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I love a parade

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 6:07 am
by Enzo
Fourth of July - Independence Day. Around then is when the fireflies are peaking. Fireworks popping here and there. it has been very hot for a while now and even our highways are popping. At least three places had highways buckle causing a couple of local area interstate highways to be closed.

We have air conditioning in the apartment, so when you walk out the door, the hot and humid hits you in the face. But after a while you get over it. SO we went out this evening and sat out front with a bunch of other inmates. Mason has a 4th of July parade. Goes right up our street. Not only that, the home here had a float in the parade. So we watched from our vantage.

A cop car led the way, followed by a bunch of tractors. There was an operating steam tractor, though it was on a trailer, it was running, and believe me, the steam whistle is LOUD. A bunch of fire trucks came along, most from Mason, but a few from other area towns. More tractors. A whole marching band was piled onto another float. They oom-pah'd along. There was some kind of queen in a gown with a sash, she rode the back of a pickup truck waving.

A number of politicians also had floats. To them I offer a rousing BOOOO, get out.

Our team came by late in the parade, but there they were, a gaggle of old ladies piled on a trailer waving. I waved to them, they waved to me. My degree is in communication, and we did study non-verbal. SO there, I am pretty sure we all communicated. "What we have here..." They were all decked out in their bright red Jefferson Street Square T-shirts.

More tractors. While there were the expected John Deere ones, I was surprised at the number of Farmalls. Some were vintage. I saw only one Case, and nary a Massey Ferguson in the bunch.

There were some commercial vehicles driving along - basically rolling adverts. I still have hopes to field a precision drill team of old ladies and their walkers.

Up here on fourth, we had a fellow across the hall leave, and a new lady moved in. She was sitting next to us, and had her rite of passage. As always happens on occasions like this, someone cruises our parking lot and decides to park in one of the designated reserve spots. Like mine. Someone did, and new lady, Jean I believe, walked over and 'splained to them they were in reserved parking and couldn't. She now is officially part of things - she shooed out bogus parkers.

I had watched parades here before, but this was the first time the wife came out with me. As soon as the parade ended, we piled in the car and went to Big Boy for strawberry milk shakes. A darned American thing to do on a darned American evening. Small town America at its purest.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 6:14 am
by Мастер
I think you folks really should have declared your independence at a cooler time of year.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 7:43 am
by Heid the Ba
Sounds like a great day.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:11 am
by Enzo
Or we could have never done it at all, and we'd be Canada.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 12:35 pm
by Arneb
And have socialism? Never!

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 7:21 pm
by tubeswell
My old Grandad had a Massey Fergusson on his dairy cow farm. It was the first tractor I learned to drive. So reliable and easy to drive. Probably sitting in some museum now, or rusting away somewhere.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 11:46 pm
by wring
yeah, I'm usually not so thrilled about parades, let alone parades where it's really freaking hot outside, but felt we should support our troops as it were, waving to the float our neighbors were on. I saw our resident manager walking along the float w/her 5 year old son, but Enzo was oblivious. Afterward, we went out for strawberry milkshakes (though Enzo had malt in his), I gave him half of mine.

Yeah, it's hard to keep up with our social calendar.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 1:13 pm
by Мастер
Enzo wrote:Or we could have never done it at all, and we'd be Canada.


Scotland?

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 9:53 pm
by MM_Dandy
Enzo wrote:A cop car led the way, followed by a bunch of tractors. There was an operating steam tractor, though it was on a trailer, it was running, and believe me, the steam whistle is LOUD.

...

More tractors. While there were the expected John Deere ones, I was surprised at the number of Farmalls. Some were vintage. I saw only one Case, and nary a Massey Ferguson in the bunch.


Did the steam tractor have an eagle on it? If it did, it was probably a Case. A lot of the other big tractors from that era aren't actually steam tractors, even if they look similar. Aultman Taylor had a line of kerosene tractors with cylindrical radiators which resemble boilers. They don't have whistles, though, so I'm pretty sure yours was a genuine steam tractor.

All of International Harvesters row crop tractors were branded as Farmall from 1924 until the early 70s, and the last one rolled off the line in 1975. CNH (Case New Holland) Global re-introduced the brand in the late 2000s as their utility line.

What color was the Case? Case tractors were somewhat uncommon around here, but no decent tractor parade would be complete without at least a handful. At any rate, for several years, Case tractors implemented a multitude of color schemes, which has given rise to legends that the factories would just paint their tractors with whatever colors were available. It also makes them hard to restore if the tractor has no paint left to match, which also seemed to happen more often with Cases.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 11:48 pm
by g-one
All right. We have some tractor guys here. :=D:
I was just thinking when Enzo posted about the parade tractors that I would start a tractor thread.
I'll do that soon, I just snapped a couple poor phone pics of our Farmall F12 the other day.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 1:58 am
by Enzo
In my suburban mind, I associate orange with Case tractors. Seems to me that was what this one was.

This was definitely a steam tractor, the locomotive whistle being sufficient clue. It had a cylinder on the side with a crank going back and forth to spin the flywheel. The gears were in idle as it was on a trailer.

Two miles down the road we have some sort of steam tractor society/association/club/whatever. They have a fairground and at least an annual gathering.

http://www.michigansteamengineandthresh ... index.html

It is off Barnes road, where our country butcher shop is. Where wring buys the thick peppered bacon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9eoZfzQdSA

That is an old Case steam tractor in the video.

Yeah, I like tractors, I am a fan of large large equipment in general. Some of those harvesters are huge. We have several grain elevators here in MAson, and one also sells equipment, so there are often big pieces in their lot. We have a Deere dealer across town.

When I first moved into my old farm house, it was a hippie commune. One of us had an old John Deere B (pretty sure it wan 't an A) It had a spinning flywheel on the left side. And seems to me to start the thing, you pulled the steering wheel off the column, and stuck it in the center of the flywheel and gave it a spin. I could be confused though. You definitely spun the flywheel to get it going. It had a compression relief to make starting easier.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 2:48 pm
by Lance
Enzo wrote:I am a fan of large large equipment in general.

Learning more about Enzo than most of us cared to know.

Re: I love a parade

PostPosted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 3:14 pm
by Enzo
Watch on youtube.com