The Saga of Tractor Man parts 1 & 2

Tractor Man was a phenomenal failure in the terror department. He came to town with a message for all to hear. No one listened. Poor Tractor Man.

A little known fact is that Tractor Man has an actual name – Dwight W Watson. Read it and forget it. He came from North Carolina and drove his tractor into a pond. As is so often the case, God told him to do it. [God, who has been receiving a lot of negative coverage lately for offering bad and often contradictory advice to a number of world leaders, declined to be interviewed for this article.]

Tractor Man, a former Tobacco farmer, has been having a rough go of it since the late 1980s, losing his farmland acre by acre. Not surprisingly, the government is to blame.

"I don't give a damn no more," Watson said yesterday in a phone interview. "If this is the way America will be run, to hell with it. I'm out of here." [The government today was actively engaged in shutting down other small farmers, and declined to be interviewed for this article.]

Watson’s failure to find a sympathetic audience for his message may be attributed in large part to his insistence that his tractor was packed to the gills with explosives. This assertion led to the closure of several major traffic arteries in the District, which proceeded to produce massive traffic jams during the 48 hour siege of the pond.

“Shit,” said Stan Hirschberg, a local commuter, a sentiment that was shared by many other drivers.

"I will not surrender," Watson said, a few hours before surrendering. "They can blow my ass out of the water. I'm ready to go to Heaven."

Tractor Man, at long last sensing that he was failing to effectively communicate his agenda, promised that he would give up peacefully if the police "treat me with respect." Eye witnesses report that capitol police were trying not to giggle as they took him into custody this morning.
 
John Easterbrook, communications expert for The Skillings Institute, offered advice for other would be tobacco farmer terrorists.

“First off, pay attention to your timing. Timing can be everything when you are dealing with issues that promote focused disgruntlement. During a slow news week, Tractor Man could have been quite a strong contender for quality coverage.
 
Second,  stay out of the frigging water. You’re threatening to blow up a pond? That is so lame.

And most importantly, don’t drive a tractor. It is not in any way cool. If people see you cruising down Constitution Avenue on your John Deere, they’re not going to think about the plight of the small farmer. They are much more likely to say such things as “look at that jive-ass rube on the tractor.”
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...and now, back to the future, 9/26/03

Remember Tractor Man? No? Come on now, I wrote all about his saga last March.

All right, to tell the truth, I'd forgot about him too. It's been a busy year, and you can't keep up with every two-bit lamebrain on the loose. So, let me bring you up to speed. Dwight Watson was the nut who drove his John Deere into a shallow pond at Constitution Gardens, caused a 48 hour traffic jam, and gave the impression that he had an "organophosphate  bomb". That was just a fancy word for "Raid Roach and Flea Fogger", he explained in court yesterday.

Tractor Man proceeded to do a lot of top notch explaining in court. Regarding his remarks to police that they would see smoke if they tried to force him out: Well hell, son, that was just a reference to the exhaust they would see coming out of his tractor when he started it back up. Not his fault if people gonna make assumptions. "'Don't ever assume nothing, or you make an ass out of you and me," he said, proving that not only is he a nut, he's a friggin cornball as well.

Watson provoked such fear in the nation's capitol that the secret service let the president jog by him on his second day in the pond. Tractor Man had planned to hold out longer before surrendering, but the wily charms of Park Police Sgt. Kathleen Harasek tricked him up. "Her being a woman and all, she just naturally took over."

Before surrendering, he told Harasek, "I tell you what, everybody will remember my damn name before it's over."

Wrong again, Tractor Man.