Battle of Sexes, With Monkey Wrenches
By JAMES DAO
Published: October 29, 2005
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Oct. 28 - Tabetha Salsbury, the two-time reigning champion, was in trouble. The clock was running down, she had stumbled during her usually smooth delivery and now the judges were on the attack.
How had she set the worm gear? What had she used to time the engine? What kinds of seals had she installed? No detail about the tractor that a distant uncle had built 73 years ago - and that she had painstakingly rebuilt to shining perfection - seemed beyond scrutiny.
The most oil-sodden mechanic might have been flustered by the barrage. But Ms. Salsbury, 17, is the first girl to win this competition, the coveted Delo national tractor restoration title for high school students. And she is the first person of either sex to win it two years running. The room waited in hushed silence.
David R. Lutman for The New York Times
Cool and composed, Ms. Salsbury, a high school senior from Pueblo, Colo., answered the first question, struggled with the second, and gave up on the third. "She blew it," her father, Hez Salsbury, muttered with obvious dismay.
Three-peats do not come easily in any sport. But if Ms. Salsbury is no longer the national champion in restoring tractors - 18-year-old Tyler Raska of Wallis, Tex., walked off with the $2,500 first-place prize on Friday - she has been a path breaker in a once male-dominated sport that is gaining popularity in rural high schools and helping turn old tractors into big business.
"I think my biggest accomplishment was to give a spark to other girls around the country," said Ms. Salsbury, upbeat even in defeat and sounding like a grizzled veteran despite her young age. "Women are getting their foot in the door."
Ms. Salsbury needed only to watch the team competition to see some of the fruit of her work. Among the 10 finalists was an all-girls team from Decatur, Tex., the first in the 10-year history of the competition to win a medal.
The Decatur girls, who finished second in the team competition, seem an unlikely bunch for the grease-monkey world of tractor restoration. One of the team's six members is a cheerleader, two were homecoming queen finalists and another was a beauty queen. Only one had ever tinkered with cars. The others claimed not to know the working end of a wrench.
But over the course of the last year, they learned the inner anatomy of combustion engines, restored from trailer hitch to hood grille a 1950 Ferguson tractor and beat the local high school's boys team in two out of three local competitions.
Through it all, they endured the taunts of guys, and occasionally girls, in their town of 5,000 people in the football-crazy plains of North Texas, about 60 miles outside Dallas.
"The guys all felt like it was a joke," said Jordan Cade, a 17-year-old senior. "But once we started beating them, they started to respect us."
Having a sense of humor helped. The girls printed brown T-shirts with pink lettering that said on the front, "My boyfriend said I had to choose between him and the tractor," and on the back, "I'm sure going to miss him."
On Friday, however, the girls were in tears when they learned that they had finished only second. "It's bittersweet," said Rick Elmore, their coach and the father of a team member. "No one remembers who lost the World Series.
"Sport" might seem the wrong word to describe an endeavor that entails tapping pistons, turning wrenches and spraying paint - until one sees the intensity of the competition. Serious contestants invest thousands of dollars in their machines and work with extraordinary discipline, spending hours a day on projects for months and even years, sometimes devoting entire summer vacations to finishing tractors for fall events.
Tyler Raska, this year's individual winner, began restoring tractors when he was 12 at the urging of his father, a farmer, who had hoped he would become a better reader by poring over equipment manuals.
He is still a weak reader, his father said. But Tyler has become a master restorer, spending hours a day on his tractors. His latest, a 1959 John Deere 630, has won seven titles, including the national Delo crown, earning him about $20,000 in cash, prizes and scholarship money. He sold an earlier project to a California farmer for $10,000.
"That guy bought it to work on his farm, but said it was too pretty to use," Tim Raska, Tyler's father, said proudly. Tyler plans to start his own tractor-restoring business after attending technical college.
Hez Salsbury says he is getting into the business, too. A part-time welding teacher at a community college, Mr. Salsbury, 46, believes there is a booming market in restored tractors driven by people who grew up on farms, moved to the suburbs and now want to acquire things that remind them of their childhood.
"They put the tractors in their garages, take them to shows and it brings back fond memories," Mr. Salsbury said.
The competition is sponsored by Chevron but held at the national convention of the F.F.A., the group once known as the Future Farmers of America. Contestants do not bring their tractors, but instead describe their projects in thick, neatly bound books filled with color photographs. They also give 20-minute oral presentations before a panel of five judges, using PowerPoint slides, laser pointers and, in some cases, music to embroider dry recitations about overhauling fuel systems.
Ms. Salsbury tried to spice up her presentation by giving each judge a set of wood dowels, buttons and spindles that they were to assemble into tiny toy tractors. But the gift apparently did little to improve her score.
On Thursday, she expressed dismay about her performance. But by Friday, she was philosophical, thinking ahead to college, expressing pride in the heirloom tractor she had restored and musing on her grandfather's efforts to tweak her competitive spirit.
"He always said, 'It's O.K. for girls to restore tractors, but guys can do it better,' " she said. "He knew that would aggravate me and make me work harder."