The time of the tractors has returned. The Blokes need to haul their boats back and forth to the water. If homo sapiens ever had a particular mating season, this has replaced it.
The tractors have been brought out, filled up, run up and deployed. Our road is alive with diesel throb and fumes as the tractors take their place with the motor mowers, line trimmers, chain saws, leaf blowers, farm bikes, quad bikes, outboard engines.
I realise now that the deployment of the tractor is more than the pragmatic thing it seems. The simple possession of a suitable machine is itself a securing of status. It is the bloke who gets to drive it of course -- I have never in coming here over 30 years seen one of the women driving a tractor. The women ride obediently in the boat being towed, they mind the kids, tend the food and booze, down to the water and back. They don’t get to drive the boats either.
Rather in the manner of the ordo surrounding that important cultural shrine, the barbecue, there are clear roles. The bloke presides, as did the priest in the high places of ancient Palestine. He invigilates the events and protocol, and the frequent libations. The handmaidens hover in the background with their supporting functions.
No one buys a new tractor. Not around here anyway. Perhaps they do at Omaha. There must be a lively market for old and obsolete farm tractors that can be kept in more or less working condition and brought to life each summer. That does not mean they are registered to go on the roadway, or have any actual warrant of fitness. The local police seem to turn a blind eye to these things, as also to the fact that children routinely ride precariously on the back of them, and most tractors have no safety roll bars that I can see.
I came across an advertisement for a tractor. I don’t understand any of it. Here it is exactly as it was printed, and I am not making this up:
Gas Left Hand Clutch. Nasty old tractor that 'D' 4 Speed Trans that shifts sideways Hand Clutch that has a brake when you pull it back 2 speed PTO but no 3 point hitch Spring Loaded Drawbar Poor Ground Clearance - Hung up on a patch of Dandelions Throttle is under the steering wheel and forward Seat Goes behind the wheels so you can stand on a pan and the brakes are down there to. 42 hp and HEAVY! Its Short to Solid Fenders for Rides and Safe to operate
Well, it is moving to realise that some bloke will read that as pure poetry.
A few years back red was the colour de rigueur. A bloke who bought a green tractor or a blue one would paint it red before anyone saw it, and then dirty it up a bit. But now I’m afraid any colour goes, along with the general deterioration of standards and disappearance of the old moral landmarks. The rest of the uniform remains however, for the present -- baseball cap, black singlet, black shorts and bare feet. After all, that is the uniform blokes wear also to the supermarket and the petrol station.
So far this summer of 2011-2012 has been dismal, however. Clouds and heavy rain. Kawau Bay has been leaden and choppy much of the time. Campers have given up and gone home. Everyone expects that the procession of fronts will ease off soon and there will still be time left for long hot days. Meanwhile here are all these tractors, some of them forlornly hauling $100,000 boats down to the water for a spin around the bay or some fishing out beyond Kawau.
