The Sound of a Tractor

I’m sitting at my desk this morning after a busy weekend…and preparing for a busy week ahead.  As I sit here I hear the sound of a tractor running.  Bob Evans is plowing the garden near my home, preparing to plant.  

I like the sound of a tractor.  It reminds me of simpler times when I was a kid growing up on Antioch Road near Center Springs in Somerville, Alabama.  While my family didn’t “farm,” many of our neighbors did.  I can remember hearing the hum of tractors usually driven by Billy Shaddrick or Robert Turney.  Mr. Shaddrick cut and baled the hay on the land where we lived…and Robert Turney always had a large garden, big enough to feed a community if necessary.  

There are certain smells that a person is familiar with only if that person was raised up in the country.  Like the smell of freshly plowed dirt.  I can’t really describe it except to say it smells clean.  Dirt smells clean?  Well, yes.  But maybe it has something to do with the way I was raised.  Farming was respected.  Farmers were appreciated.  In the parking lot of Lester Whitten's Grocery there was always a tractor or two...especially during those spring and summer months. And the men who drove them smelled like the dirt they were plowing.  As a boy I looked up to them.  Forty years later, I still do.  

I like the smell of freshly plowed dirt.  I also remember the smell of a line-dried shirt.  Mother had a clothes-line.  We also had a clothes-dryer.  But, in the spring, summer, and early fall when the sun was shining and the breeze was blowing, she’d hang the clothes on the line rather than put them in the dryer.  If you’ve never worn a shirt that’s been dried on the line, you have no idea what I’m talking about.  

One more thing while I’m talking about smells.  One of my favorite smells was the aroma of supper on the stove…  On breezy, summer days Mother would open the windows and let the breeze cool the house.  And when she began to prepare supper, the smell of that delicious-ness would make its way out of the windows and into the yard where this 12 year old boy knew fried chicken, or something like that, would soon be served.  

I also knew that I’d soon hear the roar of the tires on my dad’s truck.  I could hear him coming a mile away.  More times than I can remember I ran to the end of the driveway, which was about a quarter mile long, to meet dad…jump on the back bumper…and hang on to the tailgate as we rode to the house.  Dad was home - Supper was ready - All was well.  

Good memories this morning.  The hum of tractors, the smell of plowed dirt and shirts dried on the line.  The smell of supper and the sound of dad’s truck.  Those are good memories.  M