Tractors Don’t Kick Back – Most of the Time
by Edd Merritt,
October 6, 2011, page 12.....

Sitting once at dinner with our neighbor and late large animal veterinarian, Al Moraska, he mentioned that he enjoyed puttering with his old tractor, because after treating cows and horses all day, he was happy to be with something that didn’t kick back. Al, among hundreds of others, drove his machine regularly in the annual East Charlotte Tractor Parade.

I do remember one year, as the parade neared the turn onto Hinesburg Road, Al kept going straight up Spear Street. I asked him later whether his machine couldn’t tolerate crowds, and he explained that it was giving off strange noises and he wanted to be sure he could make it home without calling Fire and Rescue. He immediately took toolkit in hand, put on his clinician’s hat and headed for the diagnosis.

Another driver from the parade’s inception, Dale Hyerstay, said, in a conversation the other day, that the gathering of owners in the Nichols’ field before the parade was an event unto itself. “What could be more uplifting in the current world climate than a bunch of tractor owners milling around in a beautiful open field, munching hot dogs, looking at the Adirondacks and talking tractors?” Dale queried.

Hyerstay said he was instrumental in promoting the first parade in which he thought there might have been 13 tractors. Led by Tony Petricola and his CCS band, the parade went approximately three-tenths of a mile from the Catholic Church parking lot to Spear’s Store. A real benefit of driving, according to Hyerstay, is seeing the road lined with families, kids eyes ablaze at the vehicles sputtering, fuming, their engines sometimes booming down the street as though they didn’t like being held in check by a parade.

And we shouldn’t overlook the personalities of the Tractor Parade. Many locals of varying ages participate. John Sheehan’s granddaughter Lindsay said she had driven in five previous parades. Tractors must have prepared her well for her current work driving some of Steve Denton’s massive construction rigs. I asked her once whether with tractor-driving as an incentive, NASCAR was in her future. She gave me an “are-you-crazy” glance.

The large pasture behind Dave and Dianne Nichols’ barn on Spear Street is always abuzz before the parade with interested bystanders wandering about the machines, asking owners the tractor’s age and where it came from, picking out special features – even kids crawling under them or sitting in the seats immersed in their own dreams of the field they are ready to plow, the hay to haul, the manure to spread. Tractors are an element of local culture I hope we don’t lose. As an upper-Midwesterner I’ve seen too many train museums for my comfort – vehicles of a bygone past. I prefer the same not happen to tractors.

Over the 10 years of its existence, word of the parade has spread region wide. One only has to arrive at the dock that morning to see tractors freshly ferried across the lake from New York. It is often a parade of its own as they start up Ferry Road.

Last year I found myself in a conversation with a couple from Connecticut who said they were driving south on Route 7 and noticed a sign announcing the parade. They decided they’d detour to East Charlotte for their own view of it. They were delighted with what they discovered and planned to come back again.

October 9 will again provide a glimpse into the town’s agricultural past and how much we still value it. If you tire of the tractors, there will be llamas to pet and sand boxes full of corn kernels.