Reporter shares observations from 'Adventure'
By Jo Ann Hustis
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jhustis@morrisdailyherald.com
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| Jim Phelps of Monmouth readies Monday morning to begin the initial trek of the Heritage Tractor Adventure with his 15-year-old black Labrador, Worf, riding in back on a specially built elevated platform. (Herald Photo by Jo Ann Hustis) |
Rolling along with the Heritage Tractor Adventure is a real ride in history, with 200-plus pieces of Old Iron chugging beside you, behind you, and before you.
I left my nice, warm, dry, comfortable car at the Grundy County Fairgrounds early Monday to jump aboard an open golf cart and ride in the wind and rain with the vintage tractors in the 2009 HTA.
Bill Decker of South Carolina drove. He is a talkative, happy-go-lucky, retired school teacher who lived at one time in Marseilles and Ottawa, and farmed in the Earlville area.
Why me in a golf cart when my husband has three farm tractors at home in the crib, one of which he’s driving in the cavalcade? Well, you can’t hold a big camera and focus and shoot pictures with one hand while operating a tape recorder and driving a vintage tractor with the other. There’s no power steering on these babies.
The tractors on these rides range from 25 to 75-plus years in age, as do their drivers. A farm girl myself, with a long memory of riding and driving the many old tractors my father farmed with, I enjoy hearing the drivers spin their stories.
History aside, though, you know you’ve seen it all when you spot the vintage big green John Deere tractor driven by Jim Phelps of Monmouth, with his 15-year-old black Labrador, Worf, riding in back on a specially built elevated platform.
Just before we rolled out of the Grundy County Fairgrounds toward Marseilles, Phelps boosted Worf onto the carpeted – green, of course, like the tractor – platform, snapped down the water bowl, dumped the rainwater off the overhead canvass sheltering the dog from the sun and rain, and hoisted the platform off the ground to the height of the driver’s seat.
“He’s just always liked to ride in every vehicle there is, and I figured he’d like this, too,” Phelps said of the HTA event. “He enjoys going along.”
With Chicago farm radio personality Max Armstrong leading, the cavalcade rolled west on – I believe – Nelson Road. Raindrops followed us out of the fairgrounds, and stayed with us, off and on, most of the way into Marseilles.
As do the other 12 to 15 assistants on the run, Bill volunteers his time to the Heritage Corridor Convention & Visitors Bureau of Joliet to help keep the tractors running on the roadways. We stopped a couple times to help drivers either fold or unfold their umbrellas in the wind and rain.
“That’s what we’re here for,” said Bill as he clambered back onto the golf cart, dripping raindrops onto everything within 20 yards of us.
We rolled south on County Line (La Salle) Road between Grundy and La Salle counties, then headed west on a numbered road. La Salle County tags its roads with numbers instead of names.
People sat on their porches and stood along the roadsides to wave and cheer the cavalcade. We went by the Maierhofer farms. Rudy smiled and nodded as we passed by.
Just as we made the long descent into the river valley at Marseilles, Phelps pulled off to the side of the road. Worf wasn’t feeling well, and his master gave him a a rest stop.
Spectators sat on the walls at the Marseilles Lions Club, shooting pictures of the tractors as they pulled into the parking lot. “This is rolling history,” an enthused spectator told me.
Brothers Jim “Bird” and Mike Combs deep fried 300 chicken quarters and roasted 100 pounds of beef for the noon lunch. Mike planned one-fourth chicken per person, filled two full dish tubs with fruit salad, two more tubs with potato salad, and a big tub with coleslaw, all homemade, of course, then baked five sheet cakes to fill the hungry crowd.
“They called me at 7 this morning and gave me another 80 people to cook for, but I enjoyed it,” Mike said.
He started the meal at 11 a.m. Sunday, clocked out about 2 a.m. Monday morning, then returned five hours later to assist his helpers in finishing up.
“They looked like they enjoyed it, and hopefully we’ll get them back again next year,” Mike said of the crowd. “ Bill Kuiper put his name on the line for quality, and I think it showed. I compliment all the Lions Club members and people in the community for coming out and supporting us.”
Rain clouds moved in as the drivers rolled out on the Canal Road for Ottawa and the next stop at Buffalo Rock State Park. On the straight stretch, Bill called attention to how the tractors moved like an accordion, as he put it.
The line stretched out with plenty of space between each vehicle, then tightened up as the tractors moved in on each other. A natural phenomenon that occurs in all lines of moving vehicles, he said.
We chugged up the steep bluff to Buffalo Rock behind some pretty big tractors, their wheels towering over us.
“It’s really hard for these tractors to go up the hill real slow because they’ve been running in road gear,” he said. “And now we’re dropping back from an 18 miles-per-hour gear to about 5 1/2 MPH gear. When you stop these tractors, it’s hard to hold them on the hill. When you slip the clutch, it’s hard to get them going up the hill again.”
Bill slipped bottled water to the drivers as they passed by us to park. I jumped in to help.
“When you’re handing out the water, keep your feet away from those big tractor tires,” he warned me. “Get your feet too close, and they’ll suck you right in.”
HCCVB Executive Director Rob Navarro gave out slightly warm and sticky chocolate candy bars to the drivers as they climbed off the tractor seats for a break. “I don’t see how you’re keeping this off your face,” a driver told me while wiping melted chocolate off his cheeks and chin.
Julian Houston of Morris watched us. “Give it to me,” said Julian, who is black. “It won’t show on my face.” The crowd roared with laughter.
The siren sounded, everyone jumped back on their tractors, descended the steep slope at Buffalo Rock, and rolled into Utica an hour later for the overnight stay.
The tractors will have logged about 90 miles at about noon today, when the 2009 HTA concludes in Channahon. I only rode about 40 of them, but I loved the experience. So out-of-the-ordinary.
“We admire the tractors and we admire what somebody has done to restore them, and we appreciate the heritage in them,” Max Armstrong told me.
“But more than anything, I think we enjoy the people who enjoy the old tractors. They are the nicest people in the world. I don’t care where they are, what they’re doing, or what their lot in life is, when you run into people who appreciate the old farm tractors, they are just the salt of the earth.”
