I took this picture of my future replacement “practicing” on the Farmall H; the Ford 8N is in the distance, and the soon to be doomed Studebaker pickup as well
(2007, updated 2026) It’s not just cars that are safer nowadays, but grown-ups too. Imagine telling your eight year-old: “Son, we’re sending you off to a farm for two weeks to drive tractors for some family our cleaning lady knows.” That’s what my parents did, and I barely survived to tell the tale. Regrets? Hell no; it was the best time I ever had as a kid.
For five summers in a row, I was literally “farmed-out” to a Mennonite family where all the girls were born before the boys and who were still too young to drive a tractor. Unlike their more extreme techno-shunning Amish relations, these Mennonites used tractors and such. But my deeply religious host– a part-time preacher no less– was a taciturn man who mostly reserved his limited verbal output to prayer and spontaneous mini-sermons—right in the middle of the field even—whenever the spirit struck.
When it came to learning my new craft, words of instruction, explanation and warning were conspicuously absent. Education was to be provided by divine intervention or a perpetual series of baptisms by fire. My first-ever tractor drive provides a perfect example…
There I was, a mere slip of a boy, hanging onto the back of the ancient 1930s (putt-putt) John Deere Model B like a tick. While in (slow)motion, Mr. Yoder suddenly receives a heavenly twitter that I should now be the one driving. He slides off the seat, grabs me, sets me on the throne and jumps off. So much for Driver’s Ed. I can still see him standing there, very slowly receding into the distance, with a look on his face that was a mixture of absolute trust in the intercession of St. John of Deere and doubt.
Just aiming the the tractor was easy enough. But what the bewildering array of levers and pedals all did was mostly beyond me (I vaguely knew in principle from watching, but not all the specifics). When it came time for forward movement—minimal as it was—to come to an end, I had no idea of what to do. Yet somehow, the lesson arrived as intended; I’m not still driving the John Deere in circles.
The following summer when I was nine, I found myself promoted to full-time tractor driver. “Take the (Farmall) H, hook up the rake and run the cut field out past the oats.” Once I figured out what (and where) the rake was, where the field lay and what pattern I was supposed to make around it, I was in tractor-driving hog heaven.
The controls of these old Farmalls were totally mechanical and very rude. To extract any response from the stiff pedals, I had to slide forward, practically off the seat and simultaneously suspend and leverage myself from the steering wheel. And hanging on to that jerking, hot tiller while bouncing through a bumpy field all day brought visceral meaning to the phrase “steering feedback”.
I was drafted each summer during haying time. The preacher’s young sons (Steve and John, above) weren’t yet old enough to drive, so I earned my three meals a day. I wore t-shirts sitting on the tractor all day long under the blazing Iowa sun. The melanoma I had removed a few years back from my forearm brought it home as to why the men wore long sleeve shirts and straw hats.
There was quite a fleet of elderly tractors at my disposal. The “sports car” was a Ford 8N, a low slung utility tractor that usually sported a blade on the back for clearing out the dairy barn. It was by far the fastest of the bunch, with a top speed of almost 20 mph.
Seemed more like 55 to this ten year old, especially compared to the John Deere. That fast top gear was meant strictly for the road, but nobody told me that. Bouncing across a rough field in top gear was proto-ATVing.
The Model B John Deere was from the thirties, and its two cylinder 149 cubic inch engine made some 18 hp, on a good day. It sported two 2-speed transmissions, yielding, yes; four speeds. Figuring out how to end up with the right gear was another matter, but it didn’t seem to matter too much; it was always slow. Top speed was a brisk walk; it made a great tractor for cultivating, but terrible for hauling a wagon to some distant neighbors. You could look down and count the individual pieces of gravel at top speed. That exposed flywheel spinning inches away from your shoe laces was how one started these old Johnny Poppers, and was treated with respect once under way.
In addition to the Farmall H, Mr. Yoder also had a vaunted Super M-TA, the biggest Farmall made in 1954. It actually had power steering; what decadence! But I was most often relegated to the H, to help me build up my city-boy arms.
There was one more, but it only came out once or twice from its hiding place deep in the bowels of the machine shed: a John Deere Model D from the twenties, with steel wheels.
Its two garbage-can sized pistons displaced 501 cubic inches (8.2 L) and when pushed all the way to its 900 rpm red line, developed some 40 hp. Why did it come out so rarely?
It was ancient, a bitch for Mr. Yoder to start by hand spinning its flywheel, was slow as molasses, and just not very efficient. Only when it was needed, to pull out the other tractors and their load if they got stuck in a mud hole during an unusually wet summer, did it make its regal appearance, looking disdainfully down on the newfangled tractors with their sissy rubber tires mired in mud.
With its lugged wheels, it was utterly unstoppable. You could see the drive wheels pulsate with each piston power stroke. It afforded some of the more memorable moments of my youth, to see, hear and feel that D’s completely un-muffled sewer-sized exhaust pipe huffing and chuffing away to pull out the M-TA and a drag full of hay up a muddy slope at a snail’s pace.
A drag? Yes, in the archaic meaning of the word (a heavy sledge for hauling loads). To pick up all the hay bales spewed randomly all over the field by the baler, a large wooden drag was employed. It was a big flat platform made of sturdy local oak, somewhat resembling a barn door in size, and was pulled along on the ground with a chain behind the tractor. Not very efficient, but the fields were very close by, and it slid over the hay stubble pretty easily; not so much on the gravel road. If you popped the clutch too quick, the men trying to stay upright on the moving drag were not amused.
My job was to steer a weaving course between the bales and get so close to each of them so that Mr. Yoder (and a neighbor helping out) standing on the drag could ideally just grab the bales as they went by on each side, and stack them. I got lots of dirty looks for all the getting off and running I made him do. I didn’t fully appreciate their plight until the last year there when I was old enough (twelve) to stack the forty pound bales myself (now that was hard work). I looked longingly up at the oldest son on the Farmall whose turn it now was to make us run for the bales.
The drag was pulled up to the big barn, and hay forks were lowered and inserted into a cube of bales. The little Ford 8N was hooked to the other end of the rope, and at the signal, carefully driven forward to raise the bales. When the forks hit the rail at the top of the barn, the wheels on the fork would engage, and it would now move horizontally into the barn hay loft. There was another rope hanging down from the forks, and when the bales were at the right point in the hay loft, the rope was tugged, releasing the forks and the bales would tumble down, to be stacked by… whoever ended up there. I used to drive the 8N for that job, until one year I was deemed too big and strong to not be in the haymow stacking bales. Hard, hot and dusty work, putting away a whole winter’s worth of hay for a herd of dairy cows.
The lessons learned were often in precarious circumstances, but indelible. Inching a three ton tractor to hitch up a wagon between the posts in the bowels of a barn, I learned to play the clutch friction point like a Stradivarius. I didn’t want to add a knocked-down barn to my list of accidents.
The tractors had twin brake pedals, which seemed an unnecessary annoyance. One day, pulling a load, I dropped the right drive wheel into a muddy rut. Watching that tire spin I had an inspiration: I pushed the right brake pedal, and the power transferred to the left wheel. Divine intervention revealed traction control to me.
The big red Super M-TA was the Caddy of the fleet and the apple of my eye. The words “Torque Amplifier” had an almost mythic spell on me, and often appeared in my dreams but without a proper explanation of how it worked. With its power steering, driving the M was downright decadent compared to that miserable H. Its big four cylinder engine had 264 cubic inches, and it gave a delightful growl from the exhaust stack. Sitting up there in control of that big machine made me feel like a king. When told it made all of 47 horsepower, I was incredulous. That thing could pull a barn. But a day spent at Mr. Y’s father’s Amish farm behind a team of two draft horses pulling a giant hay wagon gave me a new perspective on that terminology.
The Farmalls had five highly-unsynchronized gears. The first four were for the field; you could start in any of them. But up-shifting into fifth on the road was the problem; I hadn’t yet divined double-clutching, and my dear preacher-ersatz-father never bothered to give me a lesson in that. He seemed content enough to hear the grinding of gears in the distance rather than take the time.
My technique: I forced all my weight against the unyielding stick in the direction of fifth and ground the gears mercilessly. When the tractor finally lost all its momentum and practically stopped, fifth finally engaged, I popped the clutch and the big Farmall slooowly chuffed away. My admiration for long-stroke, torquey engines has never diminished.
I drove an old Oliver 77 once when I was “lent” to another son-poor neighbor. It had a six cylinder, and I loved its art-deco inspired aerodynamic styling. The six was as smooth as butter, but it just didn’t quite have the low end grunt of a Farmall four, never mind the planet-rotating torque of the big John Deere twins.
Row-crop tractors with their siamese-twin front wheels and high centers of gravity fully deserved their nick-name “widow makers.” My first near-death experience arrived when I tried to take a tight down-hill curve on a gravel road at top speed heading to some neighbors. I made what I thought was a brilliant decision to avoid even bothering with the not-very effective brakes: pull back the handle on the M-TA’s “torque amplifier”. It reduced forward speed in the field by 50% without a balky shift down. I assumed that it would do the same on this downhill to slow me down. Not so: it worked like an underdrive while under load, but free-wheeled on a downhill. The big M was now coasting and felt like it actually sped up.
I watched the big inside drive wheel start to lift up; reflexively I eased the steering wheel a wee bit and widened my arc as much as possible, and the big wheel came back down, slowly. The hell with a perfect apex; I was too young to die. Mr. Yoder, who was behind me in his pickup, thought for sure that the M was going to roll.
The same corner tried to kill me twice. As I always did, I was riding standing up—face in the wind—behind the cab of the old Studebaker pickup. Unexpectedly, Mr. Y took an abrupt right turn at that very same T-intersection at a reckless speed (I assumed he was going to go straight, given his speed). Falling out, I managed to grab the driver-side outside rear-view mirror. His face expressed considerable surprise when he saw me hanging there just outside his window (damn Studebaker for being the first pickup without a running board). His explanation: the brakes “were out” (had been for a while). I began to understand why Mennonites had large families.
The elderly Studebaker pickup had spent its prime years as a tow truck and now hauled the occasional cow or pigs. Its tired little 170 cubic inch flathead six was fragile and it clattered, but Mr. Yoder knew how to baby it. One day Mrs. Yoder was going to borrow it for some reason. She started it with a heavy foot, the engine innards became outers, and smoke billowed out so profusely, the whole barn was obscured for fifteen minutes. Spectacular for me, but not for Mr. Yoder, who couldn’t quite afford a proper replacement. I went with him and test drove a used ’56 Ford with a proper V8, and he thought it to be a veritable hot rod. He ended up making his own by cutting down an old 1949 Chevy sedan and building a bed out of a pile of lumber. Making a living on a small farm with a mortgage and a big family wasn’t easy. Actually, it was very hard, and their finances were precarious.
Surviving (literally) those elementary-school year summers bronco-riding an assortment of elderly Farmalls, Fords and Johnny Poppers grounded me deeply in the fundamentals of auto-locomotion. They were lessons that would never leave me—just like the scars on my leg and my permanently disfigured fingers that I mangled in a hay elevator.
And yet I loved those summers. Waking up in the morning to the sun rising over the old barn across the road, with the only sound breaking the utter silence being the distinctive clatter of galvanized steel feeder box doors as the livestock ate its breakfast. The peak experience was the “Ice Cream Supper”, when each related family made a gallon of homemade ice cream, and then took it to the elder’s farm, where a dozen or more in different flavors were set out with giant plates of cookies. Now that was a memorable supper.
I learned many useful lessons, like not to pee on an electric fence. Despite two frantic trips to the university hospital for emergency surgery, I have no regrets. (In fact, one of those trips blessed me with my first 100 mph car ride, in a neighbor’s ’56 Ford with the “Thunderbird” 312 engine.) Life’s lasting lessons– and fast car rides– often come at a price.
I could write a lot more about my time with the Yoders; these are very precious memories for me. They took me in as a son, every summer for a number of years. Mr. Yoder was a huge role model for me as someone who was practical and worked with their hands, very much the opposite of my father. And their deep commitment to living their religion 24/7, not just on Sunday mornings. I feel very blessed to have had these experiences.
And we’ve stayed in touch; in fact they are my oldest friends. In 1992 we went to stay with some of them for several days at their farm in Wisconsin, where two of the adult children and their many kids had moved some years back, along with Mrs. Yoder (Mr. Yoder died early). It was a wonderful time, and both my son Ted and I got to drive tractors!
Joyce, one of the Yoder daughters, has a daughter that lives nearby Eugene on a grass seed farm with her husband and five sweet kids. Joyce and her husband (named Eugene) come out to visit every few years. We had dinner with them very recently, in January of 2026. It was wonderful to catch up on their large families and reminisce about the time that an “English” boy came to stay with them back in the early 1960s. Apparently it was as big a deal for them as it was for me.
Fantastic, Paul, just fantastic.
As a kid who very much lived in the country, but with parents who wanted anything but a farm, I was often somewhat jealous of my peers’ tractors and horses and old trucks and such. That the tractors, especially, weren’t just to ride around the pasture or yard for fun was mostly lost on me.
I was once allowed to drive around a small Ford 4×4 diesel 4-cylinder tractor, and was heartbroken when informed the right-foot little throttle pedal wasn’t there so I could drive it like a car and make the engine give a grunt and a puff of diesel smoke, but instead was there for an extra shot of power under load. Apparently, while doing actual work you were supposed set the throttle at one speed and steer for hours as some such thing or another gets accomplished. Whatever.
Another friend from church was a scrappy, independent oil man. In about 1991, he took a few of us out on his leases to show us what oil men do all day, checking the wells and pump jacks and pipes and so forth. His oil rig checkin’ truck was a tan 1-ton 1987 Ford, I’m pretty sure with the 300-6, which was somehow fairly new and COMPLETELY, TOTALLY USED UP at only a few years old. Cletus’ (yes, that really was his name) driving style and the gravel Oklahoma backroads, along with the rutted trails out to the wells had taken it’s toll on the Ford. The steering wheel, while traveling straight, was off by about 110 degrees from level, and shook so violently I was seriously fearful of bad, bad things that would surely happen. My dad had owned some beater pickups in his day, but nothing on the order of Cletus’ Ford. Cletus did not seem to think our doom was quite as impending, and his knowing I was a gearhead his probably all that kept him from telling me to STFU and walk home.
That brings back lots of memories. We had newer Massey-Furgusons and Allis-Chalmers around, but our JD “Poppin’ Johnny” was the still the best. I did, at 9yrs old, wonder about the wisdom of cranking up the tractor with that Price-Is-Right wheel standing in such a “safe” spot, though. I wondered about the narrow front track, too, but our land was of the flat West Texas sort and tipping over wasn’t too common.
I get the narrow track front wheels, but I’ve never understood why they are mounted with so much negative comber. What problem is being addressed by that?
Good question. It may have been to get the very narrowest footprint possible at the ground level, since these were used for cultivating between rows. Some of them just had a single front wheel.
Believe Paul is right, that’s why positive camber wouldn’t work.
Click here for a photo of a steel wheel JD GP
Narrow front ends were useless in the mud. Mud would ball up between the tires and stop them from moving. Was given the task of removing dried mud from between the front tires. Chipped enough of it way so that the tires would turn and then drove it to the well and used the water hose to remove the rest.
Yes-what made the original Farmall a “farm-all” was the ability to mount a cultivator to the front of the tractor and go down the rows, watching carefully ( and trying to stay awake on those hot summer days). The row-crop tractor, with its narrow front wheels, could pull tillage equipment (plows and harrows) in the fall and spring, and cultivators in the summer. Before that, you might have had a big, heavy plow tractor, such as the John Deere Model D, (you haven’t really plowed until you do it with a Model D-they are truly unstoppable-Deere kept building them by popular demand into the ’50’s) but you still did your cultivating with a horse-drawn implement. The row crop tractor was the death knell of farming with horses. I assume the camber was to make the track more narrow, but it also may have made it harder for mud to build up, which it would anyway, especially if you had clay soil. (You may see Farmalls at tractor shows with little scrapers in back of the front wheels to help with that). Our 1956 JD Model 60 was narrow front, as was our 1963 3010 Diesel, but they had a kind of knee-action system that made one wheel go up as the other went down, cushioned the ride a little. Row crop tractors went out of style in the 60’s as more implements were rear-mounted with quick-loading 3-point hitches, and bigger and bigger front end loaders were attached. One fortunate, unintended consequence of that was a wider front stance and less chance of tipping over. Pretty much everyone with row crop tractor experience has been up on two wheels. In fact, the pet rock on our farm, “Robert’s Rock,” got that name the day cousin Robert backed his M, pulling the hay fork rope, up onto said rock out in the cattle yard. We were so impressed that he was able to get down without tipping over that we dragged the rock up onto the lawn and named it after him.
Oh, the stories. And the ER visits. One more fun fact-in Great Britain, the compact, handy utility tractors, such as the Ford 2N/9N/8N are collectively referred to as “yard scrapers,” a very descriptive term.
We called them Rowcrop tractors the type is still made though done with very narrow tyres on 4 wheel tractors again I live near market gardens it just right near where the curb becomes verge beyond the Meanee rd interchange and Jervois town lie some vineyards and orchards marketgardens and stuff you guys might like it I’ll shoot some.
John Deere, now you’re speaking one of my other languages. Johnny Popper, putt-putt. There’s a little demented piece of me that desperately wants one of these. The thing is I’d still use it clear the driveway in the winter or shape the land. It wouldn’t be a “barn queen.”
Grew up on a farm in NW Iowa don’t regret one minute. Was driving truck (’69 GMC with a 351 V-6) before I was 16.
Earliest memory was driving was sitting on dad’s lap and getting to steer the tractor down the road.
First job after school was out, for the summer, was to pick rocks. Used a Farmall C to pull the wagon where we lug, carried and threw the rocks. When we could to keep our butts on the edge of the seat while pushing the clutch in we were old enough to drive. Since we weren’t strong enough to turn the steering wheel, on the end rows, dad would stand on the hitch and reach around us to steer.
When I was 11 dad let me cultivate, 1066 with a 6 row, had one instance of iron blight (got off row and plowed up corn instead of weeds) near the road, which grandpa teased me about until the corn grew tall enough to hide the missing corn.
Photo of me having lunch with dad, 806 with a 5 bottom plow in the background.
On my mothers farm, there are two tractors. A mid-60’s International, and an early 70’s Leyland. The International is unsynchronized, and as I haven’t yet learned to double-clutch, essentially you choose gear at standstill and stick to that gear until you stand still next time again. It has no brakes either, so ones has to learn very fast how to balance speed and the lenght of road ahead suitable to roll to a standstill. The experience is not that unlike the experience of sailing. It’s mostly used to cut the grass on the horseyards. The Leyland is hydraulic, with the usual farm equipment like shovels and blades and such. Though, Paul describes the experience perfectly. I really had to “slide forward, practically off the seat and simultaneously suspend and leverage myself from the steering wheel.” all the time.
If that International “has no brakes”, I assume you mean that metaphorically, not actually. Because it does, somewhere.
Yes, probably. I just haven’t figured it out yet. Though, deaccelerating is quite easy, just clutch it and it will reach standstill within reasonable time. Though, it is an adventure every time I use it.
I shot a Leyland tractor its on the cohort page it was a non runner like most of them now
What caliber did you have to use to take that down!? .303 Infield 🙂
Brilliant, Paul, just brilliant.Ｉhad many similar experiences as a child on the family farm(s) in rural Quebec. It is amazing we weren’t all killed when I look back on some of the antics we did. My children will never know such unsupervised adventure and I find myself having very mixed emotions about that.
Thanks again!
My first driving experience was on a tractor at the tender age of 12. On a Farmall B, the smaller wider little cousin to the M. I still remember getting in trouble for popping wheelies with that tractor, rev the motor up, dump the clutch in first and presto a couple of inches of air under the front tires The best feature of a tricycle front tractor is its turning radius, stomp on the inside brake and crank the wheel all the way over and the tractor will walk around the tire.
Brakes? We don’t need no stinking brakes, every tractor I’ve driven has sucked in the brake department, you just learn to stop without them.
Great storytelling, as always. I’ve never driven a tractor, though I have driven a 1923 Model T with the planetary gearbox. Was the farm near Kalona, Ainsworth, or closer to Iowa City? I wonder if the house is still there.
It was between Iowa City and Kalona, near a village of about a half-dozen house called Sharon Center. I’ve driven by in recent years, it’s still there. The family I stayed with all moved away though; some to PA, other to Wisconsin. And I’m still very much in touch with them. One of the girls and her family just showed up in Eugene recently for her daughter’s wedding.
We formed a deep bond in those summers; it was just as foreign for them to have an “English” boy from the city stay with them, as it was for me.
Great article, Paul! I can feel the mid-western summer humidity, envision the sweat rolling down my forehead and the sounds and smells of the farm – bugs and all.
I didn’t do farm chores such as you per se, but my Grandma in Missouri had horses, and as a city/suburban kid from the S.F. Bay Area, I’d visit the grandfolks and relatives in Missouri every summer even after high school.
I did painting and general outside work to the house/stable, etc. plus car detailing . . . all in the fabulous late June through August heat and humidity of rural Missouri . . . and the ice-cold 16oz BOTTLED Cokes as a cool-off treat! I can hear the cicadas now . . . . .
I didn’t learn to drive on a tractor – instead as an 11 year old, sliding next to Grandma in the front of the ’69 Chrysler New Yorker taking a wheel for the first time on a gravel lane and then my Grandpa’s ’67 F100 Ranger (full size then) Ford truck.
What memories! The first motor vehicle I “drove” about age 10 was a 1938 IH T-20 “crawler” on my grandfather’s apple farm in the Sierra foothills of California. He had to crank start it.
First class writing, this site is really coming along nicely. The story brings back memories of my first driving experience. It was a Caterpillar D8 that I drove for a large ranch near my home town. I was pulling a land plane and I was 14 years old. You basically just picked a gear and went. Steering was done with the throttle and the two brake handles. I really thought I was all that until I was ordered to drive it to the shop for some repairs. It was six miles on a squirrely ranch road in top gear with the throttle half open. Scared myself almost to death. I drove it for two years and then was moved to an old Kenworth pulling a set of doubles during the wheat harvest season. Of course this was all on private property, no Class A license required. Great stuff I will never forget and it has been many years since I piloted any fun farm equipment.
When we visited a farm family in Minnesota I got to drive the Ford tractor pulling the empty hay wagon from our hosts’ farm to the neighbors’ where the haying was taking place. I was 11 or 12 at the time, and despite being the son of a construction company owner this was my first time behind the wheel of anything. I soon made up for lost time, driving everything from the Studebaker ex-army truck to the TD-18 bulldozer. The Studebaker was low-geared enough that I could put it in first, get out, and walk beside it picking up sticks and rocks from the field. This didn’t really work all that well though, because one front wheel or the other would hit a rock or a rut and the truck would lurch off in the wrong direction. It worked better to park it and pick up all around it, then move it a hundred feet or so and repeat. I never did any actual cat-skinning but I did use it to punch stump-pile fires. I hauled concrete pipe with the International KB-llF towing the lowboy, and I drove one dump truck or another fairly often.
I learned enough about the construction business to realize fairly early on that it wasn’t to be my life’s work, and ended up working in chemistry labs and computer rooms instead, but certainly have good memories of my younger days helping Pop make a living.
Excellent! Brought back a lot of memories. Back in the late sixties/early seventies we used to visit my grandparents on their farm in West Virginia four to five times a year on extended 4-day weekends. They owned a 50’s John Deere 420 (IIRC), and I couldn’t wait to drive it on our visits. Your description of piloting an old tractor as a young boy ( 9-13 in my case ) is spot on — the pedals were big and required all my effort to operate, and the hockey-stick shaped throttle control behind the steering wheel had to be hit with a balled fist to get it to move.
Funny thing is, these were supposed to be “vacations” for me and my two brothers, and our grandparents put us all to work every day we were there — and I loved it!
Here’s a pic ( not my grandfathers ):
I just gave my daughter her first drive yesterday she’s 12 she has steered an automatic but this was her first time using the clutch. i learned on a tractor at 10 and at 12 was given to the next door neighbour for holidays he drove the rural ares reading electricity meters all over the place in an Austin Gypsy 4WD swb pickup he taught me to drive that up and down anything anywhere and sideways on the gravell back roads of the Rodney county, of course I was car mad my parents actively encouraged it.
I hit on a Mennonite once.
I was unsuccessful.
It was nice to see this piece again. We are having a long, hot summer here on the West Coast of Canada and I can vividly remember bringing in hay as a teenager. The hot sun bearing down, hayseeds, 40 lb bales, the hot barn. It’s the hardest work I have ever done. I am glad I did it, too, because it gave me huge respect for farmers. Amazing people, work all day and are usually the nicest people you can meet.
Having lived on a farm all my life and being the seventh or eighth generation in my family to lived on our farm, I have made the observation there seems to be a disproportionate number of nice people that happen to be in the profession of farming. I am perplexed by the same is not true of other professions, especially healthcare, where one would suspect that to be the norm. Perhaps my doctor needs a day on the farm.
Fast forward to the 1980s in northern Alabama, and the only difference I see is that we are Methodists with newer (not necessarily more reliable) equipment.
It took a while to understand why my friends got paid, but Dad said I got my payment every night with a roof over my head…I remember thinking that hauling hay was worth more than a roof!
I learned to drive on a Ford 8N when I was about 9. My uncle taught me during haying time. Hot, scratchy, dirty work. Loved it.
Having a brake pedal for each rear wheel was great. In the winter, when I would clear fields of snow for the cattle, I learned how to use the inside brake on turns without having to adjust the throttle. That was pretty thrilling. Neat stuff for a kid that young.
Don’t know how I missed it the first time around, but brilliant article Paul, one of your best yet.
Paul —
Were any of those pics lifted from the “Great Oregon Steam-Up”? That place can bring back a flood of memories like no other.
Yes; I did a post on that here:http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/porsche-lamborghini-and-field-marshall-cc-does-powerland-steam-up/
Need to get back, but I think this year’s is already over.
Yup it ended yesterday. Great show as usual, definitely more tractor-oriented than car.
Though they did have a (rare?) 1971 LHD Jensen Interceptor for sale at the show for $7500.00
My wife had to drag me away from it before I did something stupid…
Wow – you chose to run this on the day I returned to Van Wert County, Ohio for a funeral of my last grandmother, who nearly made it to 107 years old. That was the place where I did my early tractor driving, at an age not much older than when you started.
When my father re-married and bought some land in the country, he figured he needed a tractor. My step-mom’s Uncle Cal gave him an old John Deere Model B from the 30s. It was an early unstyled model with the spoked wheels, just like in your picture. So am I the only other guy here who got the pleasure of trying to stay away from the spinning flywheel while driving an old B?
Like you, I cannot imagine telling my 9 year old kid that it was fine to hop up and take the tractor for a spin. Of course, 9 year old me was all over it. You are right, it was really, really slow. The old B (with its narrow row-crop front wheels) was not really suited for the kind of general purpose stuff Dad needed it for, and he bought an Oliver 550 later. The old B sat under a tree for years. I tried to start it once in my teen years, but the engine had seized. Some stranger stopped one day and asked Dad if he had any plans for it. Dad told the guy he could have it. I was sorry to see it go.
Am I a bad person if I’ve lived on a farm all my (granted, pretty short) life but I learned to drive tractor on a JD 7210 open-station (essentially the tractor equivalent of a ’98 F-250 light duty with automatic, which, coincidentally, I learned to drive on), and I never even drove a “Johnny Popper” (my grandfather’s 530) until I was, like, 17?
Am I a bad person if my father cared “too much” for my welfare (to the point where he would have never taught me to do anything by placing me in the driver’s seat and leaping off) and never even actively promoted the possibility of me returning to farm beyond the occasional “well, you could always come back here…”?
Am I a bad person if, thanks to the modern convenience of PowerShift(tm), the most physical effort I’ve ever had to put into driving tractor was shifting gears as an 8- or 9-year-old on the old 2510, 2520, and 3020 (all very similar to the 2010 at the top of the page) since, by the time we bought them, all the other “old” tractors presented no challenge to my post-pubescent self?
Am I a bad person if I never even learned to drive a manual car until about 3-1/2 years ago (when I was nearly an adult), when we traded our ’96 Ram 2500 Cummins 4×2 for an ’08 F-350 V-10 4×4 five-speed?
Does all this mean I’ve been cheated out a childhood? I know I have popped a few wheelies on our narrow-front 2520, and even experienced a near-death experience when the clutch began to slip as I raked hay a little too close to the “crick” bed, but can any man say he’s really lived when the only time he ever felt the need to ride in the back of an old farm pickup was a six-mile “jog” from one farm to another in the back of a ’79 F-250?
…But I digress. Great article here–it’s one thing to read these sorts of memoirs in the farming magazines, but on an automotive enthusiast’s website, it’s a real treat.
No, you are not bad, just a different generation of farm kid. And that 2520 was a really cool New Generation tractor, handly size like the 3020, but with a more eager Dubuque engine-family should hold on to that one.
Paul, part of the reason you had to scoot up so far to reach the pedals was because “ergonomics” was not part of early tractor design philosophy. Story is told of when Henry Dreyfus and Associates came out from New York City to scope out the John Deere tractor factory where they had been hired to “style” the A and B line, they couldn’t figure out where the company had gotten the design for the pan seat-didn’t fit any seat designs they had ever seen. They asked around, and were pointed in the direction of the guy with the biggest backside-guys in the factory had simply had him sit down in plaster, made a cast of it and used that to make the seat. Figured if it fit him, it should be big enough for anyone.
And you capture Farming 101 as it was taught-go over there and do such-and-such, you should have been paying attention when I did it, don’t come home until the job is done or you break something, and it had better be the former. It is truly a wonderment any of us survived, but mostly we did, with good stories to tell.
My lesson on how much torque tractors have came whe I had to remove an old car that I had stored at my friends farm. I’d kept it outside, of course, and it was sunk in the ground up to it’s rims. I did a double take when my friend drove up in the old JD model B that his grandfather bought in 1949…I thought he’d have to use their new huge turbocharged tractor which, in my memory, seems as big as an imperial walker. But no, he hooked the chain up to the old “B”, didn’t even rev up the engine, just popped the full sized ford out, no problem.
The Ford 8N is rated at 25hp (that would be a fresh, new engine – adjust accordingly for sixty-plus years of use). Your riding lawn mower probably has a similar rating.
However, I could chain my 8N to any modern ~25hp compact utility tractor (even one with 4 wheel assist) and drag it all over my farm. For whatever reason, the old tractors just seemed to have more grunt.
I think the torque amplifier is a planetary gear that can be downshifted with a lever that does not require using the clutch. I forget which tractor had that (either an IH 706 or 806). I have also used a Caterpillar (more of a kitten) similar to the two small ones above. It was new around 1949 (year of the great blizzard).
Blizzard here link
That’s what it is, which is why it also freewheels when it’s engaged. I assumed it would increase engine braking on that downhill, but instead the tractor started coasting even faster.
It was so long ago that I don’t remember any details of how it worked other than shifting down. I do think that it was on the 706, but perhaps the 806 too.
A lot of the range selectors would do that. It could be dangerous. Nobody told me that on our White- at least I found out on a short hill.
The White/Oliver Over/Under used a sprague clutch that free-wheels in low, but won’t in direct or over. I’d assume that the IH system was similar.
I didn’t learn to drive on a tractor , but I did get my first practice on driving a standard transmission on one. I grew up in West Chester, PA, home of Schramm Inc. They made air compressors out of regular engines using custom heads, so that half the cylinders were engine and the others were the compressor. Eventually they fitted these “enblock” compressor/engines to a tractor frame to create the Pneumatractor series. (Mostly used in construction ) http://www.farmcollector.com/tractors/schramm-pneumatractor.aspx#axzz3Ntt8FHQy
I worked for them one summer doing maintenance and odd jobs. One day I had to drive the tractor though I forget why. I soon got bored with the speed (?) of the low gear and had to figure out how to shift it. Luckily it’s easy to have a forgiving clutch with low gearing and a lot of torque…
Our niece stayed with us a couple summers ago, and I taught her to drive a manual by putting her on my 8N first:
What a great story.I feel sorry that most of today’s kids won’t ever have experiences like that.Thanks Paul
You’re sadly right, Gem. Kids have no connection with how and where their food comes from, etc.
We host my office coworkers and their families at our farm each year, and I put a number of the kids on the 8N for their first tractor experience. Pic is of the 7 y.o. son of friends of ours who stayed for the weekend:
And here’s the drawing he enclosed along with the thank you letter he wrote afterwards:
Ha ! It’s great to see how kids all over the world are drawing the same tractor. Especially the rear tires. I remember I drew them like that.
You do some good work. I’m in a small village in a rural area and I’m amazed to see how even the kids here don’t have the slightest clue what is going on on a farm and where our food is coming from.
We have these “open house days” on farms. People can go to farms, often combined with a bicycle-tour, and see what is going on there. So essentially the same as what you are doing.
Here’s another one of the kids at our cookout (with a proud dad shooting video):
Oh, and why not one more – here’s a video I put together the year I plowed down 10.5 acres of corn stubble with the 8N and a two-bottom plow: yootoob link
I was at a farm auction last fall. I was 19 at the time. I was looking at a hay rake and a baler, and knew enough to understand what I was looking at. I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I know enough that my father trusted me with buying equipment.
I swear, I was the only person in my age group at the entire auction who was actually looking at anything. The auctioneer was surprised to see someone my age bidding.
This can’t be good for our future.
The increasing age of farmers is more indicative of our reliance (good or bad) on more and more sophisticated mechanization than anything else. My great-grandfather retired in the mid-70s at 65, deaf from tractor noise and suffering from ALS; his body was completely shot. My grandfather, OTOH, semi-retired at 71 in reasonably good health (save for the then-unknown brain tumor which would kill him a year later), and I’m sure there are more than a few farmers in a similar situation. If you’re healthy and still up to it, why hand over the reins to someone else?
EDIT: Oh yeah, I was gonna talk about auctions. My first solo auction was when I was 17. My father had looked the stuff over the day before and told me what to bid on. He gave me a blank check but told me not to go over such-and-such an amount for certain lots. The bidders were antsy that day and the only thing I ended up getting was a moth-eaten weather-brake for $27.50. It fit only 460 and 560 Farmalls. We’ve never owned any non-JD tractors besides a Minneapolis-Moline U.
This write up is just as amazing of a read as it was the first time I read it. Paul’s sink or swim learning experience is something to appreciate. I don’t know if it was worth the damaged finger or not, but I almost think it may have been. These kind of life lessons would be called “child abuse” by the over protective safety nannies today, and would probably be considered ground’s to have your child taken away. Nowadays your considered a bad parent if the booster seat in your car is the wrong size or “improperly secured”. Being a city boy I never got to experience life on a family farm or operating it’s equipment, the closest I ever got was bean and berry picking in Oregon in the 60’s when the old rattle trap buses would take us city kids in Portland out to the farm for a few cents a crate. And mowing lawns and delivering newspapers for a little extra money. It’s great Paul has kept in contact with this family after all these years. Enjoy your dinner with the farmer’s daughter, I’m sure there will be some interesting memories relived.
From primitive fun to modern nightmare …
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/new-high-tech-farm-equipment-nightmare-farmers/
Trust me- the new tractors are much worse. I’ll find a way to keep our old stuff working before I’ll become slave to the manufacturer.
A Gleaner L2 can do as much as a Deere 9500 can, but see how much a new combine can do… when working. I’d rather have the L2- at least I can keep it going.
I find it hilarious that the 9500 is still considered new. We just got a “new” 9560 (the last walker combine, 10 years old) to replace our ’94 9400 and granted, there were a few very stressful down-to-the-wire times in oat harvest where we had to rely on a circuit board replacement or other non-mechanical fix, but we couldn’t have finished any of our crop harvests with the 9400 in the time that we did with the 9560.
With the newer tractors or other equipment, it’s not usually a question of reliability, but affordability. $150K for something that’ll be worth half that in 5 years? No thanks. Really, the early-to-mid-2000s is the newest you can get that’s the perfect balance of affordability and technology. JD 7010 series FTW.
But in automobiles or agriculture, there’s no replacement for the feel of a mid-60s machine.
Out here, everyone loves the 9500, it seems. We still use a 6600, but are looking into upgrading to an L2. The 9500 can be a $40,000 machine, while the L2 can be a $4000 machine. I’ll take the cheaper one for that much of a difference!
Assuming that it is the same sensor that fails, and has failed a number of times, the obvious solution is to keep a spare sensor on hand.
A few months ago one of my clients gave me a ride in a brand new Fendt 718 tractor. This is much more high-tech than any car on the market right now.
While it is basically a rolling computer with big wheels, it is a perfect workplace to be in all day long without getting worn out. Seat suspension, climate control, great sound insulation, perfect visability all around, good ergonomics and a stepless Fendt Vario transmission.
Fendt is a German brand and belongs to the AGCO-company and is considered as a “premium-brand”, just like JD. Tractors like these are somewhere between € 150,000 and € 175,000.
185 hp, the six cylinder diesel has common rail injection and comes with an AdBlue aftertreatment system.
Interior.
Agco was formed from Allis Chalmers (and Gleaner div.) who acquired/merged with Deutz, Massey-Ferguson, White, Challenger, Valtra, Fendt, and others, headquarters in MN.
Our dairy farmer family only bought IH equipment back in the day, now part of CNH, an American-Italian firm based in Netherlands, formed from Case and IH (Case-IH), New Holland (Ford), Fiat Ag, Steyr, and others.
Lots of margin’ going on!
While I am a city kid who has never so much as ridden on a tractor, I find these stories incredibly fascinating–a glimpse into a way of life that existed both before my time and well outside my frame of experience. And, for some reason, vintage tractors hold a deep fascination for me too. Maybe it’s just anything with four (or more) wheels, but maybe it’s also that glimpse into a simpler time and an honest day’s work.
Having grown up in the country with tractors and farms all around, my wife does not understand what all the fuss is about. She couldn’t wait to get out of there and has no desire to go back other than for visits!
I lived in town for a year right after I got on with the Department of Prisons (Corrections now days). I couldn’t wait to get back to the farm. I bought one at Reidsville and another one when I transferred to Valdosta.
I was driving my daddy’s tractor when I was nine. And my son and four daughters drove mine when they were nine. Those things happen when you grow up on the farm.
Only one girl doesn’t live on a farm today.
My first driving experience was with a Kramer tractor with a trailer hitched to it no less. My cousin had to correct my steering all the time.
Here is Kramer in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB8CAnh46hk
Great writeup Paul , good stories in the comments too .
I grew up on a dairy farm in rural New Hampshire , left it for good in 1970 (IIRC) and you’re right ~ it’s amazing anyone survived , most of the Farmers had mangled hands or missing fingers , one eye so on and so forth….
I agree , ALL Children should be exposed to where the food comes from , the slaughter house too .
Then they can choose to study hard and get the heck out of the Country or stay and become a Farmer or Welder , etc. , one of the many important jobs necessary in Agriculture or Ranching .
We had two Johnny Poppers , an ‘A’ and an ‘B’ model one was a ’35 and t’other was a ’37 IIRC .
Hand starting those beasts was not for the faint of heart .
-Nate
I grew up on farm and was allowed to drive the Massey Ferguson 35 at around 9 years old . you learn quickly its not as easy as Dad made it look
I soon realised I had to plan ahead a bit more
my skinny arms and of course no power steering, the non spring loaded hand throttle
brake pedals way out of reach .
That fence never stood a chance
Big farm tractors are also often used in earth moving. Off-road they are a good alternative to an articulated dump truck. More flexibility too. An articulated dump truck can only be used as an articulated dump truck. Obviously. But you can tow a lot of different trailers with a farm tractor.
Because the distances are mainly short they can also be an alternative to an on/off-road AWD dump truck.
Here’s an older type of Fendt, towing a dump trailer.
Just as good on each re-read. Not surprised you were “adopted” by the family, our family still keeps up with our former exchange student and all of his parents. Farmers are very inclusive if you are willing to get your hands dirty. This time through I noted the number of people who lament never having had the experience. I was fortunate enough to recently be able to give my 30-year-old son a lesson in operating my brother’s 1932 John Deere Model D. Brother Tony started it for us-it’s his toy, plus starting it is as difficult as the video shows, I stick to the B’s-and then I got us moving and turned it over to James. We took it out to the barley field and around the back lanes and then back to the yard for pictures. (The flat portion of the yard-this vintage D only has a very rudimentary brake consisting of a canvas strap that circles the drive shaft and can be tightened as a parking brake. With a standard top speed of 2 mph (Tony’s is a hot-rod of sorts, geared up to three), I guess the engineers thought it didn’t need any more.) James’ reaction: “This is very zen. You just kind of keep going, and going…” And there you have it. Antique farming, at times, could be a form of Buddhist meditation, at 900 RPM.
But then there was the time Dad got buzzed from behind while cultivating by a couple of SAC interceptors returning to Omaha after a nuclear war exercise (we still turn up aluminum “chaff” in the fields from time to time). I’ll let him tell you that story himself. Not much meditation that day.
Paul’s story is so, so familiar. My dad grew up as a NC farm boy. Following his WWII service, and courtesy of some GI Bill education, he moved to FL to be part of one the missile programs at Cape Canaveral. His dad and brother continued running the farm, and we went back there for summer vacation every year. That’s where I got my seat-of-the-pants tractor/farm experience of the type that would make the modern day child safety advocates absolutely freak out. Tractors (Internationals, none of those John Deeres!), augers and blades galore. Best growing experience-in so many ways-a kid could ever have. And it’s also where I learned that farmers are the best mechanics/improvisational repairers in the world.
My Father has 8 tractors but only a single acre of land. Why??? He likes to work on them. He has several Farmall F-20’s, two Ford 8N’s (one with a 302 V8), and a Case VAC that was his Grandfather’s. All of the granddaughters (7, 9, and 10) can drive the Farmall Cub. All of them can plow with his Wheelhorse Garden Tractor. Valuable lessons of using a clutch and being safe at a young age.
I was 15. It was a Sunday in 1955. My Dad and two oldest younger brothers were bailing hay. Dad was driving the green tractor (later identified by my brothers as a John Deere B) and pulling that miserable terrible horrible Case IH bailer.
I wasn’t expected to know the kind of tractor–just the green one or the red one. I was expected to know how to cook.
Mom had gone into town for water (our shallow well was contaminated so we hauled water). I was to get dinner on the table.
I cut up the three chickens Mom had butchered Saturday. I used two cast iron skillets with about an inch of Crisco in each. I dredged the chicken in flour and salt and fried it up.
I peeled and pressure-cooked enough potatoes for mashed potatoes. I sliced tomatoes, and steamed up fresh green beans, both from the garden. There was tea nectar made the day before—I had taken tea bags and poured boiling water over them, then added real sugar to dissolve while the tea steeped. Then I put that strong, black sweet tea in the refrigerator to pour over ice cubes when it was time for iced tea.
Mom still wasn’t back and it was past noon. I knew Dad could tell time by the sun and would be wondering why dinner was late. I knew from the moment the tractor had started that my brothers were hoping for anything to stop that bailer.
This old bailer required one to sit on each side and feed the wires through one at a time. The seats were close to the chute. The chute sprayed a constant stream of dust, dirt, chaff, insects living and dead, and garter snake parts on those sweat-covered riders working the baler. Breathing was a challenge unless you kept your nose stuck in the top of your shirt and then you suffered from the heat almost as much from the chaff and dust When they came in after baling, their eyebrows would stick out half an inch and if they cooled down before washing up, that chaff would harden up with insects still crawling inside. It was a terrible old bailer and a terrible job.
I made everything as ready as I could and then went out to the field and waved my Dad down. He pulled up and shut the bailer down and choked the tractor back to a steady putt, putt. I said “Daddy, I have the chickens fried, the potatoes mashed, the tomatoes, and green beans ready. I made some biscuits. There is tea nectar ready. But, I don’t know how to make the gravy and Mom isn’t back yet.”
Dad kicked that tractor back further still and worked the choke, until that flywheel hummed and the engine made a pop every 60 seconds or so to let you know it was still running. Then he leaned down and taught me to make gravy.
“I don’t care if you know how to make gravy or not.” he said. “We’re going to finish this pass on the field and come in for dinner. You will have gravy on the table.”
I said “All right then.” I walked back to the house. I knew gravy had something to do with the cracklings from frying meat and I had two cast iron skillets full of grease and chicken fryings. I knew gravy had something to do with flour. I knew where the flour was. I made gravy.
Mom came home. Dad and the boys came in and washed up. Nine people sat down to dinner. Nine people ate my fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy. No one commented or complained. About three years later, my brothers informed me that I had finally begun to make gravy that you did not have to eat with a knife and a fork.
Patricia; thanks for leaving that great vignette of farm life in the 50s. I really enjoyed it.
The farmers I stayed with had a vary balky ancient combine that was the bane of their existence, but at least it didn’t require two persons riding on it the whole time. It just broke down incessantly.
As a Storyteller, I collect and tell gravy stories now. Grown ups remember that time and women and men laugh about knowing from the get-go that your gravy would not be as good as your mother’s until she was dead and would not be as good as your future mother-in-law’s even when she was dead. Hard work, good food, and lots of family started me out right.
Thanks for the great childhood story, Paul, and also to the commenters for sharing their connections.
I have a connection to the Louden Machinery Company mentioned in the video. My father-in-law is a Louden, originally from Fairfield Iowa. His grandfather was William Louden, the founder of the company. William was a prolific inventor of barn implements back in the day, and the company was likely best known for innovations in overhead trolley systems used in dairy barns. The company no longer exists, having been absorbed into a large company, which ended the farm equipment lines. The monorail trolleys invented by William Louden have evolved into overhead material handling lines found in modern factories.
A sharp eye will occasionally spot a piece of Louden equipment. While exploring an unused dairy barn on the campus of the University of Connecticut a few years ago I was surprised to find it chock full of Louden equipment. My knowledge of such is quite limited, but I remember cattle stanchions, an overhead trolley system, and auto-fill water bowls, all stamped with the Louden name. We have also seen Louden cupolas atop old barns. I imagine Louden equipment is more prevalent in the Midwest.
A minor clarification; William Louden was my father-in-law’s great grandfather. He started the company in the 1860s.
My grandfather used a drag/sled on the farm for hauling the hay. A lot easier than throwing it on to a trailer. One guy driving the tractor and one or two loading hay. The other real advantage was the brake affect of pulling a drag/sled. There was a pretty steep hill to go down when we were loaded and you didn’t have a trailer loaded with bales trying to push the tractor down the hill. Don’t recall what brand of tractors he had, just remember them being red, very bare boned, no sheet metal cowlings, hand crank in-line 4 cylinder engine, 40″ rims with, as my grandpa said, “real” rubber tires.
I worked for awhile at a farm/junkyard. All kinds of John Deere twins. A’s, B’s, D, G, H, 520, 720 & 730. The D was notable as it did not have brakes, it didn’t need them, pull the clutch and it generally stopped right there. The 520 was our GP tractor, loader equipped. Loved working those John Deere’s. The 730 was the favorite for plowing, wide front and plenty of power. Nothing like the Chuff…..Chuff……..Chuff when the JD is working hard.
I had no idea of your tractor experiences, accompanied by later life melanoma, and mangled fingers.
I’m glad you survived to recount the story for us!
I have no experience with tractors, but I now live on the edge of a small town and a neighbour has 2 beautiful Oliver tractors that he takes to the fall fair and parks at the end of his drive.
My Mom’s family were dairy farmers in Vermont having settled there in the 1760s. Uncle Arthur had the farm when I was a kid, a 20 cow dairy. He had a FarmAll Super M and another IH I can’t recall. Farm tractors were meant to be red he always said (even though John Deere was a Vermonter!). He still pitched some hay loose to put up in the hay mow. I have a pic of me about age 5 riding on his hay wagon and another of me on a donkey cart. I helped with bale handling once when a storm was coming fast when I was about 12 but just for an hour or so.
In MD when we moved to Carroll Co (dairy country) in 1973 farms were still all around us and my daughter’s (now 48) best friend’s Dad raised feeder pigs (sow litters finished up to sale weight). My tractor driving baptism of fire was one time helping them with haying: hard work pulling it off the bale elevator with a hay hook and packing it away in the haymow, as Paul said hot, dusty and tiring. He asked me to move his Allis Chalmers 180 6 cyl diesel. I experimented and futzed around and did eventually got it where it needed to, but was intimidated at first. Sports car driving with a stick helped a little but not much, very different but clutch experience helped.
A couple years later we bought an irrigated strawberry and asparagus farm near Gettysburg PA where we sold those and did PYO as well. We hired Mennonite ladies to pick for us. They were “black bumper” Mennonites who drove modest cars, mostly Fords, with all “too flashy” chrome painted black. Great folks. My only tractor was an 8N, since it had a 3 pt hitch we could use it for both cultivating, harrowing and with a sprayer. Wonderful multi-purpose machine, with an engine very similar to a Model A. We loved the farm but moved N soon after.
Great stories, I must have missed this first time around. My mom always told us that she learned to drive on a tractor working on a farm while at college in North Carolina in the 1940’s … I guess the guys were at war. And then got more experience driving a Dodge pickup. Perhaps that’s why she always owned a stick shift until her last drive in 2010; she liked to say that she couldn’t figure out how to drive an automatic. And she also thought air conditioning and power steering (both only on her last car) were unnecessary luxuries.
My father-in-law did roll his riding mower once and was pinned under it for a while until my MIL found him. He must have been doing something pretty crazy as that thing was low and wide.
Sounds like that old joke…:
A sales representative is visiting a farm. There’s no sign of life around, just the sound of a tractor approaching. When the tractor turns up behind the barn, it’s a small boy driving it. The salesman signals the boy to stop:
S: “Hello, young man – may I speak with your parents?”
B: “Nah, you can’t.”
S: “Why?”
B: “Because they are dead. Tractor ran them over.”
S: “Oh my, that’s terrible…so you live with your grandparents?”
B: “Nah, they are dead as well. Tractor ran them over.”
S: “Horrible! But you sure have some siblings of age…”
B: “Dead. Tractor ran them over.”
S: “Heavens…what are you doing the whole days long?”
B: “Driving the tractor…”
I grew up with Johnny Popper Models A & B. Started driving one summer after first grade pulling a wagon while my 2 older brothers picked up the hay bales and stacked them on the wagon. We had this big old John Deere wire tie baler so the bales were close to 100 pounds.
A neighbor had an 8N and a Farmall M diesel. I used to help him out so I got to drive those. I really wanted one of those things with a foot clutch, not some stupid hand clutch. The M diesel started on gas and then switched over to diesel after warm up. It was a complex routine to switch over. They avoided a separate “pony” start motor that way. 6V and even 12V starting systems were not up to cranking over these big diesels yet.
M&W Gear sold what was basically a hot rod kit for the M. Pop up aluminum pistons, different governor, etc. You can see them on the youtube, they can actually be boosted up to 70 hp. Search for Farmall M with M&W kit.
So glad that you republished this article. Your usual vivid writing skills bring such life to this experience. Our childhood experiences shape much of our lives. Thanks for this article. Tom
With a Biochem background for a few summers out of college I worked for U of MD extension as an IPM (integrated pest management) field rep, a great job, almost all outside walking around corn and alfalfa fields to ID the bugs and invasive stuff, do soil tests, and advise farmers. Dairy farmers are the hardest workers you’ll ever see, many not getting paid what they should, unlike in Canada where smaller farms are much better supported. Many that are smaller in the US still live quite austere lives, including the Amish and Mennonites.
The old joke about farming while so land rich but income poor:
Farmer Clem only ever played the lottery once, he believing that gambling was a sin. But that one time he got lucky, he hit the jackpot and won 10 Million dollars. Afterward he sees his neighbor Clyde, also a farmer, in church. Clyde says: “well Clem, so you gonna sell the farm now?” Clem says, “Naw, I figure I’ll hang in there at least a couple more years, you know, until the money runs out”.
Sad but kinda true!
The other one, not so much a joke, but: farming is the only job where you have to invest 400,000 a year to make 10,000.
When I was a pre-teen I wanted to be a farmer. Not because I like to grow things or because I like animals but because I wanted to have a tractor! I finally got a tractor about 10 years ago, a 1948 Ford 8N. My father bought it in 1973 after we moved to an acreage and used it to plow snow with a drag blade and mow grass with a five foot rotary mower. I use it to plow my driveway (about 500 feet long) and other minor chores. The 8N engine is half of a Ford 221 flathead V8. The first tractor I drove was on my uncles farm at about age 12, a late 1940s Minneapolis-Moline.
This brings back a lot of memories: One uncle had John Deere “B,” the other a Farmall “H.” I drove both of them, and remember the H was faster on the road, but the B allegedly had more pulling power. I remember trying to start the B using the fly wheel, my younger cousin was much more successful. I don’t remember anyone using “drags” to pickup hay bales. All I ever saw were wagons upon which bales would be stacked six high.
Paul, you have had many life experiences. All of us have benefited from your re-counting of them. That your father, who must in most ways have been the antithesis of Mr. Yoder, indulged you in these experiences is one more reason I have much respect for his very many accomplishments.
Great story! Growing up in NJ when it was still the “Garden State,” all the kids worked on farms until you were old enough to pump gas or drive a truck.
Dear Old Dad told stories about being “loaned-out” to a farm family a dozen miles from “home”; I think this was an “all-summer” project.
He said that the farmer-dad treated him OK, his own daughters and wife less-so. They got up before him, and worked all day. Dad got paid in silver dollars-he never said how many, but it wouldn’t have been much–ten, maybe fifteen–and some work-clothing. I had the sense that, like you, it was memorable, “character building” but clearly not Dear Old Dad’s strength or interest.
I never worked a farm. But Dear Old Dad let me sit on his lap and genuinely steer The BattleWagon (’50 Buick, purchased VERY used in ’63 or ’64) and later the ’66 Biscayne Wagon. At age 8, I steered the Wagon about a thousand miles on a trip to his new home Out West. By 12, he was giving me driving lessons in it, because I could finally reach all the pedals, particularly the clutch for it’s three-on-the-tree transmission.
His allowing me to steer the car as “preschool” education; and allowing me to drive on public roads at 12 would surely land him in jail, and eliminate his “visitation” rights today.
I’m not big on today’s obsessive, over-the-top safety mandates. We’re raising generations of folks too scared to have fun, or take appropriate risks. Helmets when riding on bicycles? Hell, no.
I loved re-reading this! My experiences driving the “old B” at my father’s place are some that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I will confess to occasionally surfing the web for videos of someone starting or running a John Deere B. I could listen to the music from that engine for hours!
The art of double clutching would have to be explained or demonstrated first; I don’t think there’s a way to intuit the technique.
Sure there is ~ you try to drive a crashbox and don’t like the crashing and grinding of gears, experiment a little bit and you’re off and running .
60 years later I’m still double – clutching anything that needs it.
-Nate
Paul, FYI the link to your story about being hurt and taking a fast ride to the hospital in the 56 Ford is broken.
Hmm. Works for me. here it is if it’s still not working for you:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/auto-biography-1956-ford-customline-my-first-90-mph-ride-but-under-less-than-ideal-circumstances/
That’s because it’s scheduled for next week. That takes them offline until they go live.
Thanks very much for the follow-up as I wanted to re-read it. Thanks also for updating the story here about maintaining contact with the Yoders – the kind of good folks I well remember from my childhood in Indiana.
I’m not sure if I ever got to read this post when it first came out, but it is DEFINITELY an entertaining one! Unless they’re in something like the 4H Club or the FFA, young people in this day & age will probably never get to experience anything like this.
Those old “tricycle” tractors were discontinued because of that high tendency to rollover if a turn was made too sharply, and the way farming methods as well as the attachment of tractor implements were changing at the time made a difference too–that style just wasn’t needed anymore. You still see plenty of them in parades and classic car shows, however.
That was pretty smart of Mr. Yoder to repurpose that ’49 Chevy into a makeshift pickup when the end came for the Studebaker. When you’re on a limited budget, you just use what you’ve got until it’s no longer practical. The idea of turning junked pickups/vans into “truck bed” trailers very likely originated with this philosophy in mind–if the cab is wrecked but the bed is still good, why not? (to a practical extent of course)
Glad you’re still able to stay in touch with the Yoders after all these years. Modern computer & phone technology has certainly made this much easier to do! 🙂