How old do you need to be?

How old do you think you need to be to be considered an Antique Tractor nut?

I can remember when I was a little kid, I used to watch my dad drive tractors in the barnlots and fields and I couldn't wait 'til I "growed up!" When I was about 7 years old, we lived for a short time in a small central Indiana town by the name of Gaston. This little town had an International Harvester dealership and my brothers and I used to walk up there (it was only two blocks away) and watch them work on the tractors from across the street.

My dad worked as a hired hand on a neighboring farm that used all John Deere tractors, so we heard about them from dad all the time. We could tell the distinctive "Pop-putt-putt-putt-Pop" sound and what it stood for in a childhood heartbeat!

Anyway, one day we went back to the IH dealer up the street because we heard that familiar sound again. It must have been near the county fair time because when we got up to the dealership, they were just beginning to back someone's Johnny Popper up to the back end of an IH Super M.

That's when I officially saw my first tractor pull! Right there on the steet. Been a fan of tractor pulls and tractors in general ever since then. I guess that I was an antique tractor nut way back then except what I witnessed that day wasn't antiques, they were brand new tractors.

What I'm saying is that you don't have to be old to get tractors in your blood. Everywhere you look when you go to the shows, you'll see youngsters driving old tractors or old lawntractors around the grounds.

Point is, you can be an antique tractor nut right out of the chute!