Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 27, 2012 - 10:58am PT
Up in Woodland is the superb Fred Heidrick Antique Tractor and Ag Collection, the Hays Antique Truck Collection see at http://www.aghistory.org/
I've been in there a few times over the years and anyone interested in old trucks or tractors driving up i-5 out of Sacramento through the town of Woodland, you can't miss it, on the right as you come into Woodland out past the Sacramento airport, just past the Walgreens warehouse. Its backed right up to the freeway, take the first woodland exit, right at the stop sign, left at the light, left into the museum parking lot.
So the reason I even bother to mention it....
I was in Ft Lee VA this week on business. As me and my colleagues drove to our destination I glanced out the window and saw the Keystone Tractor Works museum.
I shoulda MADE time. Sometimes I hit on all cylinders when traveling, and get to see some unusual things. More often its like this... ah but if I had the time, the stories I could tell!
It had row crop wheels and when my pop up and moved us to Tennessee hill country he was afraid to take it with him. He sold it to the people who bought his house from him.
In the late 90s I had a chance to visit my old boyhood home on 7 acres in rural New Jersey (sssush don't tell anyone!) and lo! The tractor lived on!
My brother was offered the chance to buy it a few years back but he declined.
Check this photo out of this old bridge over the Harpeth River in Cheatam County, Tennessee.
A massive flood took out this bridge a few years ago... I loved it and always went this way, for its lovely old school single lane wooden planked deck and iron works (oh how I LOVE bridges!!!) when coming home from Ashland City climbing.
My buddy snapped this shot one day as he drove home, the way was blocked, lol
Hah! I bet that scared the sh#t out of the driver!
Proof that row crop tractors ARE dangerous in Tennessee haha. Though I bet Pop never figured on this one lol.
The Western Development Museum in Saskatoon has lots of plows and tractors and such, going back more than a century. Well worth a visit. http://www.wdm.ca/stoon.html
Standard Friday night date in farm country: Allis Chalmers and John Deere.
Growing up in the rural south, I think we all got to drive a tractor at an early age as one of our first driving experiences.
Mine was on one of these (think I'd driven the neighbor's 68 Chevy pickup on the deer lease when he had to open the gate or something once before getting on one of these): 40's era Ford
First driving experience above the lawn mower was the late 40's John Deer A. I was amazed that it was still running, the thing was tough, and as my young mind did the math I realized the JD and my dad were about the same age.
Neighbor had an old international and before we could play we had the farm work to complete. Rarely drove that one but caught a gazillion bail of hay off the backside.
Hey it's the weekend, let's get out there and enjoy.
Dingus, we had a bridge that looked almost exactly like that..through truss, wooden deck, about 100' span, 12' wide, 18' up to the top of the tress, 'cept the railing was 2" angle iron or similar, instead of round stock. On Conley Ditch road, over Jackson Lake, built in 1909, and my @#$%^&* schoolbus used to cross the thing! Sketchy. They finally replaced it in 2000 with a new concrete monstrosity.
It was about a mile and half from my folk's house where I grew up. Dirt road lead to it, where my bro taught me how to drive a stick (paved that when they replaced the bridge) , decent bluegill and crappie fishing under the bridge. Every now and then some drunk redneck would jump off the top and about break their legs since it was only about 6' deep in late summer.
Old saying is true, you really can't ever go home again...it's all gone...the people, the places, all the unique things.
Elcap thanks for posting. Dickson county and surrounding Cumberland Rim country had dozens of those bridges. We dove off of them all it seemed, even into four foot deep water.
Those Ford tractors were and are ubiquitous in the hill country of Tennessee - just some a sense, the most popular small farm tractor in those hills. Wide stance (lol) much harder to tip over... amazingly I watched my friend lose control of one while baling in the downhill direction on one of my Pop's steep hillsides. (shouldnta baled going down!, he almost had to bail!)
The tractor started sliding, the baler jack knifed and locked his back wheel and he slide like 50 feet, rode that sucker like a bull, one hand up the other on the steering wheel. He shoulda jumped but didn't, claimed he was 'ready.'
At the bottom of the hill, he turned that sucker around and started back up the row, finishing the job and learning his lesson about baling in hill country.
They were burly for sure. My neighbor got that one sunk into a bog trying to cross the little creek in the woods below his corn field where he'd cleared a little patch for some melons. Luckily my stepdad had a friend's front end loader, like a much smaller version of a D-9, sitting in our yard at the time (something about hiding it from the repo man!). We loved having it around, used it to skid out a ton of red and white oak from the woods behind the house to cut up at our leisure. So pops fired up the loader and went down there to pull him out. Big spectacle for us, way better than watching another block of Bill Dance and Orlando Wilson. I think payback was a loan of his bass boat for a weekend (both were church-going men, never seen either of them take a drink).
I don't miss much about the south, but there are definitely things we got out there that you'd never get growing up in the 'burbs.
Let us know!