The Continuing Saga of Tractor Man

Dwight Ware Watson, better known as Tractor Man, was sentenced to six years in prison today on charges of making false threats to detonate explosives and destruction of federal property.

Six years hard time seems a bit harsh for lying and vandalism if you ask me, but no one did.

Do you guys remember Tractor Man? Did you guys even hear about Tractor Man?

This guy drives his tractor up from South Carolina (not to digress too much, but what the hell is with South Carolina? As a rule, I just don't get the South, but there's some extra crazy going on in South Carolina) in his tractor. He's all fired up about the cutting of tobacco subsidies or something like that. Anyway, he gets his indignation on tight, drives his tractor straight into the National Mall and announces to all and sundry that he's got explosives and he's a-gonna blow hisself up.

Which, to be fair, is the sort of thing that would have gotten a lot of press and attention if he hadn't have picked the week we went to war in Iraq to do it.

I was working in D.C. at that time, living in sunny Gaithersburg, MD. When I got off the subway, there was a man with a large weapon of some kind and a very serious looking dog staring me down. There were anti-aircraft missiles on the White House lawn and I had just realized that the R2D2 looking contraption in Metro Center was an anthrax/radiation detector. The streets were seething with protestors. Anyone with a healthy tan was subjected to suspicious glares. The newspapers carried stories on what to do in case of a terrorist attack. Our office manager stocked up on bottled water and first aid supplies.

We really didn't have a whole lot of time to devote to Tractor Man.

I remember reading the about him on the crawling news ticker on CNN and asking Thor if he head heard about it. He shrugged. "Well that would explain the traffic today," he said, then we took a
drink because Wesley Clark was on the screen.

For three days, he sat there, half in and half out of the pond. The Park Police roped off the area around him, shut down Constitution Ave, and basically ignored him. Traffic backed up to Tennessee (the state, not the street). The Washington Post ran screamer headlines about terrorist threats and troop advancements and buried back there on page three, beneath the obituaries, "Yeah, that dude with the tractor's still here."

He surrendered peacefully in the end. The TV news footage showed three seconds of some lady cop pulling out her most long-suffering, mother-of-a-three-year-old voice and sighing over the loudspeaker, "Sir, you said you'd give yourself up." And he did. Turns out he didn't have a gun, didn't have any explosives; all he had was a grudge.

And some seriously bad timing.