With five and a half-acres of land to take care of, I knew it was necessary for us to have a tractor. My wife's brother gave her a tractor, so I hired a man named Don Farris to haul it from Brenham, Texas to our place in Granbury. He and his wife both made the trip. They were a nice couple who said their son, Tom, also worked for the Union Pacific as a carmen.
It didn't take me long to figure out how it worked. I bought a brush hog and then was ready to cut some grass and weeds on a large scale.
During my first morning off from work, I got the tractor ready to run and then went to get Butch. I wanted some company and Butch is really great to pass the time with.
Butch is our farm monkey now, a pig tailed monkey, a relative to the rock ape family. He is a highly intelligent monkey, and today, he must have known what I planned to do, because he was ready to do it too. When I let him out of his cage, he climbed to my shoulders and rode up there.
As I started the tractor, I thought he might cut and run. But he didn't. Obviously, the noise didn't bother him one bit. He knew he was perfectly safe with me. It was about mid-morning when I started to mow the acres of grass and weeds around the house.
From the very first, Butch was as excited as a little kid. He jumped from my shoulders to the front of the tractor. He would sit down and look over the side and watch the ground as it passed beneath the wheels and then stand up and raise both hands high in the air and wave. He looked so cute. I wish I had a picture of him doing that.
Butch was all over that tractor. Pretty soon I had a great idea. I got out of the seat and put Butch in it. Then I placed both of his hands on the steering wheel and told him to steer. I took my hands off the wheel and Butch, my little farming buddy was driving the tractor all by himself.
I helped him and coaxed him for a while and eventually Butch seemed to understand that the tractor and brush hog went in the direction that he turned the wheel.
Soon, Butch began to have the time of his life. He turned left, then right, then this way and then that way. He went in circles. Granted, the grass wasn't being mowed in a straight line, but it was still being mowed, and that was the main thing.
After a while, I got thirsty, and after telling Butch to stay with the tractor, I jumped off to get a drink of water. I had a thermos of water near by, so I didn't have to go all the way to the house.
While watching Butch very closely and sipping on cold water I heard a sound behind me. There to my astonishment was a group of people who just happened to be driving by and saw a monkey driving a tractor all by himself. They couldn't believe their eyes, so they just had to stop and watch him for a while. They seemed as excited a Butch was.
As other cars passed by and saw cars pulled over to the side of the road, their curiosity got the better of them. And, when they saw the reason everyone else had stopped, they stopped too. In just a short time, there were about 50 people standing around watching Butch as he drove the tractor.
When I felt that Butch had been by himself long enough, I jumped back on the tractor. Butch jumped to the front of the tractor, stood up, and raising his arms as high as he could, "Ooh-ed" at the crowd. They laughed and clapped and cheered. That Butch! He's such a show-off. Secretly, I was as pleased as punch with him.
Eventually, everyone in the cars left and Butch and I finished mowing. The place looked really neat and trim. Butch did a good job, and he had good time, and so did I.
In fact, we had both worked ourselves up a pretty good appetite. We finished just in time, because Pat had dinner ready for both of us.
I put Butch back in his cage and fed him first. Then with a contented sigh of satisfaction, I walked back to the house before my dinner got cold.
Duce is the penname of Carman J.W. Vance at the Crest Yard in Fort Worth.
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