Mail Call: September/October 2011

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Brenda Brinkley's dad and his trusty International. courtesy Brenda Brinkley

GRIT's reader mail printed in the September/October 2011 issue!

Pulling for Daddy

I was 12 years old the first time my dad “pulled” with a tractor. In those days, there were no hot-rod tractors or mechanical sleds. Farmers took their dusty tractors from the field to the county fair to see whose was best and to earn bragging rights among their peers.

Dad would pull out of the hayfield, unhook the baler, and away we’d go.

Today’s shiny pulling tractors never hook to anything but a mechanical sled. They might even rattle, bang and fall apart if anyone had the audacity to hook them to a piece of farm machinery.

Dad quit pulling for several years. He had work to do, children to raise — besides, tractor pulling is not an inexpensive hobby.

A few years ago, he went to a farm auction and came home with the most pitiful tractor. The cloth seat was threadbare. The engine wouldn’t run. He smiled and claimed, “I’ve got a pulling tractor.”

Most folks thought all he was pulling was their leg. But I had confidence.

He soon had the 560 International tractor up and running, and it was time to take it to a pull and see what it would do. The first few outings were dismal, but I wasn’t discouraged. I told my husband, “It won’t be long. I know Dad, and he won’t settle until he wins.”

While the skeptics saw a hunk of junk and smelled defeat, I saw Dad’s determination and could taste victory in the very near future. How does victory taste? Like a plump, red tomato plucked from the vine. Like a juicy slice of watermelon on Grandpa’s back-porch steps. Like a bowl of homemade ice cream on a 100-degree day. Once you’ve tasted victory, nothing less will do, and Dad won many times when I was a teenager. I knew he would do it again.

He never painted the rusty “piece of junk,” and he refused to put a different seat on that old tractor. It always makes me smile when he backs up to the sled, hooks on, and I hear somebody comment about “that old tractor.” They are about to get a surprise, but I’m too busy watching my 73-year-old dad to tell them.

When the green flag waves, that tractor roars to life, and so does Dad. Black smoke rolls, and I watch 20 years melt away as he drives “Lonesome George” into first place. I wipe tears from my eyes, and it’s not from the smoke. Watching Daddy pull is one of my favorite things.