The tractor story

This is a family story of mine that I've told a select few people who are important to me. I always cry when I tell it because it hits me so hard. It's a story I'm proud of though so here it is for all who would care to read it. I have it on my mind now because my father is in the hospital this week. It's just a minor surgery; otherwise I'd have flown up there to be with him as we're very close.

I'm very blessed to now have a stepmother who is there to harrass him and make him take care of himself. I have to admit that at the age of 33 or so when they got married, I was not so amused about getting a new "stepmom". To me, it was just the thought of someone taking my real mother's place. I think everyone goes through that if a parent dies and there is a remarriage of the surviving one. Not to be repetitive, but I am very thankful for Jo, my stepmom. But having Dad in the hospital has made me think about his mortality and the loss of my mom a lot. This little post is to celebrate my mother, father and the love that they had for each other. It's what a family is and should be about. We've had many flaws and trials, but when I think about this story for example, it reminds me that I came from a good place.

This is a true story and shows so many of the traits that my mom and dad both have. I love you Mom if you can see this somehow; I know that you're looking over Dad right now. I'm thankful to have been brought up in a home where my parents truly loved each other; many kids don't now and/or did not have that then.

Just a little backdrop so this story makes sense first: My mom and dad are/were entirely self made. They had no money when they got together and their honeymoon was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just 2 hours away. They went there because that is all they could afford and both came from large, dirt poor farm families. I was on the way too, ahem, shotgun anyone?

Early on and shortly after my birth, my parents were struggling horribly financially. My mom was working full time as a bank teller to try and put my Dad through college, he was working nights and all hours that he could as a janitor in a local printshop to augment that. My grandfather on my father's side (Clark the 2nd) had died just before my birth. There was nobody on Earth that my father loved as much as his Dad. However, in the dire conditions my parents found themselves in, they had no choice but to sell off everything that they could to make ends meet. Most of my grandfather's farm equipment, land and everything was sold off to help my grandmother. One of the things that was sold was his tractor, which my father used to ride on grandpa's lap as a child. To my dad, there were only two things that had deeply symbolic and emotional attachments to his dad, they were his tractor and his truck.

The truck was never sold, but to my dad's horror, they had to sell the tractor to pay our bills. It was truly one of the darkest days of my father's life. He gave up something he loved that was deeply symbolic; he did so for my mother and me and the family they were creating; my little brother would not come till four years after me.

Well, fast forward a few years. The print shop that my Dad worked at as a janitor was now owned by my Dad. He was shrewd, and a good customer centered businessman. My mom was Assistant Vice President of that bank she worked at to put dad through college. They were living a fairy tale it seemed and suddenly had buying power that they had never imagined. But they never forgot where they came from or what was truly important to them.

My dad, much in his dad's memory, had taken up the responsibility of taking care of my grandmother. She lived well, had her own home and never lacked for anything. My dad paid all of her expenses whenever she needed anything. The tractor that they had given up was a thorn in my dad's side though, and one that he had to get back out of the loving memory he had for grandpa.

My dad desperately tried to find out and trace where that tractor had gone. He hardly needed a tractor, it was just the emotional attachment and that it was "his daddy's tractor". In my early teens, my father hired a private detective to search for it and trace it's whereabouts. The information we got out of it was not enough. The tractor had been sold to someone in Arkansas, moved to Alabama, and then back to Arkansas where we reached a deadend. We all got tired of hearing my dad talk about his biggest regret in life, that being that he no longer had "his daddy's tractor".

Well, when I was 17, my mom decided a couple of months before Fathers Day that she was "the nosiest bitch in Arkansas" and she could probably succeed out of determination where the detective had failed. She would start her own search for "Daddy's tractor" for Fathers Day. I can't go on enough about how much my Mom went through to find it. Words cannot describe it. She called, begged, pleaded and told everyone she talked to how emotionally important it was that we find that tractor. She came to a dead end at a rural East Arkansas town where the people had no idea what happened to it or where the folks they sold it to were. But they were sure the person was deceased and no longer would have it. My mom cried on the phone that day begging them to find a number or anything that might help. I was there on that Saturday morning, my dad was gone, and my mom was doing her part time job; she spent every waking moment that my Dad was not around working on "daddy's tractor".

Well, a miracle of sorts happened that day. In rural East Arkansas at the time, they still had party lines. These were common in rural areas, essentially you're sharing lines with your neighbors. A little old woman's voice came on after hearing my mom's story. She had apparently been eavesdropping on her neighbors and heard the whole thing. She said "I don't want you to think I was listening in wrongly or anything, but I think I know where that tractor is". My mom got her information and we went to get my Grandmother right away.

My mom made up a story for why we were leaving and I had to drive us that day to East Arkansas, several hours away on country roads that destroyed my old convertible Cutlass' exhaust system. Eventually we made it to this God forsaken place and saw the heap of junk. My grandmother walked up to it and said "this is it", she was pretty sure. It was completely rusted, sitting in pieces and was pure junk and regarded as such by these folks. My mom begged and then ultimately bribed them to give it up. She paid them over $1000 as they were greedy and uncooperative when they realized it had sentimental value and that Mom had money. Ultimately though, my mom wrote a fat check and we owned the thing.
Delivery was arranged with another fat check from my Mom and we made sure it was on Father's day. She sent my dad on some bogus errands to get him away and have it delivered.

Well, what transpired after that makes me cry as I write this. You see, I never in my life had seen my dad cry. He grew up in a generation where men were not supposed to; he often bragged that he did not cry at his Grandpa Clark's funeral because "dad would not approve".

Sitting at the end of the driveway was this heap of junk. I had made a poster draped over it that said "Happy Father's Day". We, my mother, brother and I, were hiding in the bushes for the surprise.

My dad drove up and got out of his car. He looked at it and was smiling, obviously thinking it was a practical joke; this tractor hardly resembled anything other than that. But he got close to it and noticed the toolbox on the side of it that he himself had built onto it as a teen for Grandpa.

He collapsed on the ground and wailed, screaming, and curling up in a ball. It was a reaction none of us had ever seen or expected. For at least the next 10 minutes, all he could do was scream and wail "that's my daddy's tractor, that's my daddy's tractor, that's my daddy's tractor.........". It was a nonstop quote that he could not break away from. My mom, brother and myself by this point had all run out of the bushes to hold him and console him.

That day changed everything in my family. My dad lost his machoism forever. He cries openly now and is not that ashamed of it. I think he's healthier emotionally now as a result too.

You see, it is my opinion that some people are truly blessed. They don't always know it. I'm not sure my Dad understood how blessed he was at the time himself. It wasn't that he got that tractor. Sure, that's important. What made him blessed was that he had someone that loved him so greatly that they would dedicate so much of their time and energy into making him happy. I hope someday that someone loves me that way and that I have the chance to return it. If you've ever seen that from your parents, you probably hope for and expect it for yourself. That's a gift and blessing too; if you don't expect something, I don't think it will happen for you.

I tell this story because it's therapeutic to me. I also tell it because I'm proud of where I came from. It is not material things I'm talking about either. We often think of the problems we have and don't recognize what's so very right. I guess that's human nature. If anyone reading this has been blessed with that kind of love from a romantic partner, I hope this story will make you think twice about it tonight and perhaps communicate your appreciation.

As for my Mom, she's been gone from us for a little over four and a half years now. But she did leave this story among others as a legacy behind. When things got really bad for my Mom healthwise, dad once told me "that's my girl, and I love her" to excuse anything he was going through and express unconditionally that he was there to the end no matter what. I later heard that exact line in a movie called "The Notebook" . I see a lot of my parents in that story other than the quote itself, and as a result it is one of my favorite movies.

I'll conclude this story by saying that "daddy's tractor" looks like it rolled off the John Deere assembly line today. If it gets a scratch on it, Dad will take care of it. He waxes it regularly as if it's an exotic car.