Tractor Pull

My husband grew up on a peanut and cattle farm in south Alabama. His dad quit the cattle years ago, long before I joined the family, and converted several of those pastures to pines. Y’all! It turns out that all those pine needles used in southern landscaping are harvested! The peanut fields were transitioned to hay and their maintenance is leased out to a local hay farmer, much like the pine needles’ harvesting is also leased. 

One of my favorite activities is for my husband to take me on moonlight drives through the pines. It’s magical in an, “I grew up reading books by flashlight under my covers” kind of way. We spend a lot of time down on the farm, primarily as its caretakers now that my in-laws are no longer there. 

My husband regularly powers up his dad’s old Deutz green tractor and mows the pastures, which grow at Jack-and-the-Beanstalk shocking speed between our visits. This past weekend he used some questionable diesel to fill the tank before driving out to the back forty. As the story goes, he got about three lanes mowed before the Duetz died out and wouldn’t go any further. 

My husband called me to drive down and pick him up so he could gather all the supplies he needed (nylon webbing, logging chain, plus me) and head back to the tractor. We were going to pull that tractor back to the barn! A heavy-duty chain stretched between and attached to the nylon webbing fixed to our two vehicles’ back and front, respectively, and my husband gave me the signal from his tractor-perch to pull slowly forward to eliminate the slack and create the right tension for our pull.

I’ve never felt so excited or aware of my surroundings as I did Sunday afternoon driving a steady seven miles an hour hauling a tractor and my husband behind me! That red dirt road stretched out in front of me like I was driving straight into Oz itself to present this green beast to the Wizard. Sitting proud and tall and heart pounding with eagerness, I split my eyes between the side mirror, the speedometer, and the approaching sharp left turn into the driveway. 

We didn’t make it. The attempted left turn proved too much and the webbing snapped on the front end of the tractor, dropping the chain onto the dirt with me dragging it alone through the driveway.  My husband surveyed the situation. Obviously, the tractor couldn’t stay in the middle of the road. He tried starting it again; maybe he could get the engine to turn over and hold long enough to get it up the incline and back down to the barn. We were so close. 

It worked! With some coaxing, the engine started up and held for him to pull up into the driveway and get just below the house, but not quite to the barn, before that old Deutz said it was done, again. We now had about 80 feet between the nose of that tractor and its waiting spot in the barn. Obviously, leaving the tractor out on the lawn was not an option.

We put on our gloves and each got behind one of those five and a half foot tall wheels and started pushing. If tractor pushing was synchronized swimming, my husband and I would have podiumed for sure. It was beautiful (and very sweaty) creating the combined momentum needed to cover the remaining distance and land that tractor right back where it had started. 

Was it the old diesel? Maybe. The tractor mechanic makes house calls and he’ll call us when he gets out and down that red dirt road to figure it out. He’ll get the Deutz up and running again, not for the first or the last time. And I will happily mark off pull a tractor and push a tractor as bonus spaces on my November Bingo card, as I hum the song, “We’re Off to See the Wizard.”