My Minnesota: Fair vendor puts tractor parts in whole new light

The Minnesota State Fair's West End Market has a new store: Machine Age Lamps. Vintage industrial remnants and tractor parts turned into light fixtures with bulbs that look hand-blessed by Tom Edison. It's the work of Shawn Carling, who's enjoying his first year as a fair vendor. A birthday gift got him started.

"My dad's the kind of guy, if he wants it, he buys it. He has everything. So I wanted to get him something really different and unique, and started to pull out old photos of a tractor we had, a Farmall 560. I've always tinkered with stuff, always had a knack for fixing stuff, so I found some parts and turned it into lamp. I thought it was funny, but people said, 'Can you make one for me?' "

Thus a career was born — partly out of necessity.

"I worked for Best Buy by for about 25 years and got an early retirement when they downsized. I've been doing this ever since." No regrets: "I was a corporate office guy, marketing, and it turns out I was miscast." He laughs. "Every day is a Saturday now."

Where do you find all the parts?

"At first, it was really difficult. I was looking at flea markets and Craigslist; my wife was e-mailing scrap yards that pull tractors apart. Now people send us e-mails all over — yesterday I got one from John Deere Model B radiator tops, and was I interested?"

So the Old Iron exhibit of ancient tractors on Machinery Hill must look like a tempting source of material.

Clients range from a guy who wanted a lamp made from the dash of his old tractor and some scraps of the barn to Gordon Ramsey: He just did three lamps for the TV chef's new restaurant in Hong Kong. Three hundred models in a year and a half, and not always to clients whose decor is "early barn."

If you don't care for tractor parts, they have lamps made from aviation gear as well. And in a nice twist, Shawn's dad, Charles, helps make those.

Twenty years from now, will someone will be converting an old dead iPad into, say, a device that syncs with subatomic vibrations to bathe the user in a field of calming invisible rays?

"Boy, I wonder. A group of kids come past the stand, and they were arguing about Xbox vs. PS3, and I thought, what could we possibly turn into lamps in 30 years?" Good question. Something that's no longer used but could be repurposed for a new generation. Maybe … incandescent bulbs?