The Road

After a month of buckling down and finishing a book manuscript, I found myself back out on the road yesterday, traveling about 70 miles north to lovely Kimball, Minnesota to photograph some nicely restored Minneapolis-Moline tractors.

I found the road--even that godawful stretch of strip malls and corn fields inbetween Minneapolis and St. Cloud--was a welcome thing. There's something about even an hour spent with the wheel in your hand that clears out the mind. In this case, add in a break in the clouds that brought good light and a freshly plowed field to give me a little something to work with for the images, and the road was an elixir for the soul.

I also had the good fortune to spend some time with Ron Becker, the owner of said farm tractors, who had immaculately restored the tractor his dad bought new in 1951 and used on the family farm until the 1980s.

"It was tired," he said with a laugh, "That tractor worked hard for 30 years."

He also told me that he had the "world's largest collection of Minneapolis-Moline garden tractors." He had a lot of them. There were at least 20 in his shed, and he had another shed at his home place that he said was full of more. Odds are good that he's right, and he does have the world's largest collection.

Never know what you'll find on the road.