The Green and Yellow Tractor of a Black and White Memory

A short, short nonfiction story about a John Deere tractor and me as a child.

The Green and Yellow Tractor of a Black and White Memory

 

            Going through the jumbled stack of old black and white family photos, I came across a photo from my childhood. I distinctly recall being there in the ancient black and white world waiting for this photo to be snapped, though in most likelihood, I had seen this picture in the meantime that supplanted the memory versus actually remembering taking part in the scene. I suppose that is the purpose of keeping pictures, to keep memories fresh whether those memories are inherently true or not, but I deviate from my subject matter, that is, the green and yellow tractor and I.

            The picture reveals me at five years old driving my father’s John Deere Model B tractor, a conspicuously green and yellow tractor despite the photograph’s obvious lack of color. The day was cold, damp, and breezy. Snow covered the ground and embedded the hefty tire chains on those big chevron-lugged agricultural tires. I was bundled up against the cold with a heavy wool coat, mittens, and wool visored cap. I was seriously grim, but then again, I was and am always grim. The picture was an action shot with snow dumping out of the tractor’s front-mounted scoop. My father was never much of a photo-bug, and there are only a few pictures of me as a child, so this event must have meant something to him, that is, his son driving the chugging John Deere at age five. Most unknowing people would say a five-year old cannot possibly drive a tractor, but the old John Deere’s have hand clutches, so my feet didn’t have to reach the pedals. I drove standing up peering over the rim of the steering wheel just as the picture shows.  

            Growing up on a farm normally shouldn’t mean a lonely childhood, but then I was a withdrawn child. Father had the farm to run and mother had the house to manage. My sisters? Well, they were sisters. I was always closer to my mother, I guess because I was there in the house most of the time. For toys, I had a small fleet, in size and number, of tractor and implements, all John Deere of course. I perfected the two-cylinder chugging sound of the tractor, some tractor collectors describe as “popping” or “pounding” as the tractors worked, but they don’t truly portray the sound this model of tractor produced. I imitated the distinctive John Deere exhaust sound through pursed lips more a kind of a “plurp-plurp-plurp” sound in heavy working load, low-rpm fashion. On sore knees, I plowed and worked the vast linoleum fields to ready them for planting or raked and baled hay for hours on end.    

            Growing up, I left the farm for many years and more or less forgot about John Deere tractors and that picture. My mother died some years ago and not so long ago, my father succumbed to cancer. Over his lifetime of farming, my father was nearly deafened by that noisy tractor, but on his deathbed, he had many stories to tell anyone who would listen, like his little boy who drove his John Deere tractor. He always added with a painful smile that they would arrest him for child abuse these days if he put a child in that kind of machinery endangerment. I don’t know, I fondly remember the sound, power, and appearance of that old two-cylinder green and yellow tractor that a child could control, and the picture brings it back to me, even though the memory and that black and white picture are in dull, faded, gray shades.

Reviews

[wondering]

memories like that well told bring a smile to anyone reading it. hope you always keep that picture and tell that story often. That is how family heritage remains alive.