EDITOR’S NOTE: Pugh first wrote about the workings of the camp tractor in 2016, but he now believes the old tractor has more work to do.

A few quick facts about the camp tractor: First, it looks like a tractor. The exhaust pipe points up through the engine cowling, a design that allows it to be covered by a #303 can obtainable at any recycling location. This prevents rain, chipmunks, small birds, and mice from gaining access.

The tractor tires look like tractor tires. They’re tall and narrow but with wide, self-cleaning lugs that move comfortably through the swamp and in the field but not so much on your front lawn.

The transmission shifts like a tractor’s transmission should — a determined, manual effort whose success is announced with an audible “clunk.”

The old tractor is lean and built for the long haul. It has a profile you can see through from several angles. No clutter here: no starting motor, hydraulic cylinders or hoses, no brake lines, no power steering fluid reservoirs, computers, or computer chips — no plastic anywhere.

Claimed augmentations are dispensed with — no backhoe, under-body scraper, bushwhacker, or mower, no leaf blower, wood chipper, or enclosed cab with cushioned seat and conditioned air.

All are affectations that detract from the old tractor’s primary function: the efficient completion of camp chores.

She’s a 1938 Farmal “A.”

The boys purchased her used nearly 80 years ago. Her engine block was cracked, which allowed them to buy her right. That crack? No problem. They would weld it closed as soon as they could find the time.

They never did.

It fell to the next generation to fashion a cure. It was Dave Richard who stepped up and installed the valve — the contamination release valve.

Here’s how that valve works:

The crack in the engine block allows antifreeze from the cooling system to leak into the oil pan and mix with the lubricating oil, diminishing its effectiveness. This mixing occurs gradually while the tractor is running. Antifreeze is heavier than oil, so, when the tractor’s engine is at rest, the antifreeze settles to the bottom of the oil pan.

That’s where the contamination release valve is located.

Before starting the tractor, the operator opens the release valve, allowing the green antifreeze to drain off until clean oil is observed. The valve is then closed, the oil level topped up, and the day’s work begins.

The fact that the old “A” still provides service after all these years is a testament to the valve’s effectiveness, an efficacy superior to those release valves serving its aging operators where a lack of sustainability and predictability is increasingly evident.

This efficiency caused me to wonder if the old valve might find application elsewhere as a teaching tool. Certainly, there is no shortage of contamination in need of draining.

Consider this:

After hunting season, before the camp fields’ spring preparation, a group of hunters and truckers could move the old “A” out to Washington, D.C. and set her up in the Capitol rotunda.

We could have flyers printed explaining its operation. Volunteers could waylay passing members of Congress to explain how the tractor’s valve could be adapted to provide relief from the constipation-like symptoms of spinelessness from which they continuously suffer.

To those Michigan congressmen whom the Detroit Free Press (Jan. 10, 2021) referred to as “People of the Lie,” they could suggest resignation. These were congressmen who tried to overturn the last presidential election by seeking to decertify hundreds of thousands of Michigan votes — ours among them.

The Free Press additionally classified three congressmen as “Bitter-Enders” in recognition of their obstructionist acts after the Capitol riots. Ours was among them.

Both People of the Lie and Bitter-Enders are convinced their abilities are superior to those of lesser souls whose morality they deny and whose faith in democracy they would destroy.

Rather than taking their ball and bat home to practice following a loss, they try to change the score, even to the point of mounting an attack on the scoreboard.

If these members cannot now appreciate the need to administer an evacuant to themselves, then members of the Capitol police force — those men and women who had to face the mob and whose lives were threatened — would, I’m sure, step up to open the valve of a contamination releasing contrivance.

But what are the chances of Congress implementing such a beneficial appliance, especially when the newly appointed speaker of the House is a leader of the vote deniers?

Zip.

It was ever thus. The job of cleaning house falls to us.

It is our responsibility to utilize the rectification valve our forefathers worked so hard and long for — the one so many of them died for:

The right for all of us to vote.

Doug Pugh’s “Vignettes” runs monthly. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.