John Deere Day

 

    I must have been five years old, because if I had been six, I would have been in school.  I must have gone when I was four years old, because I remember anticipating the event.  It happened in spring, March, maybe April.  Looking back at it, it was an opportunity for my mother to have one less kid under foot, and one less meal to prepare.

    “It” was John Deere Day.  All the farmers were invited. It was held at the local John Deere dealer at the junction of US Highways 24-40 and State Highway 71.  There was a “roundtop” building, a Quonset that was the dealership’s office, shop, showroom, everything.  Outside, there would be plenty of new green machinery with yellow wheels on display.  Inside, the building was converted to long tables, one of which contained the meal for the day.

      And the most important part, chairs arranged in front of a movie screen.  That’s right, there was a movie, and I really looked forward to going to that.  It wasn’t the free meal, or all the shiny green equipment, or seeing friends (I seem to remember Nate Einertson was there in coveralls and silver hard hat, probably in charge of cooking and serving the huge meal, since that was his specialty).

      Hey, movies were few and far between.  I remember two, an “Ozzie and Harriet” one and the biggie, “Gone with the wind”.   (I remember coming out of the theater really filled with contempt and hatred for the Yankees.  I mentioned my feelings in the car on the way home, and my brother, always ready to squelch and/or correct me, pointed out that as Colorado residents, had we been a state, we would have been on the Yankees’ side.  That put things in a new light, and maybe planted the seeds of distrust for all things media I have today.)

    That’s right.  I looked forward to a movie.  It was probably a 20 or 30 minute John Deere advertisement, but it was a movie.  I don’t remember much about it except the plow segment.

       I have tried to duplicate the plow segment with my own video clip.  It’s not very long and I haven’t figured out how to clip off the “segue” at the end (my apologies).  It also lacks the close-up of one plow bottom doing its thing, cutting a chunk about four inches deep and sixteen inches wide, throwing it left to right and turning it upside down as it speeds along.  But you’ll get the idea of how a plow works.

      Perhaps the clip will cause you to reflect on the ingenuity of man who has gone from wooden sticks to steel in the cause of spading the garden faster and more effectively.  Of course, the machine and the process are both obsolete.  Now, you just put chemical on everything, and that allows the desired crop to grow while preventing the weeds from interfering.

     But, the reason I don’t remember anything else from that movie, aside from the 60 intervening years, is because here was the seminal moment for another life-long habit that I have developed when watching a movie—I went to sleep leaning against my Dad’s arm.  When I awoke, the much-anticipated movie was over.  I don’t remember being disappointed.  Maybe we went through the lunch line AFTER the movie?

    Well, it's your turn.

     Try not to nod off, now!