When the Farmer married me, this was my farm tractor…
This old Ford had been a faithful servant for many years…but it met with a very sad ending. Grab some tea and pull up a chair and I’ll share how our faithful friend met her end.
Many years ago, early one morning…really early, my room just lit up. Since I knew the roosters were not equipped with lanterns, I jumped up and looked out the window. A vehicle was parked by the mailboxes, just out of our view, with the headlights shining on the carport. I saw a person walking from our mailboxes to the carport where my tractor was parked.
I called my son and went for the “varmit” rifle. My son and I were pretty sure we recognized this person. If it hadn’t been 4 in the morning, I think I would have had the presence of mind to throw open the window and threaten to shoot them politely ask them to lay down on the ground and enjoy a rest till the sheriff could join us.
Hindsight….sigh…
This person walked around the tractor – stood close to it for a moment or two and then left before my son got downstairs and outside. We checked the tractor and carport once the sun came up but didn’t notice anything obvious. However, a few days later one of my sons was breaking ground to plant a new field when the tractor made a horrible sound, shuddered and stopped.
We called a faithful friend who came to take a look. It didn’t take him long to find out what had happened! The news that made me sad was that our tractor had “thrown a rod”. The news that made me mad was that someone had put sand or dirt into the innards of my tractor and that is what caused it to throw a rod. It made me mad because it could have severely hurt the person who was driving it when it threw the rod.
I remembered that person we saw walking around my tractor in the wee hours and I wondered….We actually had a phone call a week or so later that convinced us that our suspicions were right.
Since I have little to no (emphasis on the NO!) mechanical understanding, “throwing a rod” didn’t sound too bad to me. Oh, what a silly woman I am! I was shocked to find out how much damage had been done to the engine and how much it would cost to fix it. It wasn’t do-able in my budget and not practical for the age of this old tractor.
So, we towed her to a resting place until we were able to sell her to a salvage yard.
But then the Farmer arrived! The Farmer has a wee bit of a reputation….he occasionally gets out his white stallion and rides it around the farm… rescuing me!
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