“I rode on the fender and watched Dad cultivate, or whatever he was doing, cutting hay, raking hay,” Jones recalled. “I loved it on the farm. We were very fortunate. We didn’t have a nickel, but we never went hungry and we were always warm.”

His dad, the late Raymond Jones, bought a used 1942 Allis-Chalmers model WC in 1953 when he and wife Esther started farming near Dayton.

“He bought that tractor — and a two-bottom plow and a disc and a two-row planter, two-row cultivator — basically everything to put in a crop and take it out, for $1,100,” Jones said.

That was a big investment in 1953, but it would enable his parents to raise their family of seven children on a farm just a few miles down the road from where Jones now lives.

-Messenger photo by Lori Berglund
It took just a few cranks from Leroy Jones to get this vintage Allis-Chalmers to start up, even after being stored for the winter.

Riding on that fender, with his dad at the wheel, Jones learned a lot of life lessons: the value of hard work, the joy of seeing a job well done, and the unique pleasure of working as a family to make a farm prosper — or at least make ends meet.

“I learned how to fix things from my dad,” Jones recalled. “We didn’t have much money, but dad could fix things himself.”

While the popular legend says that farmers can fix almost anything with just a bit of baling twine, Jones recalls that his dad sometimes even used rubber bands and a little grease to make things run again. There was no “diagnostic computer” to analyze a problem, but there was logic and experience, and the Jones family was always rich in those skills.

“I learned a lot from Dad about how to fix things with only a little bit of money,” he said.

While riding on the fender was great fun, it was an even bigger day when he finally got to drive.

“I was riding with Dad when I was about 5 years old until I was about 10 or 11, and then I was on the seat driving,” he recalled.

His first big job was hauling manure out of the chicken house, and while that may not seem like a fun chore, for a farm kid trusted to drive for the first time, it was a thrill.

“My first load of manure was a big one, and then I realized that driving the tractor was fun, so the next load was a little smaller, and I got down to the third load and it was only a half load,” Jones said. “Dad caught me and said, ‘Load it up.'”

That may have ended his driving for that day, but there would be plenty more days behind the wheel. These days, retired from Webster County Secondary Roads, he spends much of his time restoring tractors.

“I can’t remember how many tractors I’ve restored, probably 10 anyway,” he said. “I’ve got more that I haven’t done yet. There are some that I’ve sold and bought back again.”

When he spied an Allis-Chalmers WC at an auction in Stratford, he knew he had to have it.

“This one is a 1948, but it’s just like Dad’s,” he said. “This is the last year they made this model.”

Jones paid $240 for the beat-up looking tractor and then had to roll up his sleeves to get it running again

“I went to crank it, and it wouldn’t go all the way around,” he recalled. “I couldn’t figure it out, so I shot a bunch of oil in the cylinders and the spark plug holes. I left the spark plugs off and I clamped my pickup cables on, and it started spinning over and soybeans came shooting out of the spark plug holes.”

Mice had been storing the beans in the tractor. Jones even found soybeans lurking in the air cleaner. Restoring this tractor was clearly a labor of love. Just running his hands over the fender can bring back happy memories of a childhood rich in so many things more important than money.

The circle is now complete, with Jones passing down his knowledge of how to fix things with more common sense than money to the next generation of the family.

His daughter Michelle and her husband, Steve Spillman, raised their own three children, now grown, on the same farm where Jones himself grew up. For Grandpa Jones, it was pure delight seeing his grandkids grow up on the same farm he once called home.

“I got to watch my grandkids run around just like I did when I was little,” he said with a glint in his eyes.

Grandson Braden Spillman seems to have inherited the gift for fixing things that originated with his great-grandfather, Raymond Jones. Grandfather Leroy Jones is rightly proud.

“I told my daughter when he was little that that kid had a knack for this,” he recalled. “He’s grown now and he’s very mechanical. He’s overhauled three tractors already.”

Anyone can make money, but common sense and the ability to work with one’s hands is a gift that generations can treasure together.