Old Tractors Never Die
by Rosalie Hunt Mellor of Grand Rapids, MN
My neighbor, Sam Henderson, an otherwise intelligent, reasonable and practical man, has an obsession that borders on the manic. He can’t resist an old tractor. Just yesterday he hauled in another rusted wreck. “It’s a John Deere ’35 A,” he told his wife and three or four interested cows. There was more than pride in his voice. It was more like awe.
Anything can set him off, a chance remark, an ad in the paper or a distant view of a corroded heap of metal abandoned in a field. He has to “go LOOK” which according to his wife is tantamount to buying. He spends his spare time restoring them, admiring them and talking about them to others of the same bent. Yes, they do have a club, The Old Tractor Club, with regular meetings and an annual show.
At last count Sam, his father and brother (for they are in on it, too) had 24 old tractors on the farm parked in sheds, along the edge of the woods, and behind the barn. When I asked his wife what they were going to do with them, she hedged, and I never got a straight forward reply, leading me to believe she might not know, either.
His wife tells about the time she dozed off when they were driving home from the Twin Cities. When she awoke the car was parked in a farmyard, and Sam was handing a check to an old farmer. “He had that silly grin on his face he always gets,” she said, “and couldn’t take his eyes off of a pile of junk parked along side the road.”
“A Farmall Cub,” he announced jubilantly as he sprang back into the car. “I’ve been looking all over for one of those.”
While many of those old relics just sit there, some are actually used on the farm. Sam has assigned each to a special job, he told me with a proud grin, the kind you see on parents relating the exploits of precocious children. He pointed them out as he talked. “I use that John Deere M T to haul water to the cattle in the far pasture. This John Deere R is perfect for hauling loads of hay in from the field.” They were the same color and looked alike to me. “This L Case, now,” he went on indicating a ponderous machine painted Flambou Red, “pulls the manure spreader, and this Allis Chalmers W D is the one I use to tow the hay baler.”
Smiling fondly, he stood looking at the row of tractors lined up in the shed built especially for them. I knew the most exotic models were restored to showcase beauty and driven only in the Old Tractor Club parade, a grand affair that attracts people from as far away as the Twin Cities. A reporter from the local paper covers the event. With notebook and camera in hand, he mingles with the crowd, and the event is always featured on the front page. Men like Sam attach life and even souls to those old tractors. When Emil Kallem, a farmer over over by Milaca, was forced to sell his two Minneapolis Moline ‘38 U’s because he was unable to live alone anymore and had to go to the nursing home, he insisted that the two tractors were not to be parted, but like an old team of horses, they had to go together. Sam bought them,and they stand patiently, head to tail along the edge of the woods like a pair of old mares. Once a bright Prairie Gold, they are now rusty and shabby. The leaves of fall cover them and the snows of winter. Spring rains drench them,and in the heat of summer is it only my imagination or is there a faint shudder to keep the flies away?
Sam showed me the tractor he gave his son, Barclay, for Christmas last year, a John Deere ’35 A. I didn’t say anything, but I know for a fact the boy has no interest in old tractors. He is majoring in World Literature at the State University and comes home talking about things you can’t even understand. He wears faded and worn jeans that didn’t get that way from kneeling under an old tractor. I often wondered what Barclay said when he received this gift. I know it wasn’t, “Gee, Dad, just what I wanted.”
Although most of the tractors are kept in sheds or stand out in the weather, Sam’s pride and joy is housed in his workshop, a Waterloo Boy restored to its original green and red beauty. It is a work of art. Other old tractor fanciers come out of a Sunday to look at it and stand around talking in undertones as if they were at a funeral or pro golf tournament. At just the right moment Sam climbs up on the seat and starts her up. The group is hushed and listens in rapt silence to the music of that engine, more powerful than Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, more beautiful than Debussy.
