They never forget the first
Old tractors make for precious family farm memories
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HOMER -- A few of them have names. Every one of them has a story. There's some vintage tractors that never get out of the blood of those who grew up on the farm.
"People tend to collect the tractors that they grew up with, and so that's my case," said Phil Larson, standing in front of his lineup of vintage John Deere machines. "A lot of the younger guys collect the newer tractors, because that's what they grew up with."
Larson, a 1974 graduate of Stratford High School, has a striking collection that ranges from the early 1930s through the 1960s -- prime time for many of today's most active collectors.
Looking back, just like farmers had names for their horses and mules, once mechanical horsepower took over, a few of the early tractors that farmers depended upon the most ended up with names as well.
"Oscar" has been a good companion and reliable tractor for Larson. Oscar is one of two Model B John Deere's that Larson's brother, Bill Larson, bought many years ago.
"My brother bought that first one when he was probably 19 or 20 years old," Larson recalled. "As I understand the story, this one came from the factory with those steel wheels on it and that one, (pointing to the other B), came with these rubber tires," Larson explained.
He swapped out the steel wheels from the B that was more rusted out and put them on the first B in order to give it a better ride.
"This one was in better shape," so the swap made sense.
For Larson, who was several years younger than his brother, the Model B known as Oscar would be a good learning tractor.
"They turned me loose in the cornfield after they had picked corn, and I had a five-gallon bucket hanging from a clevis, and my job was to just drive around and, if I saw a spare ear of corn on the ground, I would stop and put it in the bucket."
Back then, farm kids learned to drive tractors just about as fast as they learned to ride a bike -- maybe faster. As long as he could reach the pedals and handle the steering wheel, it took only a few lessons for most farm-savvy kids to start driving.
It was the early 1960s, and the Larsons lived south of Stratford on the Boone County line, and every other farm kid around was doing the same thing -- learning young the ways of the farm.
After earning a degree in engineering from Iowa State University, Larson and his wife settled down on a small farm near Homer. He went to work for the Land O'Lakes Answer Farm, and never forgot how it felt to drive that vintage iron. In fact, he started restoring tractors as a teenager.
"The first tractor I did was about the year I graduated from high school," Larson recalled. "We always had old, 2-cylinder John Deere tractors around," he explained. "One of them was named Alvin because my brother Roger bought it from a sale a couple miles away." The owner's name had been Alvin, so the name stuck for the tractor.
"It was in kind of rough shape, so one of my summer projects was to open up the engine and kind of clean it up and get it running, and that worked pretty good," Larson said. "It ran pretty good after I got done fixing it up."
But Larson wasn't satisfied just getting it running. He also wanted to get it looking like new again.
"I just thought, I'm going to try and clean it up and paint it," he explained. "We had an air compressor and a paint gun, and it turned out pretty good."
Decals and lettering were not yet available, but Larson got a sheet of plastic and proceeded to make his own stencil from the lettering on another John Deere. It was a painstaking process, but worth it all once it was ready to show.
"I drove it in the parade for the Stratford Centennial," he recalled.
Eventually, Alvin, a 1935 Model A, ended up back outside again, but it's been recently restored.
"My brother John took it upon himself to kind of resurrect it and bring it back to life," he said. "He's got the motor freed up and took the block to a machine shop in Nevada. There were a lot of parts and dollars that went into it. It runs again, just like brand new. It's not painted, but it's in good mechanical condition.
One can bet that Alvin will soon have a new paint job and perhaps some official John Deere decals this time around.
Yet another vintage tractor in Larson's lineup is a John Deere 50 with power steering from about 1954 or 1955. He bought it near Coalville and drove it home with about an inch of snow on the ground many years ago. That one didn't want to start, even with persistent cranking, so he and his wife put a log chain on it, pulled it a bit, and got it running. He didn't stop until he made it home.
Since then, it's been a reliable tractor for small jobs on the farm. While it used to have the rust that comes with age and hard work, about a year ago he got it painted and applied new decals.
But Larson isn't done yet. He also has a John Deere 530 from about 1959. This is one that the next generation will likely look back on with fondness in years to come, just as Larson does now with his early tractors.
"Our grandson is 13 years old and last summer he wanted this one all fixed up to take to the parade in Stratford and Dayton," Larson said. "We didn't have it done in time, but I got it all put together and painted, probably in October. So when they finished combining the corn in this field right south of me last fall, I asked them if it would be all right if we just took the tractor and disk out and made a few rounds. It's really good for the tractor with new pistons to get it out and do a little work, break it in."
The farmer willingly agreed, and the grandson was soon off and running.
"Liam Larson, our grandson, took it out and he just disked and disked and disked. He went around the field a couple times, and I had to go get him an extra five-gallon can of gas to keep going. He just had the best time."
Kids and tractors, with the careful supervision of a more experienced generation, still make for happy farm memories.