The Size of Their Toys

That's what separates, we are told, the men from the boys. You've seen our exposés on Tonkas and Doepke toys, so it won't surprise you that when I learned the national meet of the Historic Construction Equipment Association was being held nearby wild tractors couldn't keep me away.

As you'd expect there were trucks and cranes, graders and road rollers. There were tractors of all descriptions: John Deere, Farmall, Ford and Oliver. There were funky machines like a Fordson with tracks and a limbo dozer. There were Caterpillars from Ten to Sixty and everything in between.

But most delightful were the action figures, doing what construction equipment is meant to do: grading, earth moving, bulldozing, alone or in teams. The power shovels were shoveling, loading trucks, even the Beverly Hillbillies came out to play. Star of the power shovels is the Northwest D80, a much more imposing sight than the modern loader. Of a different persuasion is the dragline shovel, good for digging in hard-to-reach places. There was even a gravel sifter in motion, sifting, screening and loading one of the many dump trucks.

The event was held at the Zagray Homestead Museum in Colchester, Connecticut. The late Zagray brothers were eccentric collectors with a fetish for Farmall F20s. They reportedly had more than forty of them in a forest of Farmalls.

Jill remarked that we hadn't seen many girls. It wasn't long before we learned why. The organizers had set up a play area for children. Boys, it seems, are content to look at other people's machinery, but where the kids dig dirt girls rule.