This was supposed to be a really good deal. Smart too.
We had bought a 15-acre farm south of Austin in 1974 and now, 10 years later, our (new to us) 1940s Farmall B tractor was the perfect choice for our small operation.
Living on an educator’s salary and applying my knowledge as a high school economics teacher, I was proud of myself for taking extra-close care of my tractor. I even built a small shed to keep it protected and dry.
I remember that no matter what happened or what the problem was, I always found a way to keep that Farmall in good running condition.
Over the years, I have seen a number of tractors—and pictures of tractors—silently keeping vigil in their temporary-turned-final resting places.
An old Ford tractor, for years on end, sits under the canopy of a large live oak tree, proudly displaying a “for sale” sign. Then there’s the tractor sitting near the corner of a fence row with an assortment of brush and vines winding their way through it. I had often wondered: How could a person abandon their machine and leave it out there all by itself?
I would never do that—would I?
Then I started having battery and generator issues and struggled to get the parts I needed to fix my Farmall. The longer that tractor sat outside in the very same spot, the less I thought about hauling it back to the shed, so I could at least get it out of the weather.
Suddenly I had become that farmer who let his machine down.
It’s not just the weather you have to watch out for either. A friend told me about his family trying to raise cattle in Arkansas in the 1950s, and when that didn’t work, they moved back to Texas and settled in Taylor County. They brought back all their farm equipment, including a Minneapolis-Moline tractor, which they parked between the house and the county road.
He said that, over the years, people would sneak onto his property and help themselves to various tractor parts. It made him really mad because, he said, all they had to do was ask.
Farm tractors are nearly indestructible—if you take care of them. For what I bought it for, my Farmall B gladly did everything I asked it to do. My responsibility was to take good care of it and keep it running.
I didn’t hold up my side of the deal, and my Farmall fell victim to the mystic landscape of abandoned tractors, forever stuck in the mud a few feet from my tractor shed.
