This may come as a surprise to you, but I live in the country.
I know, right?
This is a fact I used to hate growing up. My friends all lived in town, and while Hillsboro isn’t the big cities of Dayton and Cincinnati, it’s still better than being in the middle of nowhere.
As I’ve grown up, though, I’ve come to appreciate living in the country. I like the space. In certain California neighborhoods, houses are so close together that if you have Gumby arms like I do, you can touch the sides of two houses at the same time. In Ohio country, and like most anywhere else outside of city limits, there’s acreage between houses. It’s nice.
I like how it’s quiet at night. Heck, it’s quiet all day. Maybe, MAYBE 15 cars go by the house on a busy day. A BUSY DAY. I like how at night I can look up into the sky and just stare so deeply into the stars I start to get dizzy.
I like how there’s hardly any traffic. Seriously, I can drive 20 miles in 20 minutes if I’m lolly-gagging. Much less if I’m of the mind my little car is a Le Mans LMP-1. There are two exceptions to this:
School busses and tractors.
Let’s focus on tractors.
Out here, they’re as common as cars. Far more common than some cars that are daily sights in city life. Smart cars, Fiat 500’s, Saabs, Toyota Prii, Audi’s, and certainly any high dollar Porsche, Aston Martin, Maserati, Volvo, Mercedes, or Ferrari. Come to think of it, there’s only in Ferrari in the whole county that I know of, and it’s a wreck in a junkyard on US 50 east of town. Apparently it was passing though, rather recklessly, and it met one of the dreaded road-hogging Deeres.
Notice I misspelled that? But I didn’t.
I meant John Deere. You know, “take you for a ride on my big green tractor?” Yeah. The Ferrari fought the Deere… And the Ferrari lost. I couldn’t tell it was a Ferrari until I saw the back of the car. And even then the only giveaway was the Ferrari badge.
Tractors are everywhere out here. They run along the side of the road cutting grass. They haul grain, beans, corn, wheat and other implements in between the farm fields. Sometimes these fields are SEVERAL MILES APART. Get yourself caught behind a 1965 John Deere 40-something with a full gravity bin of corn when you’re late for work, and let me tell you… It’s annoying.
But we need the tractors. Out here, we can’t survive without tractors. We have a tractor, despite not really farming anything. It’s just handy to have one.
Not that far away from where I live is a small tractor dealership who restores and sells older tractors. They tear them down completely and restore them if needed, or just sell them if not. Sometimes they sell a tractor in rough shape so they can sell it cheap. If it runs good, but looks bad, oh well. A tractor isn’t going to win any beauty contests, right?
Well… Who knows when I walk up with a camera.
When I was a little kid, I loved tractors. I had more model tractors than model cars. They fascinate me. Their size, designs, colors, and the following each brand has. You have people that won’t run any tractor that isn’t a Deere, others won’t run anything other than a Case. Some won’t run anything but an Oliver, despite Oliver tractors not having been made in decades. I know some people that love Minneapolis Moline. They were bought by White in 1963!
I’m not sure what happened. I don’t know why, one day, I stopped caring about tractors. There’s one tractor I’ll see at antique shows or county fairs that will make me a bit teary eyed, and that’s the Cockshutt 30. We bought a very tired example of the breed when we first moved down here, because when you’re in the country, you buy a tractor apparently. We had it for three or four years. It was like the realization of my little 3-4 year old dream. Our very own tractor. Noisy, oily, greasy, turf-tired, always getting stuck, always leaking something tractor.
I was driving by this dealership after visiting my old school and decided to stop in and see if I could make some pictures. Here’s the best of what I got.
Fully restored International.
Down the nose.
Aging construction tractor.
A study of rust.
An old Ford basks in the sun.
International Eagle.
A Massey Ferguson 165 looks longingly at a bean field.
Can tractors daydream?
Massey Ferguson 165
When you wish upon a bean…
Missing an eye.
In black and white.
MF 165 hydraulic controls.
American Farmer.
A bug-eyed Brit.
Another Brit.
Broken temp gauge.
International 148 cab.
Steering wheel
Instrument panel.
Yeah, you can figure it out…
Panel light and throttle.
It’s a David Brow…
What a pile of junk!
Three of a kind!
Oddly, this decaying tractor has a brand new hydraulic pressure gauge…
Ditch Witch Ditch Digger.
Decay.
And that’s it. No tech data this time. I’ll tell you I used my Nikon F4, and borrowed my dad’s Nikon N70. I used Kodak Ektar, Portra 400, and Tri-X. You can probably figure out which the Tri-X shots are on.
The point is that any camera can make an image you like. I like these. I could have made them with my EM. Or my dad’s Pentax ME Super. Stop worrying about what camera you have, unless it’s really broken.
Of Life, Flying and Photography 