Weeds Can Wait, There's Tractors Out There!

We're out there just giving it all we've got to get the garden in shape for the Red Hat group coming here on Monday.  The weeds are just frolicking around the garden, romping and cavorting. Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to capture the weeds and extricate them from the ground.  Kinda sad to break up their party, but somebody has to do it.

The weather has been hot and muggy and the sweat flows freely, causing us to take mini-breaks in the house, gulping down water and seeking relief in dreaming what our life would be like if we didn't have a garden to tend.  We spent all that fun time exploring other people's gardens earlier in the month, which is something we could do a whole lot more of if we downsized.  But the pesky downsizing is taking a lot of time, too.

Since all work and no play makes Carl and Karen dull people to blog about, I thought I'd let you in on a little secret.  We've been goofing off again.  Look where we went after dark on Tuesday night (yes on a work night....but I made sure to get Carl home before 10:30PM).  

Uh-huh, that's right, Carl and I went to the Fair on Tuesday night!  Oh, this brings back so many memories.  As a kid, we lived for the Outagamie County Fair, it was the highlight of the summer.  My friend Val and I would save up our money and beg one of our mothers for a ride to town.  Then we'd spend a joyous afternoon riding all the rides and having the time of our life.  We didn't eat at the fair, heck no, it was all about the rides. We'd start out small, like the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Scrambler and the Ferris Wheel, and then we'd work our way up to the last ride of them all, The Zipper.

No, that's not the Zipper, but it looks scary enough, doesn't it?  We saved the scariest one for last because if you rode the Zipper first, all the rest of the rides felt like the Merry-go-Round.  (I took these pictures with my cellphone, so Pardon the Blurriness if you would.)

Look at all those people dangling up there.  Years ago, that would have been me. 

NOT Carl, however!  Carl is not into rides in any way, shape or form.  He detests anything he cannot control and continually points out all the rickety looking welds and missing bolts and things he sees as safety issues. I twisted his arm into riding on the Ferris Wheel once in our 38 years together and he literally turned green.  I was seriously scared for him, he didn't look well and nearly crushed my hand as we went round and round, up and down. That was the last time he tried an amusement park ride.   He doesn't mind if I go on the rides alone, though.  He'll stay down on the ground, ready to pick up the pieces as they fall, lol.

The rides sure are pretty at night, and we had such a good time, strolling hand and hand down the midway.  We were way outnumbered by young people, but I felt just as young as any of them, it was just so much fun.  There was a tractor pull going on, too, but we were late for it and didn't feel like spending full admission to see only half of the show, so we just looked at the tractors that were lining up and listened to the roar of the souped-up engines from outside the gate.  It was ok that we didn't go, we both forgot our earplugs.  Dang those tractors are noisy.  I do love a good tractor pull though.  Maybe we'll get going earlier next year. 

For those of you not besotted with tractors, a Tractor Pull is a contest where they take a farm tractor (but nowadays they're modified to have a whole lot more horsepower, heck you couldn't work land with these crazy machines, you'd fly out of the field, lol) and they hook up to a machine called an 'Eliminator' which has a large counter-weight that moves forward as it goes down the track.  As the weight moves closer to the tractor the load increases and the tractor works harder and harder and finally grinds to a stop.  The tractor to pull the longest distance wins.  Sound thrilling?  Ok, so it's not everyone's idea of fun.  It helps if you like tractors, ok, make that love tractors.  And I do.  What follows is a video I found online of a similar tractor pull to the one on Tuesday night at another county fair:




It was better when back in my childhood some of our neighboring farmers would take their regular farm tractors to town and pull a stoneboat (basically a metal sled-like thing) across the ground and there would be men lined up to step on the boat as it was moving down the track to increase the weight the tractor had to pull.  When it was your very own neighbor's tractor you saw working so hard to pull the load, then it was really exciting.  We never took our tractors to town since my dad didn't care to try pulling with our old, littler ones.  It was just a good time to see the neighbors compete.  I'd sit next to Dad in the grandstand and we'd both hold our breath as each man solemnly stepped on to the stone boat as it came his turn.  The tractor driver would rev up his engine slowly but steadily, increasing the RPM's at a rate that wouldn't make the tires spin, but yet give him enough power to pull the rapidly increasing weight.   The tractor would be working harder and harder and the engine would go right down to almost a stall before the boat stopped.  There would be a man with a flag running backward in front of the tractor and he'd wave frantically when there was no more forward progress to tell the farmer to throttle down the engine--that's it, you're done!   Then the men would run out and take the measurements of the pull, and the announcer would relay the distance to the crowd.  Cheers or boos would ensue.  Sometimes tractors simply stalled when the going got tough, or worse, threw a rod.  It was always a guaranteed good time. 

The Farmall tractor in this video is just like the one I grew up driving......and also just like one Joel bought two years ago:
Antique Tractor Pull

 I'd give up a day of weeding in the garden to go to the event shown below---a Tractor Square Dance!  I've never been to one of these, but just watching it on YouTube was fascinating enough, the skill it takes to drive these tractors without crashing into each other is absolutely amazing!  I don't think this has ever been done around here.  Like I said, I'd give up a day of weeding to watch this:



Ok, so enough of the goofing around, we have weeds to pull.  But tomorrow is another Big Deal......the Symco Thresheree and there will be a huge tractor parade and and and............well......guess where I'm going?? 

Something tells me we may have Mad Hatters running around in a weedy garden come Monday.