See Sam Drive: Tractor Edition
Sam and I re-homed the tractor today, one of many steps away from the farm and toward life in town.
He drove the tractor as I followed him in the pickup, loaded up with nearly all the tractor accoutrements Mark had acquired over the years, down Frenchtown Road for the last time.
Mark taught Sam to drive the tractor when he was a teen. He wanted Sam to learn to drive a car and figured this was a good way to see how he’d manage. Better to mow down a few trees or nick a fence or two in the relative safety of your Texas-sized front yard in that journey of self-discovery.
Sam, Master of the Tractor/Photo by Mark Wolfe
Mark was right. Sam could do it. When he pulled the tractor up under the carport this afternoon and parked it perfectly, Susan exclaimed, “Wow, Sam, you’re a professional!”
Sam wasn’t going to tolerate any tears from me, so I blinked them back behind my sunglasses.
“I made it!” he beamed.
I cried. I’ve always wanted a tractor. At least it’s still in the family, kind of.
Oh, I cried in the truck. It didn’t help one bit that “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” was playing on the radio on the way over.
But I do take a lot of comfort in the fact that it’s still in the family.
I don’t think I told Susan and Matt that Mark got that tractor for free from the late Nub Nabors. It was just sitting idle and rusting outside his vet clinic there at FM1830 and US377. Mark and old Preacher George resuscitated it when we were still living at “the chicken house,” the little house we rented at 117 Frenchtown while we cobbled together the money to build the farm.
For a time, before Preacher George cleaned that little house up so we could live in it, chickens had the run of the place. That first spring, one hen stood at the back porch and insisted on being let inside. I acquiesced, and she came in an laid an egg in the laundry room. The next day, she came back and I was happy to let her in again.
Damn, we’ve had a good life.