Along about Saturday, I saw a tractor for sale at the shut down car dealership. The tractor pictured here is not the actual tractor locally displayed, but one similar to it. The car dealership was in business for 40 or 60 years in this town, but the makers of cars are like the vendors of petroleum products, they think just of themselves, not of those who work hard to get them where they are. And where are they? In charge of Washington, they snap their fingers and Washington does whatever they want.
The tractor is a Ford 601 Workmaster. Whoever did some work lately on this tractor decided to take gray spray paint and paint right over the gauges in front of the steering wheel. Meeting this tractor is sort of like meeting a telephone operator in an ankle length dress in 1914, who moonlights as a waitress in a small cafe on a major highway, about a third of a mile from an old farm. Of course, a telephone operator from a century ago who might meet me mght also think it is similar to meeting a steam-powered tractor that has seen its better days and has been discarded along with other obsolete farm implements in the back of a dilapidated old barn on an abandoned farm overgreen with weeds, about a third of a mile from a small cafe that serves really good breakfast.
I looked up the Ford 601 Workmaster Tractor online. They were made between 1953 and 1964. At that time, the population of the United States (in 1960) was 180 million. Farmers drove these Ford 601 Workmaster Tractors and raised crops. God allowed it to rain. The crops grew. Madeline O'Hare fought against God's blessings. The Treasury showed their duplicity by printing "In God We Trust" on coins and paper bills, and then ruled against prayer in the schools, siding with Madeline O'Hare. Housewives, who had not yet invaded the workplace, cooked the crops that were harvested from the green verdant fields, and the whole family sat down at the kitchen table, or the dining room table if you had an upstairs, at 5:00 p.m., to devour these delectable crops. These crops consisted of beans, peas, okra, eggplants, corn, squash, peanuts, collard greens and turnip greens, and occasionally tomatoes and watermelons. The little children who ate these crops, with cornbread, grew up and got married and had children. As a result, after 52 years, the population of the United States increased from 180 million to 309 million. These darned Ford 601 Workmaster Tractors have caused nothing but trouble. I see that the only proper decision is to not get this Ford 601 Workmaster Tractor. It has a shady past.
I know I have to get my priorities straight. Despite its checkered past, I want to become the new owner of this Ford 601 Workmaster Tractor, because they do not make them anymore, and I am scared they will run out of them. I would treat it good, and re-do the instrument panel. I know there is no sense in getting a shiny red vintage tractor unless I already have a 500 acre farm. But sometimes, in the quiet of an insomniac night, I think to myself, which came first, the 500 acre farm, or the farmerette?
(c) 2012 by Hooknose McGee
