True Love and a Bright Orange Tractor

The conclusion of the Together series, Patched Together, releases in a couple of weeks and gives a nod to some generational tractor romance. There’s a country song embedded in here somewhere. Anyway, it also seems appropriate as our county fair wraps up.

If you’ve been reading the series, set in post-WW2 Buckeye Lake, you already know Smokey Black and Dottie Berkeley, the main characters of the third and final book. Dottie’s family owns and operates the amusement park on the North Shore. Smokey and his family own most of the farmland west of the lake, and the Naval war hero happens to also be a hopeless romantic who tends pumpkins and evergreens for the holidays.

They’ve known one another since they were children, but they couldn’t be more different. No spoilers, of course, but Dottie is finally going to need Smokey’s steady whimsy in the aftermath of something awful.

That said, you’ll find Dottie riding more than once on the fender of Smokey’s bright orange Allis-Chalmers tractor. Perching over the tire puts a gal pretty close to the driver. I know because I once fell in love sitting in that same sort of spot. I know I’m not the first to do so.

I was dating Brent (my husband) in the mid-90s, when there was a big family get-together out at his grandma’s place in the country, on County Line Road. There was backyard volleyball between the barns and yummy food. Brent’s job that day was driving the old Allis-Chalmers with the wagon attached so his cousin’s kids could have a hayride.

He invited me to sit on the fender beside him on the tractor that had been in his family since probably just after WW2. I remember, as we chugged along, thinking about how hard I was falling for that English teacher/part-time construction worker handling that antique tractor.

For my own part, I was working my way through college at the time as a teller at a local bank. One of my co-workers had lived across from Brent’s grandparents on the county line decades before, when his grandfather was still alive. One day she told me that, when she thought of Paul and Betty Garee, she could still see them on that Allis-Chalmers in the evenings. “Whenever Paul was in the field, Betty was always, always riding on the fender beside him.”

I thought, “Oh, I get it, Betty.” I’d happily ride to the ends of the earth next to her oldest grandson on that fender.

I still would. Brent and I have lived out on that same land now for decades and raised our kids here. The tractor is still in the Garee family.

This was just my sappy opportunity to tell you why Smokey, one of my favorite characters, has an Allis-Chalmers tractor. I hope you’ll appreciate how irresistible he is to Dottie as she rides on that bright orange fender over the wheel beside him in Patched Together.

You’re invited to pre-order the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble in paperback, eBook, or audio!

The Hartford Fair had a good selection of Allis-Chalmers tractors on display in the antique tractor show.