounding like an antelope on those short legs of his, shouting all the way. For her part, she was singing at the top of her lungs, and combined with the chugging of the tractor, didn't hear a sound till they came to the end of the row. She turned around to see him wheezing like an old accordion. Gasping for breath, he feebly asked, "You trying to kill your old man?"
Today that tractor sits in our garage. Modern tractors are more versatile, smaller, with four-wheel drive and front loaders. It would make sense to trade it in, except for one thing. A new tractor wouldn't have any stories to tell. This one has a lifetime of them. It'll stay in the garage, except for when I fire it up to plow our driveway as I did this morning. I don't expect to do much cultivating with it. If I do, I'll ask someone other than my wife to take the wheel. My legs are longer than Lloyd's, but I'm not up to any sprints just now.
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