Once in a life time

"I can still feel the roar of the trucks. The monster tractors of past years were much better though."- Al.

Last night I had the opportunity of a lifetime. For the first time in my 70 years or so, I witnessed a "tractor"  pull at the Chatham Fair. Only they didn't use tractors, as indicated by Al's statement above. Retrofitted high powered pick up trucks with terrifying names painted on them like "Hell's Vengeance" or "Dragon Fire" replaced the magnificent tractors of yesteryear. It was not your father's pickup. These monsters must have had about 24 cylinders in them.

And they did roar. Deafening. And the ground shook. And I wanted to run. But there is something transfixing about the scene of one of these over sized, beefed up trucks pulling a huge apparatus the size of an 18 wheeler about the length of a football field in several seconds. The towed apparatus slowly applied pressure to its braking system until the pick up could no longer tow, usually because the front end of the truck was too high off the ground for the driver to manage the vehicle.

The trucks roared and so did the fans, and some one was declared a winner. I am not sure what constituted  a win- perhaps distance, with time an additional factor. I joined in the applause at the end. Someone did a good job.

All in all, you could smell the fuel burning up, rubber on the track, brakes heating up, transmissions being over worked. Between pulls, a grounds crew using rollers,  graders and other machines similar to a Zamboni, manicured the track.

The spectacle gives one huge macho jolt, enough for many years for me. Where has this sport been all my life, and why have I avoided it so assiduously? Well, I still have my hearing, and I still prefer baseball which "ain't over til it's over" (Yogi Berra), to any timed sport like football or basketball and of course soccer with its weird timing, or even the "tractor" pull with trucks on steroids. Call me a "citiot."

Note from Johnnie Carrier:
Johnnie wrote: "Phil I worked the tractor pulls at Schaghticoke Fair where my brother in law is fair president. My duties were to tow the monsters back back to the pits with a real tractor. Mostly they use Allison air craft engines. And the winner is the one who pulls the most weight the farthest. Nice piece for a ciitot ."