Old Engines and a Cowboy Artist

Spent a couple of hours this morning at the Farmland Preservation Festival held near McIntosh which is a very small town just north of Ocala, Florida. I traveled there to see Bill Roberts, a Local Cowboy Painter, who worked cattle in Florida for 35 years, is now 82 years young and lives in Cedar Key, a small fishing village one hour west of Gainesville on the west coast of Florida. Mr. Roberts was displaying his wonderful paintings, pushing his book...All I Ever Wanted To Be Was A Cowboy and generally talking to folks and having a Great Time. Cowboy Artist

But what I was really interested in though, were the Classic Old Tractors and Classic Old Engines! I promise, there is no agricultural herstory in my past, at least none that I'm aware of. I'm a city girl from Miami, please! Closest I ever got to the fields...well I never got close to the fields! But I have a real Thing for Old Tractors and these 'Hit and Miss' engines. I could stand for hours just watching them run, breathing in that gasoline/oil/grease smell and listening to them putt putt along. Maybe it's because my father, the mechanic, whose father was...a mechanic... used to take me as a little kid to see these old engines. So naturally I think of him! I loved them then and I love them now! I've pretty much stopped trying to explain my attraction to them and the Old Tractors to people because I don't understand it myself. So if you're interested...

Checking the Line
Smokey Joe
Builds Working Models of the engines...Cool!