MID MICHIGAN OLD GAS TRACTOR ASSOCIATION
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FEATURE ARTICLE LAST UPDATED
AUGUST 4, 2016


The contents of the “Feature Article” page are provided to you for your entertainment, amusement, and perhaps information. Here you may find articles of interest, pictures, historical information on the Club, or whatever shuffles to the top of the pile on our desk.  Thank you for visiting, and please stop by again. Click on any photo to see it larger in a separate window.

AUGUST 4, 2016

Beyond the Valley

I suppose it’s just human nature, but we all have an instinct to exercise our curiosity when time permits. There’s always a new direction to look, a stone unturned, somewhere, an urge to get out of our familiar surroundings. Life is short, summer even shorter, for those of us here in Michigan. With such motivation in mind, a couple of our intrepid members recently took advantage of an opportunity to expand our horizons just a bit, and visit some of our contemporaries in a very different part of the State. As most of you know, there are “tractor clubs” all around our Magnificent Mitten, some small and local, others large and well-known. It is always informative to see how different people, in different places, go about doing some of the same stuff we do at home. We all have the common interest in old tractors, farm machinery, and vintage rural life, but each group puts its own signature on how they choose to recreate and/or memorialize it. The various individual shows are also naturally influenced by whatever local demographics are in place, as well as agricultural variables, such as crops, climate, and topography. There is a considerable diversity to our pursuit of a common goal, and that’s what makes it so interesting to visit other shows and groups, to see how they have done it. With this as a backdrop, we recently pointed the company car north…waay north, to catch up with our friends at the Walloon Lake show, near Boyne Falls. To be specific, the group is known as the Northern Michigan Antique Flywheelers Ass’n. A more accommodating group of people would be hard to find, and we thank them for their hard work, and their welcoming, friendly nature. Being in the far northern parts of our State, and very near the shores of Lake Michigan, they have a unique local perspective on things that is very different than what can be found here in the flatlands of the Saginaw Valley. I don’t think there are 10 square yards of level ground on their entire showgrounds, and while that seems alien to us, it is certainly part of the charm of the place. Other local influences would include maritime interests, remote perspectives, orchard specialty crops, and large volumes of seasonal tourist traffic. The place is largely built on the side of a mountain (Michigan scale, not Colorado scale), and, while they don’t offer multiple tractor pulling events like we do, they do make good use of their landscape with the parade and Tractor Safari events. There were easily a dozen or more full sized people mover units, full of people, and numerous individual tractors etc., that made the climb up the mountain, where they could all disembark and take in a majestic view of Lake Charlexoix in the distance. On a day when the Saginaw Valley was enduring a muggy, cloudy day, the north country enjoyed blue skies and sunshine for the time that we were there. We thank them all for their hospitality, and we leave you with a few random photos from another day on the road.



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