On a warm summer day in 2012, I arrived at my Grandma Bunke's house for the summer. Since I was only ten at the time, I had to stay at my grandma’s during the day in the summer while my dad and mom went to work. My grandma’s house is in the middle of nowhere near Florida on a road full of raggedy old barns that say “Bunke” on them for the most of the road. Like all young guys, I became curious and ready to explore new objects and subjects but still had a fear of certain objects, and one of those fears came to be large machinery. It might have been the size, the sound, or the fact that I knew that it could kill me. Regardless of my fears, since I’m from a farming family I was forced to grow up with them.

 All of the Bunkes were farmers except my dad’s brothers with the exception of my uncle, Mark. Uncle Mark used to be a mechanic at John Deere in Napoleon, where he would work day and night on random farm machinery. My grandpa, Mark’s dad, had been a farmer. Like all farmers they own their fair share of tractors while he was alive on this blue earth, but Mark was given three of them from my grandpa. Mark received a fiero red 560 diesel turbo, a cherry red 1951 H, and a patina rust International 1066 that was rusted like an old rail track. The 1066 seemed to not be in working order, but the 560 and the H are always ready to work. Mark had been and still is to this day either working on his job, working around the house, or relaxing for a few moments.

Around this time there used to be two barns, an old faded rustic red barn that had all of the tractors and such in it and a small gritty corn crib that hosted grains and a wagon. As time went on, the barn stood tall and strong, but the corn crib begin to sag and lean with its burnt toast-looking wood slowly decaying. 

One day, Mark finally exclaimed, “Well, I guess it's time for the old corn crib to come down!” The corn crib had done its job for over fifty years, and it had been  just on its last leg for too long. He thought about burning it down, but he yelled, “That darn tree is in the way, and it's too dry to burn it down!” He came to the conclusion that it must be ripped down by hand or by tractor. He obviously chose pulling it down with one of the tractors. Mark tried to fire up the 560 but couldn’t because we had a flat that was just filled to the brim with air, and that it seemed to be running with too much gas in the air chamber.

 “It can't get enough air into the chamber,” Mark stated with disappointment, so he settled with the H. Now the H has been in the family for as long as I can remember, so it's pretty old. She has some rust on her, but she still never stopped working.

Mark drove the crusty old H out onto the yard with the deep scent of gas trailing behind him, and then he asked me, “Do you want to drive it?”

Like I said earlier, I was scared of big machinery, so I hesitated at first while standing there quivering, but he eventually talked me into giving it a whirl. 

As I climbed into the seat of the H Mark said “Now don’t ride it too long. I'll need it later,” while I sat there shaking with jittering fears, while he told me how to drive it.

As I let off the clutch and hit the gas for the first time, I began to feel a little more confident in myself with the tractor. I drove it around the house, the block, and a little into Florida. I finally seemed to be driving the H, and my fears of big machinery subsided. I drove that tractor around with its white, gasoline burning smell, till I had to come home. When I drove past the bridge out of Florida, I yelled with joy, “I’m finally driving!”

When I returned, I saw Mark standing by the house with a smirk on his face. I pulled beside him and turned off the tractor and asked him while smiling, “What?”

“I saw you fly by. You were speeding, weren't you?” he asked.

“Phuft, me?” I stated jokingly. “Never.”

“Well, I hope you know that you can’t speed when you’re older,” he explained, “because when you start driving cars, you’ll get pulled over and get a fine!” 

As he lectured on about driving a car when I’m older, my stomach dropped. It slowly crept on me that I would have to daily drive a car. My fears of machinery returned.