Being in a parade

The nearby town of Lexington, Missouri, stages an annual St. Patrick's Day parade on the Saturday before the actual day.  Our tractor club is always invited to take part in this event, and usually we make a decent showing.  Last Saturday, though, the weather didn't cooperate, so our group was small.  It was pretty cool, with a steady drizzle.  Cliff  wasn't anxious to head the tractor up the slick ramps onto the trailer at risk of life and limb, but he could see he'd never hear the end of it if we didn't go.

One reason I was adamant about being in the parade was that I had made arrangements with the parents of the little girl we babysit to have her with us in the parade.  Her mom planned to dress her in green, right down to her green cowboy boots (the kid has at least a dozen pairs of boots in various colors).  I wanted to show her off, and I figured if this worked out, we could occasionally take her to other local parades when she wasn't off with her parents riding horses.

So we went.  The minute we unloaded the tractor, the gentle mist turned into a steady sprinkle and, that's how it was for the duration of the parade.  Now, the parade isn't a big one, so I knew it wouldn't take long.  However, the folks running it ask that participants line up an hour before it starts.  Cora, by the way, was a perfect angel during all of this.

Looks pretty miserable, doesn't it?

Thanks to the rain suit Cliff kept from our biker days, he managed to be the warmest, driest guy in the parade.  Cora and I had a built-in umbrella over us in our carrier behind the tractor, so we didn't get too terribly damp.  I had to put her rain coat on her, though.  So much for the lacy green dress she was wearing. 

These guys marched past to line up ahead of us.  Cora enjoyed watching them and hearing the drum beat.

courtesy Lexington, Missouri, Chamber of Commerce

Courtesy of Lexington, Missouri, chamber of commerce

A friend was there and took excellent, quality pictures of us.  This one and the next were taken by him.

As you can see, Cora perfected her waving technique.

By the way, Once Cliff saw all the kids in the crowd waving and smiling at us, he decided it was worth being in a parade in the rain.  It was a good time. 

Tis the parade season

Local fairs are getting under way, so we have many opportunities to show off a tractor in front of lots of people.  Last week's fair and parade was in Norborne, and there was a huge turnout for such a small town.  As we passed by the spectators, we saw many guys giving Cliff a "thumbs-up".  At the end of the parade route, Cliff took a turn away from the rest of the parade participants in order to get back to the truck and trailer sooner.  Just as we got out of the hearing range for the folks watching the parade, from somewhere in the little 550 came a grinding, rattling noise from beneath us in the guts of that little 550 that scared us both silly, and made us think perhaps our tractor was ruined.  Our pride was totally deflated, replaced by despair.  At least there were no witnesses to the tragedy.

Cliff came home and totally tore the tractor down.  He knew it might damage his paint job in places, but he was determined to get to the bottom of things.  He found no problem in the innards of the beast and put it back together, feeling rather discouraged.  However, there was one thing that had been nagging at him since the terrible noise was first heard:  His first thought had been that the problem was in the brakes or brake housing; but the noise sounded to ugly for that he hadn't checked the brakes.  Turns out a couple of springs had dropped out of place and were rattling around in there.  He did not need to tear down the tractor, pull off the axels, and so forth, to fix it; but what's done is done.    

Tomorrow we plan to participate in the parade at Lexington.  Because this comes on the heels of last week's experience, I remembered to buy some candy to toss to the little beggers charming children watching the parade.  I remembered to buy $17 worth of candy at Walmart.

I was careful to buy candy that wouldn't melt on a hot day.  However, there are certain risks in bring M&Ms into our house, so I placed the candy, unopened, in the back seat of our truck and did not tell Cliff, who then promptly forgot about it.  

Yesterday (Thursday) the Little Princess and I were having a discussion.  I told her Cliff and I, and possible Gabe, were going to be in the parade at Lexington Saturday.  "And for once, I'm going to throw candy out for the kids!"

She said, "Donna, would you save me some of the sour ones?"

This threw me for a loop, because I had never mentioned the candy.  And as far as I knew, she hadn't had any opportunity to see it.  I was very confused!

When Cliff came in, I told him about this as the kid listened, and even he was totally flabbergasted.  Have we been babysitting a clairvoyant child all this time?

Then she said, "Remember when we went to get the mail?"

Last Monday, Cliff had a check he wanted sent as soon as possible and he'd jumped in the truck with it; Little Princess wanted to go along, so he put her in the back seat (where the candy was hidden in the floorboard).  Nothing was ever said about it until yesterday, when she asked me to save some of the sour candy for her.  I'm amazed, as much as anything, that she hadn't brought up the subject sooner, but she didn't... until I mentioned the candy myself.

I'm thinking she knew it was safe to mention it, once I let the cat out of the bag.  Of course I agreed to save her some.   





 

I was in a parade!

Tonight was the Wellington Fair parade.  I was surprised at how many of our tractor club members showed up.  I have never been able to comfortably ride with Cliff on the Oliver1855, but he got a brainstorm today.

  He turned a five-gallon bucket upside down, placed a cushion on top of it, and it was a perfectly comfortable place for me to ride.

When we arrived in town, most of the folks in our tractor club were already there ahead of time.

What a nice bunch of tractors.

Then they got us all lined up in the proper order for the parade.

In front of us was my old boss from sometime in the 1980's when I worked for him at the orchard.  He had his grandson with him.

We saw a familiar face amongst the fair volunteers, one of the twins who used to live next door.

When the parade started, people were sitting in their yards on the side streets waving, even before we got to the main street.  We waved back and smiled.  I didn't have to force a smile, it just came naturally.

When we first turned onto the main route, I saw a couple of nearby neighbors of ours.

On the square, there was a huge crowd, but I didn't take a picture.  I was busy smiling and waving at relatives, including grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  

In a way, I hate that I didn't get to watch the whole parade from the sidelines, but it was a lot of fun being part of the parade with Cliff.  And I am happy to report that nobody died on our watch.

Random, interrupted

Oh, don't worry.  You'll get your random update.  But I got up from the computer when I was about to do this entry.  Coming back from the kitchen with another cup of coffee, I saw out the east window what looked like the beginning of a lovely sunrise.

 

I try not to miss any pretty sunrises, so I went out back and sat on the deck for awhile.  I've often said that if the only way a person could see a lovely sunrise was to travel thousands of miles... if you couldn't just go outside most mornings and see it at home... people would spend fortunes to go where they could see such a sight.  I had hoped to see a lovely sunrise when we were at the Grand Canyon, but it takes clouds to make a nice sunrise.  Apparently clouds are a rarity there.

Allow me to digress one more time.  I simply have to share a photo stolen from Facebook and cropped.  Friday the little girl we babysit was in a demonstration of police support in Kansas City:  She and her mom rode her pony in the group of almost 200 horses and riders.

I went through 159 photos to find this one, but it was worth the effort once I cropped it down to the really important people.

Now I'm back to bore you with some drivel about tractors and parades.

We got up bright and early yesterday, and Cliff loaded up the tractor with the grandson's help.  I can't help him because I can't bear to watch; I've read and heard about some terrible accidents that happened while someone was loading a tractor onto a trailer.  Cliff is aware of the danger and is very cautious, but I still can't watch.  I was surprised that the grandson was even awake, but he made the mistake of posting something on Facebook, so I gave him orders in a comment to get his clothes on and come and help his grandpa.  He found it rather funny that I knew he was running around in his skivvies, but I've known the boy a long time.  He's been heavily influenced by his grandfather, who only began wearing pajama bottoms around the house when I began blogging and taking pictures of him at unexpected times.

The parade at Odessa was attended by a huge crowd, including many children who had brought sacks for the candy some of the parade participants were tossing to the crowd.  Sort of like trick or treat, but the treats come to you, so it's less work.  At first I thought perhaps I'd take some candy to the next parade we take part in, but when I saw one girl step out pointing at her treat bucket and demanding candy, I decided against it.  

I took this picture before we even got downtown.  LOTS of people!

I took this picture because of the car show behind the people... it was a huge car show.  We had another parade to attend twenty miles or more away, so we didn't get to check it out.  I do believe that one girl at the left side of the picture was posing for me.  

(I think yet another Canon point-and-shoot camera has developed moisture inside, blurring certain portions of my pictures.  But again, I digress.)

I didn't see a lot of folks I knew, so I was excited to see my daughter's insurance agent!  OK, well, he used to be the music directer where I went to church at the time, too.  I hadn't seen Rusty in years.  He's a nice, very talented fellow.  

Then we were loaded up again and heading to Dover, which is a tiny little town with a tiny little parade.  I won't bore you with the details.  Let's just say that the seven or eight tractors that were there made up most of the parade.  We did see someone we knew there, though...

David, a former next-door neighbor, chatted awhile.  He's the guy responsible for getting Cliff the job he retired from, and we are forever grateful for that.  He invited us to a fish-fry they'll be hosting, and we figure we'll probably attend unless our tractor club is having an event.  There will be music!  For those of you who remember the twins next door who practically grew up in Cliff's shop, David is their uncle.

That's all for now, folks.

Peace.

Arkansas tractor show, part 2

Click HERE for part 1.

After learning that it was better to take my time and pay attention to things going on around me, I slowed down and stopped thinking about how small the show was.  Having seen the big engine started up and running, I wandered over to see the Parade of Power with Cliff.  We talked to a couple of grandparents there with their son and two-year-old grandson.  The grandmother confided that they only had the one son, and his wife was due to have a little girl any day, so they were excited.  

The Parade of Power at a tractor show consists of the tractors filing by the audience slowly, one by one, while an announcer tells folks the year, make, and model of the tractor, as well as any interesting stories about it:  for instance, someone might be driving a tractor that was owned by his dad or grandfather, or there might be a story about how the person discovered a tractor they had been seeking for many years.    

As I said in the previous entries, there weren't a lot of tractors on display.  Well, there weren't many in the parade, either.

 The Farmall M and H were big favorites back in the 40's and 50's, so you always see some of those at the shows.

You don't often see a tractor this rusty that runs.

This lady's husband was the announcer for the parade.  He was telling the date of an upcoming auction to bring in some funds for the club and said it was in June; in this shot, she is turning her head back toward him saying, "July!  July!"  It's really hard for us ladies to keep our men straightened out.

There was going to be a tractor pull for kiddies at some point.

Over in the shaded area where we went to see about getting a burger or hot dog, we happened on this guy, caning the seat of a chair.  I truly wish I had picked up one of his cards so I could give you his name.  He and his wife were friendly, and we conversed with them awhile about times past.

He said he spends a lot of time at this craft.  While we were there, a little bird perched right above us and sang the most beautiful song.  I didn't even stop to try and identify the breed until the man at the booth in the background wandered over and asked if I knew what sort of bird it was.  When I paid attention, I recognized it as a red house finch.  Turns out the bird and his girl friend had a nest right over their display.  While we were eating our burgers, I saw the strangest-looking bird ever.  I called Cliff's attention to it, and it was new to him also.  I just now did some googling and found out it was a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.      

In another area of the grounds there were blacksmiths showing off their skills.   The wife of one of them came over and talked to us for quite a while.  I didn't get a picture of her.  I need to wake up, I'm missing a lot of good shots!

These guys were bragging about their four-leaf clovers.  The young guy on the right had a whole handful of them, and gave me one for luck.  I burst into "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover", and the blacksmith's wife joined me for a few lines.

The older fellow had several four-leafs and a five-leaf clover to show off.  I asked the two of them if they were good at finding mushrooms.  I figured anybody who can find a four-leaf clover in a sea of green can surely do well finding morel mushrooms.  

There was a tractor pull scheduled at 1 P.M., and as much as I dislike tractor pulls, I almost wanted to stay.  There were a lot of pulling tractors being hauled onto the the grounds as we were leaving.  It was obvious that in that area, tractor-pulling is a lot more popular than tractor-showing.  

We have shows to attend the next two weekends:  one at Lathrop and one at Adrian.  I hope I can remember to take my time and see them with different eyes, paying attention to the individuals and their passion for rusty iron.  These shows really aren't about the tractors, they're about people.  I'll be taking my mobility scooter, so I will have a comfortable seat from which to watch the action.

Cliff is building a Donna-carrier

Cliff and I participate together in quite a few tractor club events.  When the club goes on tractor cruises, they take the trolley along, and several wives ride on that.  The trolley is actually a re-purposed livestock trailer with windows and seats put in.

A lot of the men have some sort of carrier on their tractors, some quite fancy, to haul their wives and others behind them in a parade, since the trolley doesn't go on parade drives.  When Cliff takes his big Oliver to a parade, I can ride along right beside him on the tractor.  But there's no place for me to sit on the other tractors.  So he is building a carrier to haul me in.  He will be able to use it with any of our tractors.  This has been his project for a week or more.

I will enter on this end of the carrier, after un-fastening the chain across the entrance.  I don't know if it will be ready for the parade in Odessa this weekend.  If it isn't, I don't think Cliff will participate.  But I'm not pushing him to get it done.  He's retired.  He shouldn't have too many deadlines.  I think he will soon be ready to paint it; he's decided to paint it black, rather than Oliver green or Allis orange, so it will work with any color tractor.

This pickup box will serve as storage for a cooler and chairs and other essentials, and will also be a perch for me.  Cliff is going to somehow attach the boat seat you see sitting on top of it.  We hoped at one time to find an old school bus seat, but we couldn't come up with one.  

Anyhow, this is going to work out nicely, I think.  And now you have seen a Donna-carrier.  I hate to mention this, but it looks quite a bit like hog-carriers I've seen around.

Horse poop at the St. Patrick's Day parade

Cliff and I, along with three teenagers, arrived about a half-hour before the parade started, found a choice spot, and settled in.  In front of us were some horses ridden by members of the Jackson County Sheriff's office (I guess).  They were milling around in that area, every once in awhile pooping, as horse have a tendency to do.    

In front of me sat an older couple (my age, probably).  Every time a horse crapped, the old fellow groaned.  He and his wife had strong east coast accents; I heard them later telling someone they were originally from New Jersey.  

The more horse poop dotted the pavement, the angrier he got.  He turned around and told me, "They should be scooping that sh*t up!  My grandchildren are going to be marching there in their new shoes."  

He got up and stomped off to see why nobody was cleaning up the horses' mess, and came back even angrier:  "Nobody is going to clean that up!  They are supposed to be responsible for their own horses, and I asked them if they were going to clean it up.  They aren't!" 

From then on, he told his sad tale to every stranger walking by who would stop and listen, never failing to mention his grandchildren's new shoes.  "I'd volunteer to pick it up myself," he said, "if I had a bucket and a shovel."  

Since Cliff can't hear, I had to whisper to him what was being said.  "By rights, they should clean it up," he said.  

Hmph.  I'm sorry, I was less than sympathetic.  I walk barefoot in horse manure without thinking twice about it.  It does clean off.  Big deal.  I guess that's the difference between city attitudes and country attitudes.  

And then a gelding took a leak, and I thought the guy was going to either cry or have a heart attack.  He acted as though it were the worst possible thing that could ever happen in a lifetime.  I sat there wondering what he proposed to do about the situation, because a shovel and bucket certainly wouldn't help in the case of urine running to the curb.  

As it happened, most of the parade took place on the far side of the street where the least manure was.  Notice the horse pile in the lower right-hand corner of this picture.  However, when some of the marchers did spread out, what a surprise!  The young folks saw the horse poop and avoided it!  Little geniuses, for sure.  In the whole course of the parade, I only saw one cute little fellow step in the stuff.  The old complainer in front of me had another conniption fit at the unspeakable thing that had just happened in front of him.

Other groups of horses passed by.  All of those had their own cleanup person, or people, following them and picking up poop.  The old man turned around and demanded that we applaud those picker-uppers for their cleanup efforts.  

Sometimes I just have to thank God I was raised in rural areas.  How did these people ever manage to change a diaper?    

I wish I had counted the times he told the story about his poor little grandchildren having to march in horse manure:  I'm sure it was at least two dozen times.  My granddaughter, Natalie, will back me up on this.  I'll bet he's still complaining.  

Somebody needs to say to him, "Hey, sh*t happens."

But he gave me something to blog about.  

It rained on our parade

Yep.  It began gently raining around 4:30 today.  It's been a slow, boring day, and I was really hoping we'd be able to participate in the Wellington Fair parade, which was to start at 6:30.  Cliff had been reading, watching TV, and napping his way through the day while I was getting restless.  Our daughter always has a party during the fair, and they have a delicious meal; then suppertime drew nearer.  Cliff and the grandson were sitting around making small talk.  I told them it was probably about time to eat at Rachel's, but they didn't seem to hear me.  Finally I decided to get some action going.

"I think we should just get on the tractor.  It's barely raining at all, and who knows, it might stop by parade time.  We could go to Rachel's house and eat and see what the weather does."  Cliff obviously thought I was crazy, but once in awhile he'll give in to something just to make me let me look like a fool so he can laugh at me later.  I put Gabe in the kennel and we went to the garage where the tractor and the "Donna-carrier" were waiting to go.  Cliff dug out the rain suits we bought when we had the motorcycle.

When we arrived at Rachel's, people were eating already, so we helped ourselves too.  I had her take a picture of me in the people-carrier wearing my rain suit, but it wasn't on my phone when I got home, so something went wrong.  No biggie.  While we were eating, it began thundering pretty close to us and raining harder.  That's when we decided to return home. 

Still, the ride in the rain got me out of my funk.  Sometimes people need to do something silly, outrageous even.  I was singing and laughing all the way home in the rain!

It reminded me of when my parents and I lived in the Harlem section of Kansas City and both parents worked.  One day the rain was pouring down while I was home alone... I would have been 12 or 13... so I found an umbrella and went walking barefoot in the downpour.  There was a popular song at the time that I sang as I splashed along.  That memory is as clear to me as though it happened yesterday.



This morning Cliff and I went to the car show in town. 

Earlier this week when I went for my walk, there was one day the spider webs were everywhere, even on the ground!

This is sort of a random entry, so don't mind the subject change.

How about pictures of my favorite car in the car show?  

Leave it to me to take four pictures of my favorite car without ever getting a shot of the entire car.  The reason it's my favorite is that when Cliff and I were in our early 20's, we went car shopping.  We had a toddler, and I was pregnant with my daughter.  The salesman at the Plymouth dealer obviously didn't think we were old enough, and didn't look prosperous enough, to consider buying a new car.  He made us feel like second-class people, so we ended up going elsewhere and buying a Ford pickup instead.  But I've always remembered how badly we wanted that Road Runner.  Cliff has said many times it was probably for the best; when he was that young, he had a pretty heavy foot, and was ready to drag-race anyone at the drop of a hat.  One time we had groceries in the back seat and some guy decided to race with us right there in Independence, I think on 24 highway.  A cop noticed and turned around, so Cliff did a quick turn onto a side street and headed home.  Yep, my husband was quite the outlaw in those days.  

It's still raining.  I saw on Facebook that the parade did go on, so I almost wish we'd stayed, but as Cliff said, we'd have been riding the tractor two miles home in the dark, as well as in the rain.  

We'll try to stay alive another year and hope for no rain on fair day.

Sincerely,
Donna

Saturday tractor show

Saturday we went to the Orscheln tractor show at Richmond.  This wasn't something we did with our usual group, since the club was doing a show at Warrensburg at the Veteran's Home.  But this was closer to home, and Cliff has had the good fortune to win first place at the two local Orscheln stores three times, with a different tractor winning each time.  These shows involve a lot of sitting around in a parking lot with your tractor, and getting a free hot dog for lunch.  Now, many people park their tractors and leave, but Cliff is always afraid unsupervised children will be allowed to climb all over his tractors and do some damage.  So we take our lawn chairs and sit.  

I have a pet peeve about both of the Orschlen shows we participate:  The winning tractor wins by popular vote, which is great (Cliff has won the $100 gift card three times).  Entrants can vote, and so can the general public.  However, there is no way the public knows this because nobody tells them.  There's no sign to tell them that there is even any voting to be done.  In fact, most of the entrants didn't know there was voting to be done last Saturday!  So what usually happens is this:  the entrants vote, and if they have relatives and friends at a show, they tell them to vote.  But all the strangers who look over the tractors, admire them, and ask questions have no idea they could vote for their favorite.  I guess the folks at Orscheln think people are mind-readers.  There were at least fifty people who came and looked the tractors over, but only 23 votes were cast Saturday.  And some of those only voted because I told them they could.   

But enough of that.  We did have an enjoyable day, and it turns out there was also a fair in town and Saturday was parade day.  Three guys were going to take their tractors in the parade, so we joined them.

This dog spent the whole day with his person (the fellow on the other side of the steering wheel).  

There was a huge crowd in town to watch the parade.  Kids were there to pick up the candy thrown from various floats, and some of them seemed to have made quite a haul.

While we were sitting in the parking lot, a couple came along with three grandchildren (one brand-new baby).  The kids were so excited about the tractors they kept wanting to get on them, or even just touch them, but the adults told them not to... how nice to see somebody actually have control of their children!  The little boy was especially fascinated with the big machines, so I told the folks I didn't think it would hurt if they let the kids sit in the seat.  I made the offer without asking Cliff's approval, but I could see he was OK with it:  His main fear is some kid climbing on and falling off.  He doesn't want to be responsible for someone getting hurt.  Watching those children on the tractor made it worth any risk on our parts!

Notice the little girl climbing on my "buddy seat".  This boy was beside himself with excitement, and would probably have been content to sit there for much longer, but his grandparents were ready to move along.  

Later another little boy was all excited about the larger Farmall sitting beside ours, and Cliff took it on himself to tell the parents they could let him sit on our tractor.

He fully enjoyed it, but when he was back on the ground he asked if he could get on the bigger tractor next to us.  Cliff told him, "I'm sorry, but that isn't my tractor, so I can't tell you it's OK."

From now on I'm going to keep my eyes open for well-behaved children who obviously love tractors and give them a chance to sit on ours.  Maybe I'll casually mention to their parents to be sure and vote for their favorite tractor.  Hmmm.  I wonder which one they'll vote for?

Peace!