Back in those days changes in the economy and agriculture were turning the farming industry upside down. The family farms were disappearing and taken over by the big corporations. Little tractors like this were obsoleted overnight. Big specialized tractors, bigger than some houses and more expensive - were taking over the fields. Little tractors like these were pushed into the forgotten corners of the fields to rust, or sold to yuppies to use on their acreages and hobby farms. Pop got his little tractor, his bailer, harrows, discs and all the other junk for a pittance.
12 years later I had a kid of my own and went over for coffee… and the little MF was gone. Pop traded it off on a bigger Case… and although I tried not to feel it… and I did my best to hide it… I felt only an odd sense of betrayal and resentment of the new machine. That little old tractor was family. I tried to push my resentment down; it wasn’t my farm, wasn’t my equipment, it was none a my damn business.
But ya couldn’t hide anything from Dad. He saw it all and gave me shit! The big Case tractor had a cab! Cabin heat, AC, an actual cushy seat for long hours, power steering… the kinds of things that matter when young men start getting old, and the aches and pains start setting in. But I knew nothing of any of that and Pop wouldn’t talk of it. The men in my family never talked about such things. I told Dad that what I thought didn’t matter. “The only guy whose opinion mattered was the bum that bought it, and if I didn’t like it… I could just go stick my head down the toilet and flush a few times…”
Pop thought I was patronizing him but because we never talked we never understood each other. To Dad, tractors were just metal, nuts and bolts. To me they were heritage and connections to a pioneering past when we were better people living in tougher times. I saw the changes coming to the farm life, the fixtures and landmarks and people were going away at a phenomenal rate and they were never coming back. Pop was slowing down and couldn’t put in endless hours on the machine anymore. A bigger, faster, better appointed machine kept him in the games and was a reprieve. Nostalgia did nothing for him.
Looking back, Pop and I fought like cats n’ dogs over stupidest shit based largely on our different starting assumptions about the world. But… we walked in lockstep in the way we processed things. We may never have understood each others’ fundamental starting points, but once we knew what they were, we could both understand why the other acted the way he did and even sympathize a bit. Our metrics of dealing with our worlds were often the same. It was a fragile, tenuous connection but we both guarded it with our lives. I was astonished that it held all our lives… even when Mom and my brother were going off the rails and Pop had his hands full dealing with them.
Today I look at the soulless face of the Ag industry. Farmers that fed us were regarded with contempt and driven away, to be replaced corporations. Farmers used to put food on our tables, today corporations put processed food products on our plates. Our gifted, celebrated visionaries want us to eat bugs. From where I sit…we deserve a lot of this. Shitting on good people that fed us was what got us here.
I wonder, Dad… do you look down on me from the afterlife, and still not see the basics of the way I think?
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