Tractor

Our beloved Ford tractor is ailing. Over the weekend, everybody was ‘in’ and Tom took that opportunity to mow the pasture. He was not out there for very long before he came back in the house. Huh? Why are you here?

The tractor had conked out. Just like that. Our faithful tractor, dead in the pasture.

We’ve had this tractor, got it new, in 1994. We had looked high and low, far and wide, for a used tractor. This was in the dark ages, pre-internet, pre- eBay. The local want ads weren’t going to have much anyway. Tractors are sold, traded and swapped out in the country, and we didn’t live in the country. We knew no country people. We bought it new.

At that same time I got the flat-bed trailer, also new, to drag the new tractor around. We needed the tractor in West Virginia but had no where to keep it, so we hauled it back and forth, back and forth. Not long after that we built the barn there, with the tractor’s help, and kept it and the flat-bed in West Virginia. Until we BOUGHT THE FARM!

He tried to figure out what was wrong with it, eliminating this and that. Fuel filter? No. Air filter? No. Fuel Starvation? Maybe. Injector? Maybe, but don’t think so. Injector pump? Maybe. Crimp in a line? Maybe. After it runs for about 15 minutes or so it conks out again.

He finished mowing the pasture with the little riding lawn-mower. The manure spreader is full and I need to clear out the run-in shed, too. A lot of our farm duties depends on that tractor being there for us. And now it is an ornament, looking pretty.

I asked Merhle who he uses and he said the outfit up in Damascus, but he didn’t like them and didn’t have much faith in them. George Halterman uses another guy out of Dayton.

Tom calls on Monday, the place in Dayton said they would pick it up today or tomorrow. He also had trouble spelling A-n-n-a-p-o-l-i-s. Really? When he called back to add another item to the ticket, no one knew what was going on, like he’d never even called over there.

When we got home Tuesday the tractor was still in the parking lot. What day are they picking up?