Dad's Tractor

Dad’s Tractor                         

By John W. Vander Velden

 

It seems too often a man is measured by his tools.  And among a farmer’s tools are those roaring wheeled monsters called tractors.

Dad raised in Europe within a farm family, where all the work demanded a strong back and willing hands.  There was no mechanization of vegetable farming in Holland at the time.  Turning every inch of soil over by shovel was only the beginning of a season’s toil.

The work built a family of strong men, but also wore at their body’s abilities.  I do not know dad’s first thought about the thundering machines that drew the plows through acre after acre.  He showed me the goggles he had worn, which failed to protect his eyes from the dust raised by the tracks of the Cletrack Crawler he drove to plow Scholl’s muck land in the late 40’s.

Things changed in 1951 when dad became his own man.  No longer a laborer, he farmed what was called 50/50.  Putting up half the cash, all the equipment, and most of the labor on William Coughenour’s dairy farm.  The job required tractors.

Over his career my father owned many tractors, tractors of every color.  Machines built by John Deere, Minneapolis Moline, Oliver and Cockshut.  But the first new tractor he ever purchased was an Allis-Chalmers Model C.  That C was among the tractors of my earliest memories. 

Those with any familiarity with the equipment manufactured by Allis-Chalmers know that the C was a small tractor.  Most that have survived now mow people’s yards.  But in the early 50’s they found themselves at work on many farms.  However the work demanded more than the willing tractor could handle.  The wagons it was meant to pull grew larger becoming too heavy and that tractor’s small tires were unable to find traction sufficient.  Dad changed the Chalmers’ clutch beneath a tree in our yard.  Perhaps that was the sign that convinced him that a change was needed, for that little orange tractor vanished, replaced by an old Oliver 77.

But I remember that C, and Dad reminding us that it had been his first new tractor.  It had a bench seat wide enough for me to sit at dad’s side as he drove it home after milking.  Once he allowed me to take the wheel.  How fortunate his strong hands remained near to correct my poor attempt as the Chalmers meandered down the road on that morning so long ago.

There is much we can learn from that Allis-Chalmers tractor and more from the man who first purchased it for his farm.  For success demands dogged determination.  But though that little C never gave up the fight – sometimes the fight is on its own not enough.  And my father knew that life is a state of flux – the world continually changing.  It is important to know when to continue as we have and when a new tact is needed.  Perhaps that is the hardest lesson we have to learn.  A lesson taught by dad’s first new tractor.

(504 Words)