EDITOR’S NOTE: Pugh first wrote about the camp’s tractor operation in 2016, but now believes the old tractor has more work to do.
A few quick facts about the camp tractor: First, it looks like a tractor. The exhaust pipe points up through the engine hood, a design that allows it to be covered with a 303 number that can be obtained from any recycling place. This prevents rain, squirrels, small birds and mice from gaining access.
Tractor tires look like tractor tires. They’re tall and narrow, but with wide, self-cleaning studs that move comfortably through the bog and in the field, but not so much on the front lawn.
The transmission shifts as a tractor transmission should: a determined manual effort, the success of which is announced by an audible “groove”.
The old tractor is lean and built for the long haul. It has a profile that can be viewed from various angles. There’s no clutter here: no starter motors, hydraulic cylinders or hoses, no brake lines, no power steering fluid reservoirs, computers or computer chips, no plastic anywhere.
Claimed upgrades are dispensed with: no backhoe, underbody scraper, brush or lawn mower, no leaf blower, wood chipper or enclosed cab with padded seat and air conditioning.
All are effects that remained the primary function of the old tractor: the efficient performance of camp tasks.
She is a 1938 Farmal “A”.
The boys bought it used almost 80 years ago. Her engine block was cracked, which allowed them to purchase her well. That crack? No problem. They would weld him shut as soon as they could find the time.
They never did.
It fell to the next generation to work out a cure. It was Dave Richard who stepped up and installed the valve – the pollution release valve.
This is how this valve works:
The crack in the engine block allows antifreeze from the cooling system to escape into the oil sump and mix with the lubricating oil, reducing its effectiveness. This mixing occurs gradually while the tractor is running. Antifreeze is heavier than oil, so when the tractor engine is at rest, the antifreeze settles to the bottom of the oil pan.
That’s where the contamination release valve is located.
Before starting the tractor, the operator opens the release valve, allowing the green antifreeze to drain until clean oil is observed. Then the valve is closed, the oil level is raised and the day’s work begins.
The fact that the old “A” is still in service after all these years is a testament to the valve’s effectiveness, superior to the release valves that serve their aging operators where the lack of sustainability and predictability is becoming more and more evident.
This efficiency made me wonder if the old valve could find application elsewhere as a teaching tool. There is certainly no shortage of pollution that needs draining.
Consider this:
After the hunting season, before spring preparation of the camp grounds, a group of hunters and truckers were able to move the old “A” to Washington, DC and install it in the Capitol rotunda.
We could have flyers printed explaining how it works. Volunteers could let members of Congress through to explain how the tractor valve could be adapted to relieve the constipation-like symptoms of thornlessness they continually suffer.
To those Michigan congressmen referred to by the Detroit Free Press (Jan. 10, 2021) as “Lying People,” they might suggest resignation. These were congressmen who tried to overturn the last presidential election by trying to decertify hundreds of thousands of Michigan votes, including ours.
The Free Press also classified three congressmen as “Bitter-Enders” in recognition of their filibustering acts following the Capitol riots. Ours was among them.
Both People of the Lie and Bitter-Enders are convinced that their abilities are superior to those of the lesser souls whose morality they deny and whose faith in democracy they would destroy.
Instead of taking the ball and bat home to practice after a loss, they try to change the scoreboard, to the point of mounting an attack on the scoreboard.
If these members cannot now appreciate the need to administer an evacuator to themselves, then the members of the Capitol police force, those men and women who had to face the mob and whose lives were threatened, I’m sure they should open up about it. the valve of a contraption that releases pollution.
But what are the chances that Congress will implement such a beneficial device, especially when the new Speaker of the House is a leader of the denialists?
Zip.
It was always like that. The job of cleaning the house falls on us.
It is our responsibility to use the rectification valve for which our forefathers worked so and so often, for which so many of them died:
Everyone’s right to vote.
“Vignettes” by Doug Pugh is published monthly. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.
