tractor

They are as important to the success of any farm as water, sunshine and patience. A farming life without a tractor is a long, lonely existence and the other farmers will laugh in hushed tones when they hear your name mentioned or when you walk by them in town. It turns out that there are some large tasks that need to be addressed while you live on a piece of property and you are either doing it with a rake and shovel or you can buy a tractor. There are large objects that need moving and you can either learn to live with them where they are, hire someone that has a tractor to move them or you can buy your own tractor and handle your affairs yourself. In essence, be free of other's help and fan the flames of your ever-growing ego. No farm is really a farm without a tractor. What you have is some property with some stuff on it but when you buy a tractor and it becomes legitimate. People respect you, the government gives you money and you can wear overalls and people won't question your musical taste anymore.

For all that a tractor does to legitimize your existence in the country, for all that is does for your mental health and your spiritual health, it does very little for your physical health. You would think that the opposite would be true. If there is two tons of dirt to move, you can do it shovel full after shovel full which will take days and would wear you down to nothing, or you can buy a tractor which can move it in twenty minutes. As I soon found out, those twenty minutes are equivalent to two days of manual labor, your arms are dead, your ass and legs are ruined and your hearing is shot. Tractors weigh six billion pounds and trying to turn them without power steering requires every ounce of strength that you have and some you don't have. It takes the whole body to turn that wheel and that is barely enough to get that damn thing to move, you have to keep turning and turning and turning...

It's with great soreness that I am writing today. My arms have left me and I am not even able to lift my cup of lifeblood coffee to keep my mind going. I am torn up inside over the tractor and I am not sure what to do. I wanted a tractor for a long time, I need help with some larger projects, now it's here and I can get them done and all I wish is that it would break down and become lawn art. I must admit that I look good on that damn thing, which is one of the great follies of man, to feel in control of something large and mechanical all the while being a slave to it. But you feel you are the king of something, that you are in control. When you're on that tractor, you act like a king or the master, you act cool, calm, collected. You try to casually let one arm rest while the other is "steering" or commanding, and you are constantly trying to look down, checking things over to make sure things are running smoothly. Not that you could do anything if it wasn't, but you're checking anyway because it looks cool. You pretend that the wind is blowing through your hair and you are the very embodiment of "free" but, in reality you are roaring ahead at a cool 4 miles an hour and the only wind is coming from you. No matter, you are king and that is king wind you're blowin'.

There is a joy to moving large sections of soil at once. It harkens back to the days of your youth, when you could spend hours in a sand box playing with Tonka tractors, when the tractor was only a foot tall and it was easier to turn. It's the real deal now, and the thrill of moving soil is challenged by the fear of not being able to stop the tractor should something go wrong or control it. Not that a tractor moving at 4 miles an hour could get away from you all that easily and that you wouldn't be able to catch up to it, but it's still a fear. I have images of the tractor plowing into the side of my house and me standing by, helplessly.

I feel like a man because I can drive a tractor. My manhood being defined not because of anything else I can do, just the tractor. If you can figure out a woman, big deal... Give her ten minutes and re-apply your knowledge, see how well you fare. This tractor, I figured it out, and I am pretty sure that I will still be able to run it in ten minutes. If a woman run into my house at 4 miles an hour, I'm pretty sure that I could recover from that.

I am waiting for people to come calling asking for my help using the tractor. That's when you know you have fully arrived. When the neighbors know you have the tractor and know that you know how to use it. Of course, I will have to complain about it a lot and I need to learn what parts of the tractor are supposed to be broken all the time so I can claim that I am waiting for that particular part to come in and can't help them out right now, but I would, normally, if the part had been in. Tractors are part of the farm, not for what they can do to help you physically, but for that they represent. A great excuse for things not being done which require the use of the tractor. They justify your laidback approach to working the land and that, my friends, is a free man.