I was with a friend last Friday and he showed my pictures he’d taken a week or so earlier at a very special country fair.It was a meeting of huge (and some not so huge!) 100 year old farm machines.They were amazing. There were huge lumbering traction engines, the forerunners of modern tractors, I guess, that looked more like steam trains than anything else. Monstrous wheels (covered in rubber to keep their, original steel rims off the roads), magnificent round bellies painted in gorgeous Edwardian and late-Victorian colors, polished brass rails and bells, and belching black smoke from tall round chimneys. Then there were threshing mills with big wooden sides. Horse drawn ploughs and tedding machines. And buzzing around between their legs, so to speak, three charming little miniature steam engines that were taking children for rides across the grassed fair ground.I got to thinking about the early cars of that wonderful period. In fact I noticed a couple of them steaming past me at an intersection yesterday, elegant and green, open and looking positively rakish. The sort of vehicle you would love to take for a quiet spin, but which would definitely have to go into the hands of a good car mover if you were shifting home and needed to transport it any sort of distance.