The View From the Fender of a 4020

I've always been of average height - not too short, but definitely not tall.  When in crowds or at parades I always have to stand on tip-toes to see anything.  I do remember, when just a kid, when my perspective was a little different.  I had the perfect vantage point to see the whole world from a bird's eye view.  It happened to be when sitting on the fender of a John Deere 4020 tractor.

The old 4020 was a workhorse on the farm.  It was old, but dependable.  The paint was a little faded, but it didn't matter.  I remember the yellow seat on it was comfortable and it had lots of spring in it with armrests and a back support.  It had screens on either side that were held in place with springs.  The screens would fill up with Vaseygrass seeds, so you'd have to run your fingers down the screen to remove the seeds to allow air flow.  It was easy to work on, unlike the new computer driven tractors with circuitry and fuses.  Although I remember driving it, I mostly remember sitting on the fender riding on farm roads.

Although this is not our 4020, I found this photo on the Internet of one that looked kinda like it

When riding on the 4020 with my Dad, I sat on the fender.  My legs would dangle off the front and my rubber boots would hit against the rubber grips on the tire that passed underfoot.  The fender was wide, smooth, and comfortable to sit on - unless it was summer.  Then it was as hot as a blast furnace.  There was no air condition on the 4020.  I take that back.  You could control the speed of the "air condition" by how fast you drove.  Believe it or not, the old 4020 could move pretty doggone fast!  There was a rubber-lined hand-hold on the fender, like you see in the photo below, and that is what you'd hold onto while riding on the fender, with your hair blowing in the breeze.  Sometimes my cap would even fly off!

Sometimes after harvesting rice, we'd burn the field's stubble with a forestry drip torch.  It had diesel mixed with gas.  While the driver drove, the fender sitter held the torch and dripped burning fuel down into the rice stubble all around the perimeter of the field and along the levees.  You could see rabbits and rats running and the smoke rising high into the sky.  As the day turned to evening, you could see pillars of fire coming from fence posts that had caught fire.  If the fire got out of hand, the 4020 had a ditching blade on it that you could drop and make a ditch to break the path of the fire and put it out.

As you rode on the backroads around the farm sitting on the fender, the diesel from the exhaust would blow back and envelope you, but I learned to love that smell.  It seemed that you could see everything from that fender.  You could spot the cow that had just calved and had her baby hidden in the tall grass.  You could see down into the gully and watch the striped head turtles jump off of logs or nutria swimming with their noses sticking up above the water or bullfrogs in the cat tails in the irrigation canal.  You could see the steam rising from puddles on the asphalt road after a thunderstorm blew through and then the sun came back out.  You could watch red-tailed hawks circling in the sky above, then swooping down to snatch a rat from the fence row.

Today's tractors are nice (and expensive) and big.  They dwarf old tractors like the 4020.  In today's monstrous tractors, you ride in comfort in a hermetically-sealed environment in air-conditioned comfort, listening to country music in ergonomic chairs.  Computers and GPS control everything.  We unfortunately sold the old 4020.  I haven't forgotten the magic, though, of riding on its fender, seeing the world from the eyes of a ten-year old with my hat on backwards so it wouldn't blow off, while singing Conway Twitty, Crystal Gayle, and Don Williams songs to the top of my lungs while holding on to the rubber handle on the fender for dear life.