Mystery Metal

 This month it’s your turn to supply the information. That’s because in the next few minutes, I'll have told you everything that I know about this piece of machinery. 

Back in 2018, I was at the Richland Creek Antique Fall Festival, admiring this contraption when the owner walked up. I had just gone over every part of it pretty thoroughly, looking for anything that might help identify it, and had found nothing. I asked him If he knew who made it. 

His answer surprised me. “I think it was homemade”,he said. Hmmmm, well maybe. Certainly there are things about it that would lead you to that conclusion, like the tiller steering mechanism, made from old plumbing pipe and fittings. 

It wouldn’t have been beyond the capabilities of a skilled and determined shade tree mechanic but it would have been a ton of work. 

I’m inclined to believe that it evolved gradually over the working lifetime of the tractor. As parts of it broke, they were replaced with whatever the owner could scrounge up to keep it going. 

Then again, it might have been cobbled together from two or more broken down garden tractors to make a single working unit. 

Even the gear shift knob contains one last haunting mystery. Preserved under the glass is a faded photo of a woman. Who was she? 

Well folks, I’ve about run out of new, interesting stuff to post. If you go to shows for several years in a row, you start seeing the same things you saw the year before and last year thanks to the Covid Scamdemic hysteria, there was only one show held near where I live. If I do find something that’s especially interesting, maybe I’ll add a post about it.