Tractors

[cosmolinguist]

"They had this FFA Olympics thing today," Mom told us at dinner.

FFA is the Future Farmers of America, an institution that I remember from my own days in school as a group of boys with bad skin and matching navy blue jackets who argued about the relative merits of Polaris and Arctic Cat snowmobiles.

My dad was in FFA, too, in his day; now hanging in "the shop" (the small building where we keep tools and old stuff and a wheelbarrow, etc.) is an old sign with his name on it, proclaiming him to be a Future Farmer of America. And that's even true!

Before I could wonder just what exactly an FFA Olympics might entail, she started telling us about it. The kids competed by grade, and the staff had a team. The events included hammering nails and drilling in screws in a sort of tag-team race, seeing who could carry bales of straw from one side of the gym to the other the fastest, and a amilk-chugging contest. (The milk-drinking thing I remember as a lunchtime centerpiece of FFA Week when I was in high school, with kids crowding around to see if anyone threw up.)

But what truly convinced me I'm from a rural area wasn't the fact that bales of straw are easily attainable at my high school, but something Mom told us about the tractor pull. I've seen a real tractor pull or two; they're like a tug-of-war on a big (and loud) scale, but this was the pedal-tractor version, something I've seen little kids do at the fair.

"Anyway," Mom said, "a pedal broke on one of the tractors. And this was a big deal because one of the tractors was a John Deere and one was an International ..."

She didn't have to say any more. I was already laughing. I could imagine the feud that assuredly broke out. Those little tractors may have just been hunks of red or green plastic and metal, but of course it would do no good to point that out to the combatants in this age-old debate.

But then, the pedal tractor my brother and I had was an International. And in our machinery shed, you won't find one speck of green. Coincidence? I think not.

Comments

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

Of course its not coincidence...everyone just *knows* that International is better.

"Nothing rusts like a Deere"

FFA is not that big here. But 4H sits at the right hand of God :-)

[cosmolinguist]

everyone just *knows* that International is better.

It's nice to know you agree with me (well, okay, with my dad I guess) on that. :-)

I so wanted to be in 4H when I was in grade school. My kindergarten-to-third-grade best friend was, and she showed me the things she baked and sewed and the stuff she did to her family's horse to get it ready, and I was just in awe. My mom always refused, of course; I think she just thought it'd be more hassle for her, to drag me around and help me make brownies and stuff. I was so disappointed.

I think my dad was in 4H when he was a kid, too; his family had all kinds of animals to show.

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

Put it this way. 4H is so big around here that 4H stories have been known to bump stories about the President off the front page. Indiana even has a 4H license plate.

[mllesarah.livejournal.com]

AHH! 4-H license plates? That's amazing! I want one! (Is it obvious that I am a former 4-H member?)

[cosmolinguist]

I thought of you when he started talking about 4H, as you are easily the most enthusiastic of the people I know, concerning that matter. :-)

[cosmolinguist]

Massey Ferguson! I hadn't thought of that in a long time. I used to go to farm shows with my dad when I was little (I loved them), and he'd talk about all the different kinds of tractors. I always confused Massey Ferguson and Minneapolis-Moline. Probably just because they both start with M and I don't remember hearing much about them outside of the tractor shows.

John Deere, eh? You'd think they should be International Harvester, which would then actually be y'know, international. I guess I never thought, though, about what kind of tractors they use in the UK, so I'm glad to be told this bit of information. :-) Do you live in the country? I didn't know there was a field behind your house. Of course, I don't know all that much about you anyway, and am shamefully bad at paying attention to things that I am told. So if you talk about fields and tractors every other day or something and I am just noticing now, I'm sorry.

[cosmolinguist]

We have a Ford tractor, too. A pretty old one (I think they're all about as old as me, our tractors, but that one looks old), but I ilked it a lot when I was little, and bothered to have opinions about our tractors, because it has character ... though I didn't think of it like that then, I just thought I liked it.

I remembered seeing one quite like it at the Minnesota State Fair once (Machinery Hill is always the first place Dad wants to go when we get there) and being dismayed because it was red. Ours is blue. Then Dad told me that they were all red and someone must have painted ours blue later. I thought that was silly. It looked better blue than red. :-)

[mllesarah.livejournal.com]

I watched Napoleon Dynamite here with some friends from the UK, and I had to explain what FFA was. They did not seem impressed. I also told them about the glories of 4-H, and still, they did not seem suitably impressed...

FFA Olympics! That's pretty cool.

[cosmolinguist]

Heh. They don't know good things when they see them, obviously. And if your glorious tales of 4H didn't impress them, probably nothing will; I remember your massive and contagious excitement about 4H, especially around state fair time.