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Red neck recreation
Even the toughest cowboy or the most determined farmer needs to have some fun. Rural America has always based its culture on "work hard, play hard" and the type of entertainment is often surprising in its simplicity and utility. Rodeos were started by getting a crowd together to ride rank stock from nearby farms and ranches, sometimes without a fence around the arena. Recently I've witnessed the new generation of using what you were going to put in the junk yard to entertain a hometown crowd. It's unknown how a loosely construed sport gets started. It probably starts with beer and a few mechanically inclined daredevils talking up what they can do and then going out and proving it. Sometimes a new vehicle is the genesis, like an off road motorcycle or the four-wheel drive pickup truck, which leads to motocross and mud racing. But sometimes it's a vehicle that has already served its purpose in industry or transportation and, just before it goes to the recycler, is used in ways the original designers never intended. I'm talking about combine demolition derbies and school bus races! Last Saturday night both were held at the Southern Iowa Fair in Oskaloosa, Iowa. The grandstand crowd on the half-mile dirt track was estimated at 2,000 screaming folks who just wanted to have a good time watching things we don't often see. The track was wet down in front of the stands and large tires were walled up on each end. The combines in competition were a cross section of the machines of the 1970s in strange paint jobs with roll cages and seat belts. The objective of a demolition derby is to be the last one moving. Not a lot of nuances and style points in this event. The strategy is to flatten the tires of your opponents or knock out their undercarriage or just keep hitting them until their header comes off and they are disqualified. All of these things happened in five 10-minute battles throughout the evening. Each time a heat ended, the machines were towed out of the ring to an eager bunch of volunteer mechanics and welders who bent them back into shape and welded supports where Baldwin and Deere never intended. To entertain the crowd between combine smashings, the promoter had a fleet of six school busses and one semi tractor. They drove around the track as fast as they could go with moves in the corners that NASCAR competitors would call "stupid." Just the thought of the vehicles that safely carry our children from home to school being run at full speed and sliding side by side through turn after turn was just about as much fun as the crowd could handle. The "outlaw" semi tractor could outrun them all but began shaking so violently that pieces started to fly off on every lap. The busses hit each other so often that the fourth turn became a junkyard, with volunteers running out and hauling bumpers and fiberglass fenders off the track just to keep the race going. The winner of the bus race was pretty much undefined with five still running at the end and the little red one blowing steam out of the radiator. In the combine pit, a big Massey and a smaller John Deere fought to a draw and split first and second place money. All the drivers and crews got together and laughed at the antics of the evening and everyone appeared to have gotten their money's worth and went home happy. You might think this is a modern phenomenon but I recall the donkey basketball and baseball games of my youth. This vehicle (the donkey) was still around but no longer of much use. The promoters came up with a ridiculous role for them; the crowds came out to pay their money and laugh uproariously. ESPN has boosted some new sports that have a lot of action, antics and danger. Even Disney has commercially sponsored competitions that show off the skills of lumberjacks and sawyers. I don't think combines and school busses will be replacing Bush Series racing, but you never know. So as you attend organized and sophisticated sporting events, remember these county fair attractions with mud-slinging, metal-crunching, death-defying men and machines. They may be having a whole lot more fun than you are. Editor's note: Ken Root is now celebrating his 34th year as an agricultural professional. His career began as a vocational agriculture teacher then turned to agricultural broadcasting and writing as well as environmental consulting and association management. He was the original host of AgriTalk (1994-2001) and now is lead farm broadcaster for WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa.
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