Some may recall the time I accompanied my friend and lawn tractor collector Terry Wolfe in Herding the Wheel Horses South to a show in Florida. In the last paragraph of the report, I noted that the camping involved made it different from most trips I had taken recently and did not “rule out doing it again”. Despite not ruling it out, it did not happen for seven years.
It’s not that Terry had not asked. The Florida show had been something of a bucket list item for Terry. There is an all-Wheel Horse show in Pennsylvania that he has participated in multiple times and which we have discussed in the past. A common conflict is the annual Lincoln Highway Association Conference. This year it was only an almost conflict. The LHA conference is just a day’s drive away and I would be home from the Wheel Horse show the night before my planned departure. On Wednesday, we headed east to the Wheel Horse Collectors Club show near Arendtsville, PA, with a herd of seven — though not all the same seven as in 2017 — Wheel Horses in tow.
There they are in the display area. The two at the left end of the line are what we used for transportation during the show. I rode the restored 1962 702. Terry rode the heavily modified black hot rod which began life in 1963. The third photo is of our view while at rest.
I do not know enough about Wheel Horse to properly appreciate the many restored and unrestored tractors so I find my attention attracted by some of the wilder concoctions.
Here’s a motorcycle made entirely of Wheel Horse parts and a self-propelled Wheel Horse wagon. I guess that engine-less chassis with a hitch attached is an all-in-one tractor and trailer.
Complete ready-to-ride Horses can be found along with “projects” and plenty of Horse parts.
There is a “parade” on Friday afternoon MCed by Wheel Horse maven Wild Bill Pearson. Bill knows pretty much everything there is to know about Wheel Horses and, in addition to asking participants about themselves and their rides, will more often than not tell the riders something about their ride that they didn’t know themselves.
Terry took the “Runt Rod” through near the end of the parade. Its many modifications include lowering part of the frame to accommodate the two-cylinder 16 HP engine without altering the hood, moving the steering out of the way, and getting the engine’s vertical rotation to turn a horizontal driveshaft. Bill became more impressed as he realized now tidily each of these problems had been solved and ended up distracted to the point that he forgot to ask his standard who-are-you and where-are-you-from questions.
Free ice cream and an evening cruise were other regularly scheduled events that Terry had told me to expect. The ice cream, which we ate in our chairs in the shade was quite welcome following a 95-degree afternoon.
Beach Boys’ music (I think it was “Little Deuce Coupe” but my memory is shaky.) signaled the start of the cruise which consisted of everybody who wanted to driving an oval path around a sort of infield. This included some fairly young kids. The show operators are pretty lenient and the attendees are very responsible and it works out well for everybody. During the day, it was not unusual to see pre-schoolers steering a slow-moving tractor while a parent walked alongside. Safe behavior during the cruise is one result.
Saturday’s big event was the backing challenge. The object is to crack or at least touch, a stationary egg without breaking it. Most or all of the participants were pretty young and quite a few were successful.
We were loaded and headed home shortly after noon. Some of our early route followed the Lincoln Highway in Pennsylvania so I snapped a picture of a marker. Almost as soon as I get home, I will be heading to the Lincoln Highway in Indiana.
