Tractor P u l l
On Saturday evening, Weldon and I finished chores early so we could go to a tractor pull in Winston-Salem. He hadn't been to one in 30 years and I'd never been, so we were looking forward to the event. When I first heard of tractor pulls, I imagined 2 tractors having a tug-o-war, seeing which one could pull the other over a line in the sand. Wrong :-) Instead, there are souped up pickups, 4x4s, garden tractors, and tractors that attempt to pull a weighted sled as far as they can. In the "good old days," farmers drove their tractors in from the fields to compete against their neighbors and win bragging rights. The sled they pulled got heavier as men jumped on it, and their distance was marked by a stick stuck in the ground. Today, the sled is weighted with a cement-filled form that increases the weight as it automatically moves towards the front of the sled and the distance is marked by a laser beam. And the tractors? At least some of them LOOK like tractors! but the vehicles (see list above) are big-boy, big-buck toys, built to look good and win. The engines can cost upwards of $60,000; one vehicle had a jet engine; the garden tractors (dust busters) don't have a single garden tractor part. My final comments: Loud! Strange! What's the point?! Weldon's final comment: We don't need to go for another 30 years!
(photos are from the United Pullers of the Carolinas website; from Gaffney, SC, pull)