[AT] Reactions to pictures posted from Portland

[Dean Vinson]

Trying this again... I sent it originally on August 28th but was having ISP
problems and kept getting my outgoing emails kicked back.  Sorry for the
duplication if it made it through before.

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Hi Grant.  Interesting comments on the regional differences you noticed in
the photos from Portland.  (Indiana, that is.  Maine and Oregon would no
doubt have their own variations.  :-)

I have to chuckle at narrow-front tractors being considered "strange"...
having grown up around farms in western Ohio and Indiana, where corn and
soybeans have long been the big crops, to me those narrow-front tractors are
just what tractors are supposed to look like.   Wide front ends began to
dominate in the later 60s or so I would guess, as tractors got bigger and
tractor-mounted cornpickers and such became more rare, but it's the classic
two-wheel narrow front that still just looks the most "right" to me.   It's
those single-front-wheel tricycles that make me scratch my head.  I lived in
the southwestern US for several years in the 90s and noticed the
single-front-wheel configuration was much more common out there, along with
LP-gas tractors (another rarity in my experience).

I've always gotten a kick out of the tight turning radius the narrow-front
tractors have (single-front tricycles would of course be the same).  I
remember as a kid watching a neighbor back a four-wheel hay wagon into his
barn using his narrow-front Allis WD-45, cranking that steering wheel around
with a spinner knob and using the left and right brakes as needed, a very
fluid and well-practiced ballet as he guided the wagon up the little bank
slope and through the doors and close in to the waiting elevator.  

Crawler tractors for agricultural purposes are likewise rare in the Midwest.
I didn't even know there was such a thing until much later in life--to me a
crawler was always synonymous with "bulldozer." 

Cockshutt was a Canadian manufacturer I believe.  They were the featured
tractor at the Portland show in 1997, from whence I took one of my favorite
tractor photos:  
http://www.vinsonfarm.net/photos/Cockshutt_row_Portland_97.jpg.  The
Cockshutt 30 was one of the first tractors with live PTO if I remember my
history correctly, and I think all from that era are fine looking and
well-built machines.

I don't know the physical size of the Portland show, other than "big."
Numerically I'd guess they typically have several hundred tractors and
thousands of stationary engines, and certainly some acres of swapmeet area
and craft barns and such.  Not a lot of steam tractors but some.  In recent
years the show grounds have expanded to include plowing demonstration
fields, and this year the old Caterpillars were out there moving dirt and
working on a new road.  

The grass and trees on the showgrounds are indeed nice.  Weather for the
show this year was about as fine as you could ask for--low humidity and dry
and with a moderate breeze--but it was still good to be able to get under
those trees now and then in the afternoon heat.

I hope to make it to the Tulare show some year and I'd be honored to visit
your farm--I'll add that to my someday list.  (As long as I'm daydreaming
I'll imagine making the trip with a truck and trailer, so I can bring back
one of those little agricultural crawlers that you all are overrun with out
there... :-)

Dean Vinson
Dayton, Ohio
www.vinsonfarm.net