do and you enjoy enough that you would forfeit going to the movies?’ he said
‘Grandad, I don’t know.’ I told him to think about it. He’d come home after
work and watch TV and I asked him if that became boring. I thought he was
hopeless. So I thought the best thing to do was to take him to the shows.”
Being a member of about five different shows, Roberts took his grandson
with him and now he has a big interest in the tractors. With the many tractors
he has, Roberts shows his tractors at the shows he’s involved in. “There’s one
in Granbury. Three here in Texas, one in Oklahoma. The next one is going to
be one in Comanche and the one after that in Gainesville. I go to all of them
and become a member,” he said. “Memberships get me into all these shows
for free. I’ve got a tree about two feet wide and about eight feet high that is full
of all the shows I’ve been to and with
all the things I’ve won.” And apparently if you win in the show you
also get a free meal which Roberts
is pretty fond of. “If you don’t have
anything you can’t show but I’ve won
all these things like knives, tools and
dinners. With my membership I get
to go to the show for free and if I win
I get a free meal and free pass and
free membership for the rest of the
year. Becoming a member makes the
payback pretty nice.”
At the moment he has two more
tractors waiting for him in the shed
and he has no plans to quit. “I’m
having trouble handling some of
the pieces, I just don’t have the
strength,” he said. “My older son and
my grandson told me to call them
anytime I need help. But that interferes with their jobs and I just can’t
call every time I need them. It might
be three times a day or I may not
need them for three or four days. I
guess I just can’t bother them so I’m
kind of pushing back. I’m still working on one as we speak. But I’m not
going to quit until I can’t get up in
the morning.”
SEPTEMBER 2016
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
111