Tim Tabbert
It's well over two years ago since Tim passed into the Lord's everloving arms. I think about him a lot because we spent so much time together. He was truly one of a kind. Nowhere near perfect, but who among us is?
There's a definite spirit to being a
Queen's Liner. Membership has its benefits. It's an Exclusive Club, and it has
Prestige, and nobody's getting in. They can want in, but they're
not getting in. You can only get in by birth, marriage, or moving there
and living there at least ten years. And before anyone brings it up, you're right: I no
longer live on the Queen's Line, but I personally ratified the rules to effect
Lifelong Status for members like myself and Cory McClure and the MacKay boys. Tim Tabbert was for sure a Queens Liner. As a matter of fact he was pretty much the Ambassador of the Queens Line.
There are so many stories to tell. I'm afraid my memory will fail me if I don't jot them down. And yet I'm afraid I'll get carpal tunnel syndrome if I do.
Timmy was a wildman. And a legend. Nobody that knew him, especially in his younger days, would argue that. The tales of him going for a spin around the top of the empty silo hanging from the tripod made my hair stand on end. Or him sprinting from one end to the other on the peak of the barn. He was a daredevil in his youth for sure.
One of my favorite times with Tim was in his black 1965 Ford Galaxy 500. Him and Terry and Billy McClure had gone swimming at Stone's Lake. I went with them, but what I did couldn't be referred to as swimming. Sinking like a stone would be a more apt description. So I stuck close to shore because none of them were sober enough to be counted on to save me. Anyway, we came back, and dropped Terry and Bill off, and Tim said to me, "Let's go dry our towels". His idea of drying our towels was holding them out the windows at 105MPH as we tore down the Queens Line (and back) in his Galaxy. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Devil's Eyebrow at McLaughlin's was gone by then, or we would have gotten some serious air time.
Whatever it was we were doing, Tim and Uncle Charlie (Roberts) and I were hauling... er... donkey... in the old Tabbert blue Chev stepside truck, with its big 'BERG' decals on the doors, up the Queens Line one afternoon. Tim was talking to Uncle Charlie about someone else driving fast, "... doing damn near eighty". He looked down at the speedometer, and said, "THIS thing's doing damn near eighty!" As if it was doing that all by itself and his foot planted on the floor had nothing to do with it.
Uncle Charlie laughed with his "TUSS SUSS SUSS!" But he was hanging on for dear life. I was having a whale of a time, as usual. Driving fast with Billy McClure I would have likely been scared half to death. With Tim it was all in a day's work. When he slowed down later on I thought he'd up and got old on us. He then was always telling me I drove way too fast. I wonder where I learned that from?
One evening Tim got me to go to the back field of the home place with him to crop. I was 13 or 14 at the time. He had got their David Brown 990 and cultivator stuck back there earlier in the day. The plan was, I was to pull him out with their International 434 and then disc while he cultivated. Late night cropping was all the rage to a farm kid and I was an eager participant. We went back with the 434 and disc on the road. We pulled into the field and unhooked the disc and went to try to get the 990 out. It was in pretty good. We managed to unhook the cultivator, and backed the 434 up close to the 990. Tim hooked the chain up and warned me carefully, "I've got you hooked up high, so if the front end comes off the ground you push that clutch in, got it?"
"Got it".
We had really good weight transfer that way, and we got the 990 out in fairly short order. Tim then hooked the bigger 990 to the cultivator by the chain to drag it out sideways. We turned the 434 around and lit up the cultivator with it. He hooked the chain up to the top link of the 990's three point hitch, and stood that tractor almost on end hauling the cultivator out. He skillfully rocked the 990 a few inches at a time, using the front end weight dropping to inch the cultivator forward out of the mud.
The sideways view of Tim on the 990, its headlights pointing into the dark night sky, black smoke pouring, on top of the round knoll where we were, the whole scene lit up by the 434's headlights, is burned into my psyche. I can still see it, hear it, and even smell it. If I was a painter, I would paint that picture to have on my wall. It was an agricultural scene to behold. And only Tim Tabbert could have made it so darn epic.
Tim and Bill Oates owned a welder together or had some mutual arrangement. Whatever the case was it was kept in Bill's shop. There was a craze when I was still a kid of turning motorcycles and bicycles into 'choppers' by extending the front forks and giving them a rake and a long wheelbase. I had an old Universal hi-rise bike I was no longer using. It was still in excellent condition. Tabbert's had a pile of old bikes outside behind the house near the clothesline pole. Tim took the fork off of one of them and welded it to the ones on mine down there one humid summer night while the fireflies blinked on and off above the grass next the driveway. He made a really good job of it. Naturally, he had the honour of taking the first ride. I can still see him out on the road in front of Bill's farm on that bike. To be that young and carefree again...
In later years, Tim used to tell me my love
of loud rock'n'roll was going to deafen me. He said he could hear the AC/DC blasting
on my tractor's stereo all the way up at his place when I was round baling. I didn't think it could go that loud. I was actually kind of proud of that. Well, I
can still hear (even though my ears ring quite a bit), and he didn't get liver disease, so I guess neither of our habits did us in.
The Tabbert's and Bowes's represented the Queens Line at the local tractor pulls. Tim told me he knew it was me coming to the Beachburg Fair when he heard the stereo blasting in my 1850 while I was just turning in from Main Street. I was young, wild, and free; capricious and unbridled. A long-haired, farmboy rock'n'roller. I drove like every destination was a race, farmed like a maniac, hardly ever slept, and blasted my music at as close to concert volume as I could get it. As old as he was already then, Dad had to stay alive to keep me from getting myself killed. Tim was slower by that time with marriage, fatherhood, and the onus of farm business in general, but I was still as wild as a bald eagle's cry. I was just about as crazy as a guy could get stone cold sober.
The fact that I was a
teetotaller and Tim, well, wasn't, made for some rather odd buddies, but we both
respected each other's right to choose. It didn't affect our relationship much
if any. If anything sometimes alcohol can make people even more honest, and by
that I mean they might say or admit things when a little under the influence
that they wouldn't normally. Tim was no different. One evening I went to his
place but he wasn't home. He came in just behind me, slightly... liquidated. He
came over to me and put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a good jostle
and said, "This is my little buddy, and I think the world of him!" I don't know who he was introducing me to because there weren't any
strangers there, but he said it anyway.
When I got into trouble with some very over the top, out of control authorities, Tim was outraged. He was furious at the things they accused me of and disgusted with their complete lack of understanding of anything relating to farming. When he saw them set up a 'Community Service' booth at our Queens Line plowing match and tractor pull, with a sideways look of pure, undisguised disdain and contempt, he muttered through clenched teeth, "The only 'community service' they could do is to kill themselves". He knew they were corrupt and as crooked as a dog's hind leg and what they were doing to me was a sham and he didn't hold back in his opinion. He never withdrew his support of me. That meant more than I can ever say.
One thing that I can say
about Tim for sure is he was honest. He wasn't always complimentary, but he was
honest. I cannot recall one time ever that I had a sense of him being untruthful to me.
That just wasn't in him, and without a doubt it was a core quality of his. It's
unfortunately rare in this world now and I hold it in very high regard.
When he built his feeder yard, I ran Danny's Massey Ferguson 294-4 and carried the concrete from the cement truck in the bucket while Tim and a crew raked and screeded it. One morning his dad, Henry, drove in to look at it and the concrete wasn't quite set. He left tracks in it. When Tim came out and saw the tracks in his brand new yard and all his hard work he was so mad he broke a shovel handle around one of the steel posts. He was still fuming and saying a whole lot of unpleasant things when I arrived to help at the barn cleaner section. The shovel was still wrapped around the post. Unless he later repaired them, those tracks may still be there inside the gate to this day.
One Fall Tim had me bring my 1550 and New Holland Crop Chopper up and chop the corn stalks for bedding in the front field next Ivan Hawthorne's. For the life of me I can't remember for sure if we blew it into a pile outside or into the loft of the barn. It seems to me we went the loft route for easy delivery to the barn floor, even though that seems a little risky. I can't really say for sure. My memory isn't what it used to be. Tim always thought the Hiniker cab on my 1550 made running it noisier than being open station, but on those chilly Fall days, it was a darn sight nicer in there with its powerful heater going than being out on an open Queens Line field in that pesky West wind. We had a great old time. We knocked the field out in two pretty easy afternoons and early evenings. Farming was fun when it went right.
Sometimes things didn't go quite right. We had a snowfall after I accidently ingested a half round bale that was covered in a snowdrift. It was the end of field half bale and I forgot it was there. I could see the full size bales but not it. There was a huge WHUFFFF! of surprisingly fine-chopped hay thrown into the air and landing in a fan shape on the white snow. And a gut-wrenching clanking. It twisted the shaft from the gearbox to the auger drive off. Being that it was a bit of a goofy, off-brand blower, it was going to take some time to get it repaired. To help out, Tim came down with his 990 and blower to clean our yard out. Always the showman, he wanted to show me how much better his blower worked than mine, and against my warning backed into the deep snow below our driveway on the MacKay side. That time showing off backfired on him. Well, the backfire really came on ME. In the deep, hard-packed snow, the chain came off the auger drive. A little sheepish, he pulled back up on the driveway and we set about trying to get the chain back on. I wanted to go get wrenches to slacken the chain tensioner, but he was in too much of a hurry for that. He wanted to try to just roll the chain back on. We fought with it a fair bit, and all of a sudden it gave way when I wasn't expecting it and it rolled around and I guess the cotter pin of the master link caught my glove and pulled it in with my left index finger between the chain and the sprocket. I was jumping up and down and I won't repeat what I said, but it was very loud and very, very emphatic. With my free hand and both of Tim's, we got it rolled back so my finger came out. I won't say what it hurt like either. I was pretty mad at him and he knew it and he was noticeably subdued for a while after that. When ever it was going to rain or snow after that I knew it, because 'my Timmy finger' always told me so beforehand. Many years later I bashed that finger with a hammer laying a floor for Sharon and a column of blood shot right up the wall. Adding that on top of the Timmy injury I passed out in the chair she dragged me to.
One Spring Tim decided to put crop in the front field next Bennett's. It wasn't plowed in the Fall. Whether he ran out of time in the Fall, or only made up his mind over the Winter, I don't know. He started to chisel plow it with the Allis and soil saver. He asked me to come disc for him behind the chisel plow with his spartan but trusty old Belarus 611 and Massey Ferguson 12 foot disc. Oh, mercy, it was rough following the chisel plow. It had been a dry Spring and the chisel plow was making one heck of a chunky, erratic job of it. The Massey discs just literally weren't cutting it. We stopped, and discussed (disc-us-sed: get it?) the situation. I said, "Let's go get my White disc. It's way heavier per blade and cuts a lot better. We can put my bridge harrows behind and it should do a lot better job". Tim thought that was a good idea, or at least worth a try, so we unhooked the Belarus and ran down to my place and hooked up my White 251 disc and headed back. There was no good way to move the harrows other than carry them, so we hopped in my car and went back and used the loader on my Cockshutt 1650 backhoe to just carry them up, hanging full size.
On the trip back up on the backhoe with the harrows, Tim came up with the idea of hooking both my disc and harrows behind his disc. Their Massey disc had a rear hitch and hydraulic remotes at the back. I was seriously dubious. I told him I didn't think the Belarus could ever possibly pull that load. That disc and harrows is normally all a 50-plus horsepower tractor ever wanted. He wanted to give it a try anyhow and he was Boss, so we hooked it all up together, despite my misgivings. I started off and to my great surprise it actually could pull it. I could hardly believe it. I would have nearly bet the farm it couldn't. I completely expected we'd be unhooking my disc and pulling the Massey disc off the field and going back to the original plan. No, against what I thought was my better judgement in this case, it could actually do it.
Thoroughly pleased with himself, he jumped back in the Allis and took off and I followed him. I couldn't match the pace he was making with that load, and steadily fell behind, but it still pulled it, and I was for sure making a much better job than before. It was really dusty and hard to see outside the cab as the lights tended to make a 'grayout' in the dust. When Tim lapped me, he stopped the Allis abruptly and came running over and stopped me too. There was bluish-gray smoke coming from the back of the Belarus. In all the dust I couldn't see it, and the cab was so surprisingly well sealed I never even smelled it. It turned out it was the brakes. Tim had done the driving hooking up and set the parking brake. I wasn't familiar with that tractor and didn't know where the parking brake handle was, much less that it was on. I burnt the brakes right up. I couldn't see the smoke mixed in with the dust through the dust-covered windows and never smelled it and never felt any undue heat build up or drag. I would have stopped immediately to investigate if I did. I felt terrible about the situation, but it became bragging rights for Tim: his '60 horsepower' Belarus pulled a medium 12 foot disc, a heavy 10 foot disc, and a 10 foot set of brand new bridge harrows, ALL with the parking brake engaged the whole time! The damage was done so we just disengaged the parking brake, and it was "DRIVE ON!", as Tim would say. He installed new brake discs in it the following summer.
That Belarus was a source of muted pride for Tim. He only paid five thousand dollars for it; "Only two payments: Twenty-Five Hundred Dollars each!" It served him well and he for sure got his money's worth out of it. I was skeptical, to say the least, at first, but it really proved its mettle, and for sure impressed me with what it could do. A little crude by other tractor standards, granted, but still acceptable. I took a load of grain corn up past Beachburg for him with it once and thought it drove surprisingly well on the road. A little bouncy on the front end, maybe, but that was it. It was tight and quiet. One time the injection pump quit in the field. He tore the injection pump down right there in the field, figured out what it needed, got the part, and put it back together and got it going again! I don't know anyone else that would do what he did and I don't know anyone else that COULD do what he did, but he did it. Tim Tabbert wasn't daunted by a little thing like rebuilding a Diesel injection pump far away from a sterile workbench.
Tim was the one who taught
me the weather rules of thumb, 'Big Snow: Little Snow; Little Snow: Big snow', 'No Dew before a Rain', and, 'You need a good rain to dry up the ground in the Spring' on our clay loam Champlain Seabed Queens Line soil.
One of my dawning's of some form of wisdom was to come up with the adage, "The greatest Respect you can ever pay anyone is to remember what they taught you". Tim taught me a lot and I strive to hold on to it whether I ever use it or not.
In case I've wandered too much or you have, the gist of all of this is I looked up to Tim. I appreciated his matter of fact input in my life. He didn't always make the best choices and I didn't either, but we always tried to give each other the best advice and support we could. I liked to hear his approach to a problem. I admired his acute sense of fairness. I enjoyed his long visits with the common thread of farming and tractors and equipment. The world doesn't seem like such a friendly and relaxed place without him in it anymore and I for one sure don't like it.
Tim could be a little rough
around the edges for sure, but he had a really soft side as well. At lunchtime one day I
dropped over with my blonde little 3 year old ray of sunshine daughter Kelsey.
Kelsey knew she was adorable, and she hammed it up to its best effect whenever or wherever an
audience presented itself. She would chatter away and show anyone who would take notice whatever
it was she had in her hands at the time. Tim and Henry, were sitting
on the couch. Tim had Kelsey on his knee and she was chattering up a bright but
unintelligible little commentary on the toy she had with her, proudly showing
it off to them. Tim hugged her in tight to him and gave her a side to side rock
of affection as she beamed and squealed in delight in his attention. He looked
at me over her little blonde ponytailed head and said, "You just can't
help falling in love with her!" Kelsey always surveyed a stranger
carefully, but she would jump into Tim's lap without a second thought. Maybe it was the beard. No, it was someone who adored her and she responded in a positive way.
On the entire other end of the spectrum, I remember one of his
girlfriends one time bellowing at him from the porch, "Pull your ****ing
weight!!!" He WAS pulling his weight. And hers too. And her kids.
While she was off in Pembroke shopping.
Tim's Allis was sitting out
in the field where he was plowing. Or trying to. I parked the car and trudged out to where he was,
alternately slipping and sliding or the mud sucking at my rapidly saturating
shoes. Tim was under the plow frame, clawing wads of corn stubble laden with
clay off the mouldboards with his bare hands.
He had been pulling huge
clods of heavy soaking wet sod off of the plow all afternoon until I found him almost sobbing in frustration. It was raining and he was drenched and covered
in mud. The plow just kept plugging and plugging in the corn stubble in our gray clay soil and he was at his wit's end; physically and emotionally
worn right out.
He asked me, not for the
first time, "Have you ever felt like killing yourself?" I'd learned
over the years that was his code for needing emotional support.
I knew he was beat and just
beating himself down further by continuing in defeat. Sometimes the best thing
to do is just leave it and try again tomorrow. I have found, more than once,
that just going back at something in a fresh start another day without even changing a single other thing can make all the difference.
"Tim, come on, leave it
alone, buddy. You've had enough. It'll still be there tomorrow. Get yourself
cleaned up and some dry clothes on and let's go to the Kountry Kitchen. I'll
buy you supper and you can unwind. You gotta get away from this for a while.
Maybe it'll go a little better tomorrow". At least it might not be raining tomorrow.
He took me up on it and left
the tractor and plow right there where they sat in the field. We had a great
supper. He noticeably brightened and relaxed and stopped beating himself up. He
was back to himself and thinking positively before we headed back.
When we got back, he wasn't
out of the car before his... uh... 'better half', home from her outing, was bellowing
off the porch at him. His shoulders instantly slumped, his bright demeanour
vanished, and he trudged off to his browbeating fate with his head down.
She undid all I had tried to do for him in an hour and half in the course of a second and a half. I drove away thinking it seemed like I had completely wasted my time and money, but at least he felt better for a little while. I never forgot that moment, and the lesson I learned of the effect an approach, good or bad, can have on someone. You can make someone's day better, or you can make it worse, and with only a few words or a gesture. It's all up to you. For goodness' sake, try to conduct yourself in a constructive fashion.
That nonsense and misery ended for him when he met Connie. Tim was the happiest and most relaxed I'd ever seen him after Connie came into his life. He didn't need emotional support anymore. Not once. He just wanted to shoot the breeze and pass the time with a friend. Even though his visits naturally became fewer, they became more enjoyable.
Aww, man, I could go on and on, but I'm tired, my Timmy finger is aching from typing, and you're likely bored. Tim is sadly gone and we just can't bring him back. All we can do is keep his memory alive.
Quickly going back to our youth, I was standing in the Tabbert home yard after supper one hayday summer evening when Tim came flying in with the 990 and two empty hay wagons. He went past me, and I did a double take when the wagons came unhitched and were rolling to a stop by themselves past the elevated farm fuel tanks. There was Tim, wheeling around in front of the milkhouse to head back out, with the drawpin dangling from a piece of baler twine in his hand! And a hearty, "GOTCHA!" Timmy laugh. That's the way I choose to remember him right there. Or standing the 990 on end pulling out the cultivator that late, dark night. Or tearing down the Queens Line in his Galaxy 500. Or... you get the picture.
When Tim's son, Chris, came to my shop and asked me to be a Pallbearer for his Dad, grown man or not, I broke right down and sobbed. The Honour was huge and I willed myself to do my lifelong friend and neighbour right. Burying his ashes in the toolbox of the Tabbert David Brown 990 was the most fitting thing ever. It would have been very strange for anyone else, but it was exactly the right thing to do for Tim. We laid him to rest on a very hot and sunny July summer day when Tim would have normally been laying down hay for all he was worth. It all seemed surreal and yet so final.
I couldn't believe we were saying goodbye to such a Queens Line - and Ottawa Valley - legend, but we were. The Pallbearers practiced the handoff of 'The Football', as we nicknamed it, in an air guitar fashion, to make sure we got it right. We did that because I said to them, "We don't dare drop Timmy, or he'll never let us live it down in Heaven!" They all heartily laughed and agreed, and we made a few practice runs through it to make sure we knew exactly what we were doing and could do it smoothly and with Dignity.
It took a long, long time for me to adjust to the reality that Tim was really gone. I'm not good with partings. Tim had been so much a part of my life. When I got my new shop in Cobden, it always seemed like he was just going to walk through the door and get me to show him around. He would have admired all the new shelving and bin racking, asked how all the new packing equipment worked that I bought for that shop and took a genuine, almost childlike interest in it. He always liked to watch me pack orders in the shop on the farm, and then the shop here where I've lived for a long time now. And he would have at the new shop, too, especially with the new equipment. He used to say something like, "I can do a lot of things, but the things you do when you're packing are beyond me..." Watching me whiz through some motion of packing a tractor parts order, he'd say, "You've done that before!" And a hearty Timmy laugh. That was one of his highest compliments for a job well done.
After familiarizing himself with the new layout and gizmos, he would have dropped in the chair on the other side of my desk with a big sigh of taking a load off, and so would begin another long discussion about everything to do with tractors and equipment and repairs and farming and my business of selling tractor parts. I so wanted him to see my new setup. It always seemed like I was just going to look up from picking or packing an order and he'd be there. I kept telling myself, "He's not coming", and yet I kept glancing toward that door. Some bad dreams you never wake up from.
Yep, I still miss Timmy, but the best times with him are yet to come.
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