| Looking
Back |
| |
My
mother took a good amount of pictures long ago, and, bless her heart,
kept them. In recent years it's been fun to look back at
these images of things I only dimly remember--or that happened
before
I was born--and yet seem so familiar. Me on that toy tractor
40+
years
ago...could have been my own children just a few years back.
And
real photos of Dad's
F-20,
source of my inherited Farmall loyalty! The tractor itself is
now
long since lost track of, but it lives on in spirit in my father's
memory.
My mother is now
a partner in a small business that helps people create books to
preserve
their own family stories. Visit the Storehouse
Collection of Memories for information.
|
 |
 |
My dad
and a friend of his in late 1958,
cutting up a fallen tree with a buzzsaw mounted on his F-20. Cutting
wood this way may not win the OSHA seal of approval anymore. |
 |
 |
We
moved around a bit when I was very
young, but the first place I remember living was a rented farmhouse in
Anna, Ohio. My dad built "the climbing thing" in the
backyard, with my
earnest assistance.
The
farmer who owned the place still worked it, and I loved watching the
activity. One day in about 1963 or so, I backed
my wooden tractor up to this elevator while my
older brother supervised from his tricycle.
|
|
 |
Dad
driving our 1948 Case VAH in 1969, with me on the
drawbar. That Case was a good,
hardworking,
reliable tractor, and handled all our chores for many years.
Dad sold it to a neighbor in the
early eighties, and I bought it back and returned it to the
farm in 2006.
The
VAH and our old disk, in early 1973.
That big hedgerow of multifloral roses behind the tractor had been
there
for years, and it took us years to get rid of it.
|
 |
 |
Part
of the pumpkin crop in 1974.
For a hilly little farm with not much equipment but enough manpower
(young
teenagers), pumpkins made a good crop. The planting and
hoeing kept
us out of trouble during the Spring and Summer, and the paycheck came
in
one big chunk at Halloween. A couple of hundred bucks sure
seemed
like a lot of money. |
 |
Self-portrait
of the artist as a farmer. I found this drawing in a folder
of some old stuff my mom sent me. I must have drawn it in
the late 60s sometime. |
|
An
M Farmall waits for restoration in Modoc, Indiana, in January
1999. The gentleman I bought my John Deere 3020 from had this
tractor in his lineup outside. I imagine it's fixed up and
back in service now, and I'm glad there are people who keep these old
machines from all rusting into nothing. |
 |
|
