Thinking of old-days tractors

I have always been fascinated with tractors. Probably my growing up on a farm had something to do with that. But I actually had a toy tractor before we had a tractor on our farm. And, early on, before we were big enough to think about operating a real tractor, my brother Ben and I used to play tractors.

When you are a young boy and you don't have the real thing, you can use your imagination to have a tractor to drive. For example, a red wagon can be a tractor if you want it to be. Or, you can turn a tricycle into a tractor in the blink of an eye, and if you have some rope or cord to tie your red wagon to the back of the tricycle, that gives you a tractor and wagon and you are ready for hauling your stuff. Then, when I got old enough to use a hammer and nails and a handsaw, I could make a "tractor" out of boards and nails. One board was the engine and driveline. A cross board was the rear axle. A long nail was the front wheel under the engine, and two more nails in the outer parts of the "axle" became the rear wheels. A bent nail at the back gave you a drawbar to hook your plows to, and with a little more imagination and your mouth to sound the engine, you had a tractor that would really plow the soil. My home-made tractor plowed way better than my store-bought toy tractor, which wouldn't plow at all. All my "plow" needed was two or three nails in a board, and I had a two-bottom or three-bottom plow that would really dig in the dirt.

My dad bought our first farm tractor in 1948. It was a 3-year-old Ford-Ferguson tractor, all gray in color, with a four-cylinder motor much like the motor in a Model A Ford car, outfitted with a three-point hitch and a Ferguson hydraulic lift system. At that time, the Ford Motor Company had not yet perfected their own tractor hydraulic system, so they contracted with Ferguson to use their system. Early tractors often didn't have what we came to call "road gear," they only had field gears, very slow, designed for heavy pulling. Our tractor had been outfitted with an add-on gear system, providing a step-up speed for each of the standard gear speeds. So we had a "low" and a "high" for each of the three transmission gear speeds. "Low-Low," or first gear in low range, was very slow; whereas "high-high," or third gear in high range was a pretty fast road gear.

Many early tractors were pretty basic in their provided features. Most had no hydraulics at all. Implements were controlled by manhandled levers. Mounted implements were not plentiful, and those that were used took a long time to install on the tractor. Putting the cultivator on the tractor might be at least a half-days job. Most early tractors also had no electric starters. To start the engine, you had to use a hand crank. With some, like the older two-cylinder John Deere tractors, you turned the large flywheel on the side of the tractor to start the engine. I well-remember Mr. Mal Rogers, who had a small John Deere tractor which he used to pull a hay baler. I don't remember the tractor's model designation. It was new enough to have the 1940s styled hood, but it had no starter, no lights, no battery, no hydraulics and no power take off. Mr. Rogers owned the farm on the south side of Hazelton Road, across the road from Bray's Iron Works.

One thing the older tractors did have, and which current tractors usually don't, was a belt-pulley attachment. In those days, many farm machines were belt-driven, and often a tractor, either steam or gas, would be used as a stationary power unit driving the machine by a long belt about eight inches wide. Grain threshers operated that way, as did hammer mills for grinding feed grain, or power corn shellers, buzz saws for sawing firewood. Getting the tractor lined up just right, and getting the belt on the pulleys and stretched just to the right tightness was quite a process. With some machines one had to actually start the pulley running, slowly, then "throw" the belt onto it, trying to be careful not to get a hand or finger caught and injured. It wasn't an entirely safe operation. Most of the older tractors had belt-driving pulleys installed on the side. Our own 1945 Ford tractor had no side pulley. It had a power-take-off shaft in the center rear. We bought a belt-pulley attachment for the power-take-off to operate a rear-mounted buzz saw apparatus. For many years we sawed our firewood with that.

I suppose I was a little weird as a boy. At the Benton County Fair, while most kids were taking in the rides and game booths, J.W. Jordan and I used to visit the farm equipment booths, spending time looking at tractors and balers and silage cutters and other implements, and picking up brochures to read. Usually the Farmall booth was the most elaborate and interesting, but Newt Hailey Ford usually had a good booth, and sometimes there was an Allis-Chalmers booth, and maybe even a Case booth.

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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history, vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Editorial on 06/24/2015