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Published Friday, August 19, 2011 in Local

Photo by Sarah Fay Campbell

Frank Harris of Senoia is grand marshal for the 2011 Turin Tractor Parade, which begins 10 a.m. Saturday.

Harris to lead Turin Tractor Parade

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Newnan Times-Herald

For Frank Harris of Senoia, being the grand marshal for the 17th annual Turin Antique Tractor Parade is quite an honor.

Harris, 85, grew up on a farm, but in those early days, he plowed with a mule. His father bought their first tractor, a Model B John Deere, around 1943, Harris said. After the war, he bought a Model M.

The weekend's festivities kick off with the annual street dance tonight, sponsored by the town of Turin. The free street dance runs 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Food and beverage vendors will be on hand, and music will be provided by Jim McKnight.

The parade through downtown Turin kicks off at 10 a.m. Saturday. Then the focus will shift to the nearby pulling grounds for the show and pull. New this year will be a pulling event for lawn tractors. There is also the pedal race for the kids, and the "slow race" where the goal is to run the tractors as slow as possible without stalling.

Harris has owned his fair share of tractors, but he used most of them in his pulpwooding business -- usually to pull logging trucks out of the mud.

He would also use them for plowing his garden. It was always a garden for personal use, not a business endeavor -- even though it was about an acre each year. He and his wife, Georgene, would try to freeze enough of their produce to last the winter.

Harris' first tractor was a John Deere B. He's owned a 5,000 Ford, a 4,000 Ford, a 3,000 Ford, a 231 Massey Ferguson, and the biggest, a 756 International.

Harris thinks he's been to every one of the annual Turin antique tractor events, which include the parade, "farm power show" and the tractor pull. He's never competed. "I just go watch them," he said.

Harris was born May 7, 1926, "where Peachtree City is now."

"There wasn't a Peachtree City then," Harris said.

He grew up on his parents' farm just shy of the Spalding County line.

His parents, Homer and Daisy Harris, raised cotton to sell, and corn, wheat, oats, and vegetables to feed the family and their livestock, which included cattle and hogs. "We always had something to eat. I never went to bed hungry," Harris said.

He remembers doing plenty of plowing behind the mules.

A farm's mules were very important. "When you got through getting your crop, the first thing you did, if you had any money, was put shoes on your mule. If you had any money left, you bought your wife some shoes," he said with a grin.

"You didn't mess with a man's mule," he said. "Old mules have done a lot of things in this world. They've put a lot of preachers in the pulpit."

There was even a unit of pack mules in Italy in World War II that hauled supplies in the mountains, Harris said.

Harris' father bought the first tractor just before Harris headed to fight in World War II. He remembers he and his brother loading hay -- while his little sister was at the wheel. "We had a 7-year-old girl driving a B John Deere tractor," Harris said.

Harris fought with the 103rd in the European theater, and was decorated.

"He fought in five of the six major battles of the war," said Harris' son, Bill.

After the war, Harris worked at a saw mill, ran a filling station, and worked at the Ford Motor Company assembly plant.

In 1958, he started pulp wooding, and he's never stopped.

Harris still works just about every day.

"You have to. Otherwise, the flour barrel will get empty," Harris said.

Thursday afternoon, after his newspaper interview, he planned to rebuild a few starters for his equipment -- so the rebuilt ones will be ready to go when others go out.

The logging business has changed a lot in the years Harris has been in it.

"It's gone from muscle to machinery," he said, with the machinery doing more work for less money.

"It costs so much to operate now, with diesel fuel and labor," he said. "I had bought diesel when it was 18 cents a gallon."

Lumber and other timber products just don't sell like they used to, he said.

In the last 14 years or so, the timber market has dropped by about a third, Bill Harris said.

"Now it is just demand. There is no demand," he said. "Every growing region of the world right now is using more timber products than they have ever used -- except the southeastern U.S."

"Any logger you talk to will tell you the same thing --they're just hoping and praying the mill tells them they have orders. It's week to week," Bill said. But "if you are diversified in enough forest products you always have an outlet somewhere."

That's something his father was always good about -- "knowing the different people, who to call," he said.

When Harris was a teenager on his parents' farm, he would use a crosscut saw. By the time he started his timber business, they were using two-man chain saws.

These days, "they cut timber and never touch it with bare hands. They have a machine to cut it, to pull it out, a machine to limb it," he said. "Some of these big loggers can have a million dollars worth of equipment, or more."

Just about every Sunday, Harris can be found at the Christopher farm, sometimes with his friend George Thompson of Haralson, last year's grand marshal, pulling clays for target shooting.

Bill Harris said his father really enjoys watching some of the younger generation in the area farm. "Because nobody does it anymore," he said. "You've got to have a special desire to do that. And you have to have a passed-on skill to do all that. And I know firsthand that he respects every one of those boys and he loves to watch them."

To make it in farming, "you have to be a closet alchemist and a backwoods engineer. You have to be able to think real fast and make do with nothing, and he has always been good at that," Bill said. "They have to scuffle, but they have a good time doing it."

"I've had a good life," Frank Harris said. "I caught a lot of hell, but I had a lot of good times."

"Through cutting timber, I've met a lot of good folks," he said.

"I'd change a few things if I had it to go again, but not much," he said.

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