Our magic carpet

As temperatures moderate and our towering snow banks diminish, the snowmelt largely runs off into municipal storm drains and finds its way into Narragansett Bay. Not so fifty years ago.

On the high plateau above Lake Erie, the two-hundred inch snowfall began to melt during late winter and turned the road to muck. Back then, the main highways were paved but many farm roads like ours were plain dirt. At worst dusty in the summer, during mud season they became impassable. Our salvation turned out to be the neighbor’s old two-banger John Deere tractors. Tall and sturdy, these machines had nearly three feet of ground clearance and needed every inch. Driving down the middle of the road, the front wheels would become buried to the top and steering was accomplished only by skilled application of individual braking to the huge rear wheels. The tractors would bog and complain, but always managed to deliver us up the hill.

Our cars were parked near the pavement at the bottom of the hill, nearly a mile away. We took turns shuttling each other back and forth using our communal magic carpets, these magnificent machines. There was no other way to travel unless one were willing to slog through knee deep, sucking mud.

Mud season was problematic because the cows never stopped their natural processes, and the byproduct thus produced still required daily collection and spreading in the fields. At times a tractor in such duty would sink a bit too much and become high-centered in the mud. But always the other would come to the rescue and pull the errant rig, tractor and spreader, to firmer ground. Tractors always work better in pairs, a truth that seems to be mirrored in good marriages.

In later years, copious dump-truck loads of gravel firmed up our road and allowed year-round access via automobile. But I will never forget the season of mud and the sturdy tractors that served as our lifeline to the outside world.