Sep. 22--The bleachers were nearly full for the Great Frederick Fair's annual tractor pull Monday evening as the first puller, Myersville resident Jake Cline, roared onto the track.

The grand stand arena's two-wheel drive truck class had a dozen contestants.

"Cline Excavating Blast from the Past" stretched out more than a dozen feet.

A volunteer hooked it up tight to a sled on the dirt track.

"The principle of the sled is very slick," sled driver Ronnie Shifler said. The sled weighs thousands of pounds and when the weight comes down on it you're pulling tons, he said.

Cline had to move the weight on the sled across the track as far as he could, but ideally no farther than 300 feet, which is the distance the audience can see comfortably from the bleachers.

The truck cleared well over 300 feet and had to be flagged to a stop.

Officials reset the weights twice to try to force pullers to stop before the 300-foot mark.

A lot of horse power and a lot of money is in tractor pulls, but if you did it for the money, you'd be in trouble, Clarence Tipton Jr. said.

His son, Union Bridge resident Clarence Tipton III, two-time winner of a state championship in Virginia, would be coming up later in the race. He's been pulling for 23 years.

The next time Cline took off, a couple of fans in the bleachers smiled and waved at him.

Cline finished at 297.07 feet.

The announcer said that's the mark to beat, 11 more to go.

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