|
Andy in Manteca
06-04-2006 17:33:31
|
I feel like a broken man. I just sold my first tractor and it was the last to go. I’m not a very emotional person but when I saw that tractor pull away from my yard this afternoon on someone else’s trailer – it crushed me. I didn’t know it would creep up on me like that but it did. Strange thing is I’ve owned so many cars and boats and lots of other toys over the years and sold them to make room for new ones or simply being bored with it like a child is with a two day old toy. But this is different. I had my eye on this little Farmall B since I saw it at a restaurant ten years ago. The Red Tractor Café. I use to visit the café for lunch, the food wasn’t that good but pondering over that little red tractor was worth the stale bread and flat soda. I moved away from the area where the restaurant was five years ago and really missed seeing that tractor. Then one day I happen to drop by to have lunch... but the restaurant had closed it’s doors. The tractor was still there though!? There was old newspaper covering up the windows but in a small corner of a side window... in very small writing was a phone number. I called it and a man answered the phone – surprised that I got a real person I said "what are your plans for the tractor?" He said that it was already sold to some rich person in Saratoga, Ca. and they were going to use it as yard decoration. "what a waste" I thought. We kept talking and he started to turn and finished the call with "let me call you back". He called back a couple of days later, it seemed like a month, and said the tractor was mine for $1800. Faded, missing lots of parts and not running, 1800 was way, way too much, but I had to have it. It sat in my back yard where I could easily see it from almost every angle of my home – I had no intension of restoring it because I am a city guy and I had never even driven a tractor let alone wrench on one. Six months later my wife and I and my 6-5’ neighbor pushed and dragged it to the garage where it sat for another six months. Most of the neighbors where just as bewildered as I was. "what does this do" and "where does that go"? After some detective work I found the guy that sold it to the restaurant and he told me the tractor was stuck and had been for decades. Stuck? I thought, "no it isn’t... it rolls just fine once you pump up the tires". Well, several books and weeks of surfing the web and visiting this web site I had a much better handle on what was what. I spared no expense on parts and tires and decals and paint. The paint job was done by a pro, that was one thing I did not want to compromise. In the end she turned out perfect. I did all the work myself with countless phone calls and long trips to small farms and paying too much for everything I bought to restore it “right”. I couldn’t wait to get home from my 9 to 5 job in the bay area to dust her off or start her up and idle to the end of the driveway and then dust some more and idle back into the garage. Soon I was daring enough to take it down the street and wave to the passersby. "boy, that’s a really nice tractor he’s riding" – "wonder what kind it was" I could just sense what the people in the cars were thinking. I entered her in parades and washed it in the front yard every other weekend and checked and recheck random nuts and bolts to make sure all was well. My wife thought I had gone off the deep end but she started to understand how special that little red tractor was to me. Since we had moved away from our families I guess the tractor sort of replaced some of my friends. My two daughters fell in love with her almost as much as I did. I brought it to their school and other local schools for kids to see it. My youngest asked me one day if she could have it IF I ever died. – that sort of blew me away!, but I said "of course you can have it". "This tractor will out live me and maybe you too" I told her. In a weird way I started to think of it as a small legacy of my efforts when I did finally pass away. See, after I restored my tractor my wife needed a hobby other than raising our two girls. As a kid she always wanted a horse – maybe as much as I wanted that little red tractor at the Red Tractor Café. Well, she got her horse and another and another and a horse trailer and dozens of other things that go with horses. And probably dozens of other things that I never knew about – kind of like the dozens of things I would get for my tractor and not tell her. All was good, life was sweet Cut to a few months ago; I lost my job after I had just bought a new house. A ranchet to accommodate the horses and my growing collections of tractors. Cut to two weeks ago. Still no new job and money is running out faster than ever. I sold two of my unrestored tractors to keep food on the table and the foreclosure papers from advancing. I swore "I’d die" before I would sell my beloved Farmall B. Well, more bills forced me to finally face reality and offer my tractor to the first 1800. Far less than the money I invested in her and far less than what that tractor means to me. As I sit here and ramble away I feel like a broken man. I have no more tractors and most of my tractor buddies don’t know yet. These tractor friends have turned out to be the nicest, most sincere group of people I’ve ever met. I will never trade my friendship with these guys for anything! That’s one thing the bill collectors will never take from me. My only hope is that my family and I get through all this with no more disasters and that I can some day soon get another tractor – maybe a free throw away or something like that. I know things could be much worse like getting injured in Iraq or getting a life threatening illness. As they say, "time will heal". I hope I didn’t bring you all down too much.Thanks for reading,
Andy
|
|
|
|
