Broken Down Tractors

My dad loved to tinker. He bought vintage Mustangs and brought them back to life, rebuilt numerous cars and trucks, and fixed just about every mechanical thing in our house at one time or another. He lived by the "If it moves, grease it; If it doesn't move, paint it," adage.

A Greatest Generation MacGyver, Dad really could fix just about anything with a hammer and electrician's tape. I almost wrote that he could fix practically everything with a screwdrive and tape, but Dad wasn't that subtle. A hammer was more his style. In fact, I still have an indelible image of him pounding a screw into some project using a hammer, and then commenting that the threads on a screw were put there for removal purposes only. Dad generally took the most expedicious route to solve any problem or fix any broken down thing. He never wasted effort on things like actually screwing in the screw.

Dad only owned one new car in his life because he saw no reason to shoulder the financial loss of the initial depreciation, when he could make used cars work almost like new. And if that was true for cars, it was even more so for lawn tractors. Not only did he NOT EVER buy a new lawn tractor, he loudly ridiculed anyone (including my husband) who did so.

Buying old tractors and fixing them up was one of Dad's primary post-retirement hobbies. And if the old thing broke down or threw a belt every time he tried to mow with it, so much the better - because the breakdown gave him another reason to tinker - another reason make a run to the junk yard or hardware store. (He actually bought mowing deck and tractor belts by the gross!)

The most notorious of his tractor creations was the one he cobbled together from two, or maybe three, junk-yard finds. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a photograph of that "monster" tractor, but it ended up looking similar to the one pictured above. Since the engine was from one tractor and the transmission was from another, they weren't exactly compatible, so Dad ended up having to put two gear boxes in the thing to make it run slowly enough to mow. The down side was that the improvised rigging made the tractor a bit too long for the job it was intended to do. It's wide turning radius forced Dad to mow both our yard and the neighbor's if he wanted to get the darn thing turned around and headed back in the opposite direction.

Despite the fact that the monster tractor wasn't particularly well suited for yard mowing, it did make a great vehicle for getting around the neighborhood. When our sons were little, Dad loved to pull them up in his lap for a ride down the street and around the block. The thing made so much noise that all the neighbors were sure to look out to see what was up, which gave Dad a great opportunity to show off his grandsons.

Remember that I told you that Dad made fun of my husband for spending the money to buy a new tractor? Well, here's the rest of that story. After Dad died, my husband took on the responsibility of mowing the yard for my mom, using his new Cub Cadet tractor. The first three times he went down to the house to mow, something on that new tractor broke - a belt snapped, or a mowing deck wheel came off, etc. The first two times it happened, my husband figured it was just a coincidence, normal wear and tear. But when it occurred again on the third attempt to mow, he decided had to be more than that. His thoughts were confirmed when he heard my dad's laughter ringing in his ears.