Busted Tractors and Rusty Knuckles by Roger Welsch is a quick moving and fun-reading book for any gearhead or hot rodder who has ever brought a piece of forlorn machinery back from the dead.
Roger Welsch is a fairly well-known humorist and the author of a stack of books, several of which are based around his love of old tractors and the weird attachment us gearheads have to our projects.
The story in this book is one of giving life to a fairly wasted old Allis WC tractor. Living on a Nebraska farm, Welsch deals with the typical stuff lots of us do. Wrenching in the cold, battling old rusty parts, and sometimes fighting the urge to just put your wrenches down and walk away from the thing forever. The payoff for finishing the project is something that just totally sums up what it means to be from the Midwest, live in an area with an appreciation for its history and doesn’t take it self too seriously.
Welsch has a very folksy writing style that may turn off some readers who are looking for a more formal look at the technical process he engages in, but we found it to be engaging and, frankly, fun to read along when someone else was trying to surmount the same problems we’ve been through.
You certainly do not need to be a tractor person to enjoy this book. You do need to be a person who has a genuine love for this mechanical mental hitch we all seem to share around here. It’s a quick read, and can easily be devoured over a quiet weekend with time to spare. We’ll warn you though, Welsch has written several books similar to this one, so you may be kicking off a buying spree if you like this book.
