MORRIS, Ill. — Checking on crickets and watching frogs croak in roadside ditches can be a blast, from the wheel of a vintage farm tractor chugging along at 10-12 mph – which is some of what 170 vintage tractor drivers did in the four-day, 11th annual Heritage Tractor Adventure (HTA).

This run explored Grundy and La Salle counties’ trails and byways under the leadership of Indiana native Max Armstrong, now of St. Charles, Ill., a broadcaster who has been recognized for 30 years as the “Voice of Agriculture” in the Midwest.

The drivers renewed old friendships and formed new ones; splurged on delicious genuine home-cooked foods in small communities along the route; explored an old county jail cell which once held Prohibition gangster Al Capone (or so they say); toured the Middle East Conflicts Memorial Wall and museum honoring the nation’s 8,000 military killed in action since 1979; and enjoyed a totally awesome solo music performance by a Johnny Cash sound-alike trucker/farmer/ HTA driver from Michigan.

Originated in 2001 by Armstrong and Mary Beth DeGrush of the Heritage Corridor Convention & Visitors Bureau in Joliet, the HTA runs on the slogan “Mile After Magnificent Mile.” The 2012 adventure ran from June 8-11. Home base was the Grundy County Fairgrounds at Morris.

The ride totaled about 125 miles, mostly on country roads and a canal towpath. The drivers were from Illinois, Michigan, Arizona, Indiana and Wisconsin. Ten new drivers joined this year’s ride.

The HTA’s enticement is the great time it furnishes the drivers to get together, Armstrong said at the humorous awards ceremony that ended the adventure: “We ride, enjoy the good meals ... ride, enjoy the good meals ... ride ... There’s something about the social aspect of this that draws us back, time after time. I enjoy that for sure, and I look forward to it, many, many weeks in advance.”

Armstrong also handed out awards. The winner of the first, the “Spread it Thick Award,” was Julian Houston of Morris. The crowd loved it; Houston, a Morris City Council member, has always been a favorite on the HTA rides and in the community as a whole.

“All the years I’ve been coming on the HTA, I’ve been emulating Max,” he told the crowd. “That’s the only reason I can do what I do, and I enjoy every day of it.”

Houston said the HTA is more a social event in which drivers from all parts of the nation become acquainted. He said everyone involved in any way treats everyone else so well.

“I’m not a farmer,” he said. “My dad was an undertaker and my mother a teacher. After I retired, I began helping Don and Bethyl Johnson on their farm at Morris. Don had a 1951 John Deere A he wanted to restore. I didn’t know anything about tractors, but I said, ‘We’ll do it.’

“We tore it completely down, rebuilt it, I started driving it, and I’ve been driving it ever since, including the HTA. Now I know a lot about tractors.”

If he could live his life over, Houston, a retiree of a major electrical utility company, would be a farmer. “I enjoy it that much,” he noted. “Farming leaves you free. Nobody’s holding a thumb over me, and I can be free and do what I want to do.”

Armstrong led this year’s tractor trek with his 1951 Farmall M while Owensville, Ind., tractor aficionado Charles McCarty followed on Armstrong’s 1951 Farmall H. “I’m doing this for fun,” said McCarty, who grew up on a grain farm in Gibson County, Ind. “It’s a great vacation and gets me away from that desk job.

“I was fortunate to be invited on the first tractor run 11 years ago, and I’ve met a lot of great people. I hope they keep the tractor runs going forever, because it’s a good thing. You can’t experience the countryside from a car like you can on a tractor going 14 to 15 miles an hour.”

Farming is just a different lifestyle, as most HTA drivers agreed. Also, most on the rides are really good mechanics and know how to keep old iron running.

Take Ed Bouws of Holland, Mich., who told a tale about the fuel on his one-owner 1951 Farmall M tractor apparently shut off the second day of the ride.

“I discovered it when I ran out of gas,” he said. “From there on, we had more troubles. The tractor wouldn’t run on four cylinders, only on three. We just kept tapping the carburetor – tapping, tapping and tapping. All of a sudden, it cleared up and I had no trouble since. It was very embarrassing for a Farmall man, though.”

Bouws said the drivers call HTA “participation mental therapy.” “We just have a good time, camaraderie, bringing everyone together and having dinner, breakfast, whatever. One evening we all sat at a big table in a local restaurant and reminisced history,” he said.

Cal Klokkert, the trucker/farmer who sings Johnny Cash songs, and his son, Troy, a dispatcher for an agricultural trucking company, joined the run. Cal drove a 1959 Case 800 and his son, a 1954 Farmall MTA. Cal has done the run the past four years, and was also feature entertainer at one of the evening programs. Both father and son are from Hamilton, Mich.

“I’ve always been a huge fan of Johnny Cash,” Cal noted. “I had all his records. As a kid, I’d get my records out and rattle the windows in the old farmhouse – turn the volume way up and just sing along with Johnny Cash.

“The day he died, September 12, 2003, at age 71, I decided to do a Johnny Cash tribute show. I bought a sound system and that’s how it started. I have sung with his brother, Tommy Cash, and his sister, Joanne Cash. They said, ‘You sound just like our brother Johnny.’”

Troy sings bass with a four-part harmony group. He’s been singing barbershop quartet for a couple years now. He was selected to solo at his high school graduation: “I sang an Alabama song, ‘Goodbye.’ It made all the girls cry,” he recalled.

Driver Kenneth Alling of Morris didn’t believe the tale about Al Capone and the county lockup at Gardner. “Capone was a very busy man to be every place where they say he’s been,” Alling, a one-time farmer, observed. “He was in Morris, and he controlled that part of the county. It didn’t do him any good, though. He lived a bad life.”