Logic Left the Township
“You good?”
His hand is already on the doorknob. I must’ve nodded or something, cause then I look, and he’s halfway down the steps and about to make the dangerous leap from the step to the ground.
Slip or screw up, and you’re getting served under a maple syrup bath at the church pancake feed.
I’m four years old.
My feet don’t touch the floor.
And the tractor is moving.
Kenny’s 8640 wasn’t even our tractor. Big green elephant, just sitting at the opposite end of Mickelson’s field, like it was waiting at a watering hole. Half a mile from the approach, nowhere near any crossings.
I still don’t know why it was out there.
“Gonna have you drive it back to the south end by the granary,” Dad told me, as if it were something as simple as picking up my stuffed Bert and Ernie off the floor. He never wanted me bringing those guys into the Deere store for parts.
Must’ve embarrassed him.
The job wasn’t that difficult. Tractor wasn’t hooked to anything. And why were there forks on the floor of this thing? The faint caking of an old hotdish. Slightly bent like they’d been stepped on.
The day was grey, one of those soggy springs. Mid-morning but still only half night and half light. The kind of day that makes you wanna stay in bed all week.
My stomach dropped through the bench seat of Kenny's poop-brown 80-something F150. Old grey seat cover with red and brown stripes, like a wool blanket.
Dad climbed out and fired up the green elephant. It puffed out its signature cloud of unburned diesel smoke. Still one of the best smells in the world.
He climbed back down and got in next to me as the 8640 idled.
Always gotta let a diesel engine warm up, Dad told me a million times. Gotta cool ‘em down before killing the engine, too. It’s the only way to make them last.
My 4-year-old brain understood the logic. Drive it to the south end. It’s not even hooked up to anything.
But I’m 4. Dad was operating tractors and grain trucks when he was that age, tag-teaming with his older sister because he couldn’t reach the pedals.
He steered. She ran the clutch and foot-feet.
Standard behavior for a Kuznia kid in the 60’s.
So I guess that automatically means any old yo-yo can do it.
We climb up into the cab, me first with pops behind me in case I slip. The metal handrail is cold. Damp. I’m procrastinating now while my heart thumps against my chest wall.
The crescent-shaped quarter-moon door is still open from when Dad started the elephant. Narrow. Not for a small child like me, but for larger guys like dad. It takes a sort of circus contortion to round yourself through in a spin move and a plop in the seat.
“I’ll get er going for you.” Dad lets the clutch out, and we’re rolling.
B Range, slow and steady. 4, maybe 5 mph.
I’m sitting up as straight as I can to see over the steering wheel and around the smoke stack and air cleaner sticking up vertically from the hood, directly blocking the driver’s line of sight. Why it took Deere so long to move them to the side of the cab, I’ll never know.
“You good?”
And then he’s gone. Makes the jump, sticks the landing, uses the momentum to keep running back to the Ford while I make my way south toward the granary.
Dad whips the Ford around, and I think maybe he’s gonna drive beside me. See how I’m doing. Wrong. Guy blisters past me with the Wrangler Radials, flinging mudball roosters, dust, and straw. Blows right past and onto the end and just sits there, still facing south, not even looking back to see how it’s going for his boy.
He’s far more confident in his son than his son is in himself.
For the first quarter-mile, things went well. But when that Ford blew by me and began shrinking into the distance, my confidence trailed directly behind.
And then it hits me.
How the heck do I stop this thing?
Straight panic.
I’d watched the old man do this at least a thousand times. Clutch to start and stop. Quad Range shifter to neutral. Cool er down. Turn off the key. And then, the final step, which had become MY JOB. The knob. The orange-reddish one with the no-smoking slash that you had to pull out to kill the fuel flow to the engine. The only way to shut off those old Deeres. I’d get pissed if Dad was in a hurry and forgot to let me do it.
So I knew what to do, logically speaking. But as soon as that brown Ford was just a small dot in the distance, logic left the township.
I did what any preschooler would do. I cried. Hard. Opened the quarter-moon door, stuck my head out, and started screaming. Top of my lungs.
It didn’t dawn on me that I could just drive in circles until he saw me. Didn’t realize I could pull that knob to kill the engine. Stand on the clutch and put it in neutral? Forget about it.
The thing to do here was panic.
And if there’s anything I did right that day, it was the freakout. Perfected it. All this time, I’m in crisis while dad still sits at the south end. Not even sure he was watching, cause it felt like I screamed for a dozen years while the brown Ford still faced the opposite direction.
How will he hear me? A couple hundred Deere horsepower isn’t exactly quiet.
500 feet from the end now. Pleading with God and the grey air that the man look back.
400 feet. Still screaming. Face hot. Cherry red.
300 feet. He emerges from the pickup. Stretches. Maybe pulls a wedgie.
200 feet. Finally. Eye contact. He sees something’s wrong. Takes off running toward me.
And if it’s dangerous enough leaping out of a moving articulating 4WD tractor, getting back in is an entirely different animal. Instead of the wide landing platform of the earth, you’ve got a 6x10 inch grated steel step.
Nail the landing, or it’s pancakes for you. The guy didn’t even think about it. If he had, I’d have squashed him. And then what? Circles till the fuel ran out? Who knows.
Dad sticks the landing. Climbs in. Does the spin move plop in the seat and put me in his lap to calm me down. Pulls the tractor next to the Ford and the old granary with rats as big as cats and shuts er down.
He didn’t ask me to pull the cigarette knob.
Just kills the engine and says, “Adam... why didn’t you just push the clutch in? Or kill the motor?”
Calm as can be.
Like we’d just been learning how to ride a bike in the backyard.
I don’t know, Dad. I’m 41 now, and still trying to figure it out.
My Daddy would put the two of us, my sister and me, on the Massey Ferguson tractor, put the gear in low, tell us to drive in a circle, put the bush hog down and jump off. He’d go to the chicken houses and check on the flock, walking through the house, making sure the water troughs weren’t clogged with shavings and pick up the dead ones. When he was finished, he’d trot out into the field, leap up onto the running board and pull the choke. We’d climb off the tractor, get into the back of the truck and head off to our next adventure, sitting on the tailgate, dragging a stick behind us on the dirt road.
I felt every bit of your panic here! Give me a horse, I was fine. Give me a piece of machinery, I was terrified and clearly in danger. Where is the logic in that??