Knights and Their Machines

The bees are buzzing around the blueberry bushes I need to plant, but it’s the first friday of the month when the chiropodist comes to Taghmon and my boot is rubbing a raw place on the side of my foot. My time was wiled while I waited by  a traveler  harnessing his cob. It didnt look like the same one tied outside the hardware store last Wednesday, but I couldnt be sure. The foot doctor needed a twenty in folding money so I walked down to Supervalue and was just deciding on the crumbley blueberry scones for the cashback when the I hear a cacaphoney of horns blaring down the road.

The manager tears off his apron shouting “Take the till, Fonola!” and dodges through the automatic doors that aren’t opening fast enough for him. I follow. Snaking towards us a is a line of  semi trucks  bearing the sigils of the local girls and boys GAA teams with an Irish flag flapping from the smokestack.

As the driver approaches he looses a long blast of his horn that makes the manager wave both arms with joy. The mostly male crowd lets loose with much swearing that the lads done a grand job, weren’t they swelling with  pride to be a part of the Wexford to Galway 500 km benefit run.  Now if a kid breaks an arm or  an “auld wan”  has arthitis it’s half an hour to Wexford Hospital, then probably another 2 hour wait to get treated. The hope is this  fundraiser will bring in enough to attract a GP to town.

Each gleaming red or green  tracto is  spitpolished free of even a speck of muck and mud.  Only the oldies in the back look a bit Frankensteined together. No amount of new paint can  disguise they were built in a different era.   I feel a kinship.  But even they are strewn with blue and yellow bunting  riding the wind  like maypole streamers. Having the  farm machines  loaded on to flatbed trucks for the  journey seems a cheat, but it is far more practical.

I think all the fellas were thrilled their tractors were off on a holiday-even if they couldn’t spare the time.  Our own 1975 Massey Ferguson   stayed home. It’s so indispensable I’m not allowed to drive it. The minute I take the wheel, it dies and  the tractor priest has to be   called out to resurrect it.