Tractors – We Don’t Talk About Them Much.

Maybe it is just me, but I feel like at some point in life I will need an old tractor. I don’t want to actually “farm” anything per se.  I just want to move piles of dirt and rocks around the yard on the weekends.  Is that crazy?  

There is just something very raw about old tractors that makes you feel way more rugged than you really are.  I mean face it, you are straddling the transmission and rear differential, and driving an engine around.  It makes obnoxious cackling noises, and doesn’t care about anything around it.  It just starts, stops, and puts in work somewhere in the middle. This particular John Deere is the most basic of engines with 2 meaty cast iron cylinders, a single barrel carb that freezes itself, and a couple ancient spark plugs.  Driving it is the scariest thing that you will ever do in life. There are about 8 full turns of the steering wheel from lock to lock, and 7 of them don’t do anything.  Driving it feels something like riding an angry blindfolded rhino through a Walmart with your hands tied behind your back.  It’s basically an accident that hasn’t happened yet.  Each and every second in the captains chair makes you realize how much tougher previous generations were than us.  Nevertheless, someday I will have a big enough yard to beach one of these giant green animals on, and I’m going to have a straw hat to match.

Jeremy Nutt

Hi, I'm Jeremy.

4 thoughts to “Tractors – We Don’t Talk About Them Much.”

  1. You obviously have not tapped into the John Deere “nut” universe. (Substitute the word ‘John Deere” into any of your VW bus conversations and you will get an idea – only it will make the VW guys seem normal). My boss is a certifiable John Deere nut. At one time he owned more than eight of them. He kept them in friends barns etc. Finally, he ended up buying a farm so that he would have a place to play with them (I am not making this up). The down side was that when he moved all of his tractors to the farm, his wife found out how many he had and made him sell several of them!

  2. A) At least you got a four-legged one…try it with three!

    B) As to the previous comment; Wives never have any mechanical humor!

  3. P.S. Better stock up on brushes, bushings, caps, rotors, points and condensers…they are disappearing rapidly! Carb kits too!

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