[AT] Vintage tractor pulling advice

[Bob Seith]

"Paved" was a flexible term when I was growing up. Most of the roads in 
Perry, Ohio, (with the exception of U.S. 20, which bisects the village) 
were tar-and-gravel affairs that got re-coated every summer by the 
county. The thickness built up to several inches over the years, but 
there was no base beneath it. The same cracks re-appeared in the same 
places regularly. Through my high school years (grad of 1970) all were 
marked "Tractors with lugs prohibited."

We got "real" paving (concrete) when I was in college. Digging up the 
old road proved to be quite an operation. Because the road in front of 
our farm was the main truck route to a construction site for a nuclear 
power plant, it received an ENORMOUS base -- something like 16 inches 
thick. I don't think it has cracked yet.

The "Tractors with lugs" signs disappeared, but probably because they 
were so incredibly unnecessary.

Bob Seith

Indiana Robinson wrote:

>On 21 Jul 2005 at 18:03, Roger Welsch wrote:
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>>I have one on my shop wall...TRACTORS WITH LUGS PROHIBITED.  Every road used
>>to have one when I was a kid.  Now it seems like every tractor is driven by
>>one kind of lug or another.
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>	When I was a kid only a couple of roads in the neighborhood had them. They were the only 
>couple of paved roads around here. The rest of the roads were gravel or dirt. The road 
>past my house was gravel with 3 wheel tracks and two strips of grass. The road that goes 
>west from my barn lot was two wheel tracks and almost all grass. We kept it pretty well 
>stirred after we started using the crawlers. The county did mow the sides a tiny bit 
>about twice a summer with a Farmall CUB and a sickle bar mower. Mostly the road sides in 
>much of the county were a wall of brush.
>	When they switched from pit gravel to crushed limestone for the roads (a huge 
>improvement) many of the fields showed their PH problems when the dust from the road 
>settled on the first few rows of corn and those rows grew a lot bigger and darker. We had 
>our road "oiled" yearly in front of the house. This county announced in the 1960's that 
>all through roads in the county had finally been paved. I believe that they claimed to be 
>the first of the 92 counties to do so.
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