Monday, May 11, 2009

Standing your ground: a recipe for an immobile life


Here is an interesting pic for you today, a snapshot of my '53 International Harvester "Super" C, for those not in the loop, it's a rather archaic farm tractor. It's also a battered, rusty, artifact we dragged out of a junkyard. Happily though, this one runs! My history obcession tends to run away with it's self, and a couple of years ago, it ran right into collecting old farm tractors. Hefty beasts these, even more cumbersome than the basement full of vintage ten speeds, but not, thankfully as immobile as the collection of industrial lathes I have somehow taken in.

But my half dismantled farm tractor is not the point.. mostly. My point is, heaven help me if I ever have to move, somehow in my life I've assumed the mantle of unpaid, untrained and very unofficial museum curator to the Midwestern race. From the box of old Bell Telephones to the garage full of woodworking equipment I have enough stores of antiquated stuff to keep three or four 1950's Illinois farm family's well provisioned and comfortable, Everything down to the books to teach them how to use the tools, (and educate the whole family somewhat comprehensively for that matter). Battle scars of the unstoppable flea market picker are the thousands of books I somehow amassed on unconnected subjects, from flying to fishing.

What I need, is a gigantic time capsule, A King Tut's tomb of middle America, that way, 10,000 years from now people will know what a Zebco 33 Spin-casting reel is, or a Bell 500 Rotary phone. Then I can start collecting stuff all over again.

In the mean time, I think there is an Apple //+ under my bed, stacked beside the pile of Successful Farming from 1964......

RNW

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