January Sketchbook - "The Last Row"

Happy 2017, friends. Got another tractor for you here, a second Allis-Chalmers. This one is an "A" series, I think, from some time in the late 1940's. She's a bit worse for wear, and looks to have been left where she gave out. Her front wheels are flat and sit half-buried, and her back end seems to lean to the left. What brought her down is a mystery, but it's apparent she's hoed her last row, as the saying goes.

This is another one of the tractors that belonged to my grandfather, although his was in a bit better shape than this. I always wondered as a kid about that spindly front wheel. It seemed to me to always be on the verge of bending or breaking off. And how did it turn? I used to spend so much time thinking about it I'd get hollered at for not paying attention. You can't be wandering around daydreaming around a machine like this, grandma would say. It was easy to get hurt, cause grandpa couldn't always see you.

I remember the time my cousin climbed up into the driver's seat while grandpa was gone to the house. He accidentally knocked the brake loose, and the tractor went barreling down the hill with him still on it and crashed into a tree. He was lucky he wasn't killed, and boy, was grandpa mad when he got back. Fortunately, the tractor wasn't seriously hurt either, and after an hour or so of fooling with it, my dad and grandpa got it running again. Still, the funniest thing was seeing my cousin bouncing down the hill on the back of that tractor like it was a bucking bronco. We still kid him about it 20 years later.

#sketching #drawing #pencildrawing #farmlife #abandoned #sketchbook