David Cohen illustration
A Tractor Reborn for Christmas
The 1957 D-17 Allis-Chalmers tractor, faded by the sun and long unserviceable from languishing for years in the old machine shed, has recently been brought back to life by my cousin Gilbert.
This night before Christmas, boasting a new coat of Persian orange paint and an overhauled engine, the beast stands ready for a test run around the cornfield.
I am the last to abandon the warmth of the farmhouse and join in the fun. As I step across the dew-covered ground to where the tractor’s dark shape looms, sparks spew from the exhaust and flare away into the chill winter night.
The mighty power of its engine causes the tractor to rock fitfully. Its narrow front tires are turned in my direction as though it has been waiting just for me.
Excited voices seep from the trailer hitched behind the tractor as I climb over the side and fall onto a bale of hay next to my husband. When I am settled in, Gilbert drops the tractor into gear and the trailer lurches forward as he swings into a wide turn to the left and eases out onto a field of stubble.
Gilbert makes a wide turn to avoid some rows of withered, still-standing cornstalks, runs parallel to the farmhouse and momentarily toward the county road, then angles to the left again.
He coaxes the tractor down a small slope onto a rutted dirt road where the cornrows reappear. Corn husks sway under the moon’s soft light. Headlights from the county road arc briefly, then wink a bright and momentary gleam of yellow as a car turns in the drive next to the house.
An oblique yellow light, infinitesimal as some distant star, glows from one of the farmhouse windows.
“There’s the Big Dipper,” someone whispers.
We follow the rutted path to where a stand of trees starts up, galumph on through, then bounce back out into a large clearing. Todd, my cousin’s son, begins to sing: “Away in a manger, no crib for His bed…” Soon, we are all caroling, our voices swelling to fill the air under a canopy of sky that holds sway over all below. We finish with that carol, then continue with the joyous choruses of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “The First Noel.”
In the end, it is not the tractor that fails us, but the trailer. Todd, realizing that one of the trailer tires has gone flat, yells for Gilbert to halt.
Gilbert grinds the tractor to a stop, and we all clamber out of the trailer; everyone else gathers in a huddle near the tractor to discuss the situation.
I remain where I am, however. Standing stock-still, I turn an eye toward the celestial arena above me and stare in awe at the enigmatic ribbon of stars stretched across it. Except for the weak breeze of voices over by the tractor, it is so quiet the world seems abandoned.
Sentimental recollections of a long-ago time, when life was not so complicated, revive in my memory. I recall a Christmas Eve more than 50 years past and how my father, his voice merry with the trickiness of his claim, summoned his children to a farmhouse window to witness Santa’s flight across a starry sky.
Over by the tractor, a consensus has been reached.
We will leave the tractor and trailer behind temporarily and walk back to the house. Fragmenting into groups of two or three, our voices calling out intermittently in the tingly darkness, we hike back along the rutted road and open field to the house.
The ride ended too quickly. But I will always have the memory of that night: the way the moon poised like a thin, bright pancake in a mystical sky; the way dried corn husks rustled as a soft breeze rippled through them; the way my breath rose in the magical silence of a somewhat chilly night. And I am certain that, from time to time, I will even hear again the dignified snore of an old tractor’s engine as it gouged its way across a lonesome stretch of cornfield.