Originally published Saturday, May 8, 1999

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Just about where Smokey Point Boulevard makes a gentle westward bend, north of the Stillaquamish Senior Center, 35th Avenue comes in from the north and the old coal mining railroad comes in from the east.

But this train don't carry no coal, no gamblers or ramblers. It just sorta sets there not far from the road, looking cute with its freshly painted black-and-white "Choo Choo 1" engine and five coal cars, beneath the long train-shed roof edged with Christmas lights.

And this ain't no right-of-way or Smokey Point tourist attraction. This is the very private driveway of Glenn and Barbara Harless. In fact, according to Glenn, the train was completely refurbished and placed on tracks atop a concrete roadbed in that precise spot "because everyone who missed the turn (on Smokey Point Boulevard) kept pulling into my driveway to turn around, and the (bleep)ing cars would get stuck right about where that coal train is now, and I'd hafta go out with one of my tractors and pull the (bleep)ing fools out!"

He eyed me suspiciously when I pulled into his driveway, but when I didn't turn around, he went back to working on the engine of a '48 John Deere tractor. "It's getting so I have to set in my own driveway for 15 or 20 minutes in the morning or evening waiting for space enough to pull out onto that road!" he volunteered. "It's growed-up so (bleep)ing much the last few years that a guy can't get in or out of his own driveway. There's always some (bleep)er who's too much in a hurry!"

Meet Glenn Harless, a crusty, plain-speaking, 1926 vintage Snohomish County native son, who spends most days repairing and refurbishing his tractors. "Got about 20 of 'em . . . I think," he said, taking a bandana out of his overalls pocket and wiping tractor grease off stubby hands.

That coal-mining train out front was a fun project that just sorta growed up, like the traffic on Smokey Point Boulevard. Glenn found the little engine and some car frames not far from a played-out coal mine near Centralia. "The brakes were all froze-up on that little engine, and of course, there was no glass in the windows. I had to rebuild the whole cab.

"I got the engine and two cars -- all of the cars were nothing but rusted metal; my cousin and I had to rebuild all of 'em -- then the guy I got 'em from said: 'Glenn, you really oughta have these other cars,' so I went back down and got three more," he said with just a hint of a smile.

For the past 30 years or so, Glenn and Barbara have occupied the little frame house bordered with perennials and transplanted fire hydrants at 18405 35th Ave. N.E. And most of that time, Glenn has occupied himself with things mechanical. Which is why there are a couple of vintage farming tractors under their own open-air shed roofs, sharing front-yard space with the coal train.

"The hydrants aren't for any special purpose . . . I just pick up things like that," Glenn volunteered. Same goes, no doubt, for the old gravity-feed gasoline pump at the edge of the driveway by their back door. This latter-day American Gothic couple have seen the Smokey Point area change a whole lot, even if they haven't followed.

On the front of the modest-looking frame garage where he rebuilds his old tractors is a hand-painted sign:

"FOR SALE
USED TRACTOR
NO SEAT
NO STEERING WHEEL
PERFECT FOR A GUY WHO
LOST HIS ASS . . .
AND DOESN'T KNOW
WHERE TO TURN!"

"That there sign sorta fits me to a 'T'!" Glenn said, bending his barrel-shaped body slowly to set on a 5-gallon bucket in the doorway. The one thing Glenn doesn't need right now is another used tractor. The half-dozen or so locked outbuildings on his acreage contain enough tractors to start a farm museum.

The very suggestion raises his eyebrows and blood pressure to the point of loosing another stream of monosyllabic verbals about government permits and regulations and the like. It's obvious from the get-go that Glenn Harless ain't no fan of government on any level.

But move the conversation back to tractors, and Glenn glows with pride as he takes the tarps off his refurbished toys. "And it's just like they say, something about the guy who ends up with the most toys, wins." Or maybe it's the one about the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys?

Glenn's sold off "more Model A's and Model T's than most guys see in a lifetime," but his toy box is still full . . . of tractors. Visible from the road out front is that 1932 Fordson with the red steel wheels. There's also a '29 Allis-Chalmers.

But in the half-dozen or so locked outbuildings behind his garage-workshop are the real prizes of his collection. In one of the buildings are several rebuilt and repainted tractors, including an Oliver, a Massey-Ferguson, an orange '48 Case and a prairie gold '49 Minnie-Mo, which is what folks back home called the ubiquitous yellow farm machinery.

In still another shed, Glenn shows me a '47 Model H John Deere, alongside a '51 Model R and a '40 Model AR. And in other sheds he's got everything from a fully restored vintage Railway Express Agency freight wagon ("got that from the depot at Marysville") to an old International and an International-Harvester and a spiffy looking Oliver Model 60.

"I've had a lot more, but there are other guys who have old tractors as a hobby, too, and I must've traded or sold a thousand tractors." If he had held onto some of those, he would've ended up with the most toys, for sure.