lightninboy

This was on the USA network. This took place in Nebraska City, Nebraska. It's the same contest as is common where the last one standing touching a car wins the car, but in this program the prize was a Case International Maxxum tractor with cab and a loader. There were twelve contestants. The contest was held in a big tent or shed. There was a line of porta-potties for people to use when it was potty time. The contestants were not allowed any sleep. The contestants were friendly to each other. One young man found the contest harder than he thought it would be, and he dropped out. One farmwife was trying to win the tractor for her family, but she lost. One man brought a lowboy-trailer semi to the contest to haul the tractor home on, because he was planning on winning it, and in the end he did. He was disciplined and experienced in sleep deprivation. It seems like his name was Buster.

The Gordon Kahl incident, Medina, North Dakota on Sunday, February 13, 1983, was a forerunner to the James and Steven Jenkins incident, Ruthton, Minnesota in September, 1983, the whole mid-1980s farm crisis, and even Ruby Ridge and Waco. Gordon Kahl was a promoter of Posse Comitatus, and had a considerable following in North Dakota. Eventually, push came to shove. Kahl went down to the Arkansas Ozarks. But the FBI went in and got their man. The movie is based on a book written by James Corcoran who covered the news story for the Fargo Forum. The Georgia filming location suffices for North Dakota in winter? Not quite. There was a Dodge Ramcharger in the actual slaying incident. There was a small undercurrent of Posse Comitatus in North Dakota and Minnesota in the 1980s and early 1990s. They are a neo-Nazi sort of group. I think maybe an anti-Big Brother undercurrent would be a good thing if not taken to extreme extremes, but not a racist one.

David Carradine plays Fast Charlie Swattle, a motorcycle racer and kind of a con man. He tells everyone he's a World War I hero, but he's not. The race ran to California from Missouri or somewhere and was an important race for a motorcycle manufacturer to win. Fast Charlie rides a Moonbeam made by Pop Bauer in Moonbeam, Oklahoma. He gets somebody out of a jail by enticing the cop with a Model T Ford American Graffiti-style. Brenda Vaccaro plays Grace Wolf, a woman he discourages from marrying "Howard Hardware Store." Names in this movie include L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, Jesse Vint and Noble Willingham. Pretty good recreation of the early 1900s.