By PAMELA ROBINSON, Register Staff Writer
Gainesville Daily Register
Lindsay —
If you’re looking for a Labor Day activity for yourself or the whole family, the annual Antique Tractor and Farm Machinery Show is this Saturday and Sunday at the Tractor Pull Arena at the Hess Farm in Lindsay. The gates open at 9 a.m. and the show starts at 11 a.m.
You don’t have to even be a fan of history to find some of the appliances, gadgets and tractors on display interesting, and besides standing artifacts, there are events during the two-day show that include wheat threshing, hay bailing horse-drawn equipment, tractor games, corn shelling, Kiddie Pedal tractor pull, tractor parade and arts and crafts.
The Cooke County Antique Tractor and Farm Machinery Club is sponsoring the event and will also have the only certified steam engine in the state of Texas to run at the show. The steam engine will be used to bail hay and it will also run in the parade.
Admission for the event is $5 and children ages 12 and under are free.
Concessions will be available for lunch and refreshments and barbecue, hotdogs, hamburgers and the “kinds of stuff that people used to eat” are on the menu.
Club member Willie Joe Matthews said the parade will begin at approximately 2 p.m. each day. The Kiddie Pedal tractor pull is scheduled to take place after the parade and a pedal tractor will be provided by the club for the competition.
Matthews said that everyone that attends the event will enjoy the show.
“This is the way the old time farmers did things,” Matthews said. “This is something that the grandkids would like to see because they don’t even know what happened back then. For some people, the tractors and machinery will bring back memories of their younger years.”
Matthews said the steam tractor will run all day, every day. There will be a mule-powered press to show “the way people used to bail hay,” he continued.
“We also have some of the old combines. We have the thresher farmers used to use to get the grain, before the combine was invented,” he added.
The Cooke County Antique Tractor and Farm Machinery Club was organized because they have a love for the past and see the need to preserve it for future generations.
“The purpose of the Club is to hold an antique tractor show each year,” according to their website at www.antiquetracxtorshow.net.
Each Labor Day weekend exhibitors from Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas, and from many parts of Texas attend the show to display their tractors and machinery. The local club has formed many friendships and keeps in contact with club members and fans from these other states and areas.
Matthews said he has been a member of the club for 45 years and said a group got the local one started in 1985.
The Cooke County Antique Tractor and Farm Machinery Club has approximately 80 members from Cooke County and also some members from Denton and Oklahoma. They meet five to seven times each year and conduct business to organize and run the show each year.
The vendor fee for a 10 x 10 booth for two days for the event is $20 and registration is continuing at the gate.
The tractor pull arena is located approximately three miles north of Lindsay on FM 1199.
For more information about the weekend event or the club call Willie Joe Matthews at (940) 736-4541 or call 1 (800) 689-7861.
