Dayton Daily News & Radio’s ‘joe’s
journal’
Several years ago, Carl Secchi, as President of the Blue Grass
Steam & Gas Show, Harrodsburg, Ky., began awarding a special
plaque to every Spark Plug I wrote up for THE GAS ENGINE MAGAZINE.
He informed me that he was doing it, in cooperation with The
Champion Spark Plug Co., in recognition of the fellows who worked
so hard and contributed so much to the engine shows.
In appreciation of this fine gesture, I wrote to Carl, asking
for a snapshot of him holding the new plaque, so I could write up a
bit of publicity for G. E. M.– as a sort of ‘Thank You’ to
both him and The Champion Co.
But in reply, Carl wrote, ‘As originator and writer of these
Spark Plug stories, you are the ‘Chief Coil’, and will
receive the first plaque. So, you just write yourself up, along
with the history of the Joe Dear.’
I might add that, outside of writing up the various ‘Spark
Pluggers’ who work so hard to fix up the fine old engines that
keep the shows going, my only claim to being a Spark Plug is the
little three-wheeled garden tractor which many know today as the
‘Joe Dear’. Most of these people might well think that I
cobbled up the little tri-wheeled monster, solely for showing
around at the reunions–and nothing more. Little do they realize
that I made the little Delco-powered tractor, over a quarter of a
century ago, just after the Second World War, and long before the
gas engine reunions.
My younger brother, Stanley, would soon be returning from the
European Theatre of the War. He always had a ‘Green Thumb’,
was a fine gardener, and I felt that if I could make some kind of
small, powered tractor or cultivator, he and I could do some real
gardening out in the country, after he was mustered out. Later I
learned that his young English bride had announced ‘All that
will stop, when I get there,’ even before she had met the
family. All of which explains why brother Stanley took no interest
in the little tractor I’d made in his honor. Her prophecy had
indeed proved true. For I don’t recall him ever noticing it or
even commenting about it, the many times they’d visited us in
the country.
It was during a time when gas engines were rather scarce. To get
one you had to swap another one, or pay an exhorbitant price.
Somehow I had acquired a small Jacobson two-cycle engine, during
the war, which we mounted onto an old reel hand-mower, making us
proud owners of one of the first gas-powered lawnmowers in the
neighborhood. Later I recall buying an old one-cylinder Maytag,
then a two-cylinder Maytag, and finally a small Briggs &
Stratton. I wasn’t so much interested in gas engines, but they
did speak loudly at the time as a bargaining agent in about any
kind of swap a fellow could make.
The ‘Joe Dear’ has chugged across three generation
gaps–Before I finished making the ‘Joe Dear’ almost thirty
years ago, I had combed every junkyard and wrecking yard, visited
every machine shop, all long since gone out of business, and
wracked my brain on every kind of mechanical principle conceivable.
I guess that’s why it has lasted over the years. By the time I
finished it, I felt I had grown up, my son also grew up on it.
(He’s NCR Technical Director in Computers for European
Continent) and his four sons have ridden it in parades. At Blue
Grass Show in 1970, a little gold Kentucky lady saw it and said,
‘I’m a welder. I’ll build one like it and bring it next
year.’–Never saw her again.
GOLLY–How does one go about writing a story about himself?
Guess I’ll talk mostly about the ‘Joe Dear’. Note the
beautiful Champion Spark Plug plaque which Carl Seechi and The
Champion Spark Plug Co. have been giving to each Spark Plug of the
Month for the past several years. The old telegraph in the bay
window was sold to me by a Sioux Indian who said her ancestors
raided the narrow gauge depot in Colorado to steal the ‘white
man’s voice box’ to keep them from sending messages for
more white people to come there. Western Union teletype machine and
desk can be seen at far left in picture. Old candlestick telephone
was given me by Spark Plug Wayne Whitenack, Wire Chief of Union
City Telephone Company when he removed it from my Mother’s
home, some years ago.
Sometime later a friend of mine in Arcanum showed me a little
tractor he’d made, using the small Delco light-plant gas
engine. It wasn’t a well-designed tractor, but he did a lot of
bragging about ‘how powerful’ it was. ‘The Delco is
5-horsepower,’ he claimed.
Paying a visit to the Patterson Brothers’ Junk Yard, at
Winchester, Ind., I spotted a couple of the larger 850-size Delco
Light Plants, which I purchased at ten bucks a piece.
‘Surely if that guy’s smaller Delco delivers five-horse,
then these much larger ones will develop at least 7?
horsepower’–so some fellows told me, and I really wanted to
believe. Unloading the two old Delcos onto the barn floor, I picked
which one I thought was the better of the two, by way of
compression, etc. Then I took some parts from the other engine,
which I thought were in better condition, and placed them on the
one I was keeping, and sold the other one for $12.50 to another
fellow who also used it for a riding tractor, I later learned.
Making $2.50 over and above the cost on the engine I didn’t
keep was quite a profit I felt at the time. But if I knew then what
I know now, I’d have been a lot smarter
‘wheeler-dealer’ to have kept the other engine rather than
gloated over the paltry profit.
First of all, I spent quite a lot of work, removing the long
bolts that held the electrical generator onto the back of the old
Delco plant. After all, I was going to make some kind of gasoline
cultivator or tractor, and wanted it strictly gas. (So I thought.)
At the time I couldn’t visualize exactly what I did plan to
build. So I just loaded all the junk into our little farm trailer,
hitched it onto the rear of the old family Model-A Ford Flivver and
my father-in-law and I drove it over to Wes Duvall’s blacksmith
shop, northwest of the village of Coletown, Ohio.
We drove up the narrow mud road and parked in front of a rather
dilapidated old frame building. We could hear the big gas engine
that was running the long line-shafts that seemed to vibrate the
little old blacksmith shop from their moorings overhead. Shutting
off the power, Wes Duvall listened sympathetically to what we
wanted to have built.
‘I made a garden tractor for another fellow over a
ways,’ he said, as he looked over the big Delco engine and
other scrap parts we were unloading in his yard.
‘First of all, well need some kind of frame,’ he said.
‘I don’t have any channel iron, but try Duffey’s
Hardware in Greenville,’ he went on, looking over odd pieces of
iron and steel scrap in the dark corners of his ancient shop.
‘Channel iron’s not available, due to the steel shortage
and the war,’ said the clerk at the local hardware store.
‘I can sell you four pieces of angle iron, and you can have two
welded together to make the same as channel iron.’ The clerk
dutifully sawed off the four pieces out to Sharpeye and had Orville
Mong weld the two pieces of channel iron together to make one side
of the frame, and the remaining two he likewise welded to form the
opposite side of the frame. Taking the two sides of the frame back
to Duvall’s blacksmith shop, Wes promptly came out and began
setting things up on wooden blocks, to give him a sort of
visualization of what he was going to build. First he set up the
channels for the frame. Then he began cranking his blower and
getting hot coals in the forge, after which he began pounding and
shaping some heavy bars into end pieces to bolt the frame together.
Then we both lifted the heavy Delco Engine up onto the frame, and
Wes began visualizing the steering mechanism. He reached for an old
steel fork leaning against a tree, which he had fashioned out of a
heavy wagon tire, and immediately cut it down in size to fit the
wheelbarrow wheel I had. Meantime I was scouring every junkyard in
quest of odd parts which I felt could be used. Lugging an old
Terraplane steering column to his shop, Wes grabbed it, took one
look, and in a matter of minutes he had pounded out a complicated
piece to hold it onto the steering fork at the front end, fastening
the rear of that support onto the Delco air-column jacket. And atop
this, he set the Delco gas tank, lengthwise, givint it, for the
first time, an appearance of being a tractor.
I’ll never forget the spell that old Wes Duvall cast over
me. He’d puff on his corncob pipe and look at the contraption
taking shape, as if to visualize what we wanted. Then, in only a
few moments, he’d be coming out from his shop again, with the
finished piece still steaming. He rarely measured things, but
merely looked at them, and the finished pieces always fit in place
and were bolted together.
Then came the rear end. And I was off again to the Iddings
junkyard, in quest of a ’36 Ford V-8 rear end which I was soon
lugging out to Mong’s garage at Sharpeye, just up the road from
where we lived. Mong dismantled the rear end housing. I took the
rear axle to the old Ed Lohman buggy and telescope shop in
Greenville, Ohio. I told Ed I wanted the axle cut down to three
feet and eight inches, re-tapered, re-keyed and re-threaded on both
ends. When I went to pick the finished axle up, (I’ll give you
a guess as to what he charged me for all that fine machine
work.)–and asked what I owed him, he replied, ‘A dollar and a
quarter to you.’
I took the shortened axle directly back to Mong’s garage,
and Orville said he’d cut the housing down and weld it to fit
the shorter axle if I’d trade him my old one-cylinder Maytag to
put on his lawnmower, which I did. The old Maytag cost me only
$2.50, and, with the $1.25 for the machining, the rear axle cost me
only $3.75 complete to have it narrowed. After Mong assembled the
rear axle and housing, I took it over to Duvall’s Blacksmith
shop, and we placed it under the rear end of the proposed tractor
frame. A couple of new utility trailer wheels I had already
purchased, we fastened onto each end of the narrowed rear axle. A
new implement seat a friend had given me out of the old Kerr
Hardware Store in Union City, when it went out of business long
before, was found in our barn and Wes Duvall made a hole in the
frame to bolt it right behind the iron steering wheel I had placed
on the old Terraplane steering column. Placing the wheelbarrow
wheel inside the front fork, and securing its bearings with a big
bolt I had bought at a hardware store, the little tractor began
looking like something we had visualized.
Wes Duvall was a fast worker, an artist in shaping iron with
hammer and forge. All the work he did, in building the parts and
setting up the main outline of the little tractor, seemed only like
a day, had the hours been placed end to end.
In mounting the support for the heavy steering wheel, Wes Duvall
anchored it with only one bolt into the Delco Engine crankcase
where the generator bolt had been removed. I could tell this would
never hold, but didn’t say a word. The last thing he did was to
put on a sort of slip clutch, which I knew also would never work.
When he said $20 for all that work, I nearly fainted–paid him, and
loading the garden tractor onto our little farm trailer we drove it
back to the farm where I proceeded to work out the finishing
touches. I made a curved template out of cardboard, and asked
Duvall later to make me a piece just like it out of iron. He did it
immediately and I returned and bolted it onto the engine frame, and
the single support he’d made for the steering wheel. From that
moment to this, the steering wheel support never came loose and I
was proud that it also lent a little artistic contour to my garden
tractor. I had planned it that way. But I never breathed to Wes
Duvall that the piece was to improve something he had already made.
Diplomacy was the name of my game.
‘Contact’–a jerk on the flywheel and ‘Chug, chug,
chug.’–After Wes Duvall laid out the general pattern and
outline, I never changed a thing on the ‘Joe Dear’, except
to add all the refinements, such as Pierce Governor, right and left
foot brakes and hand brake, throttle linkage and clutch, all of
which have remained the same for almost thirty years. Some modern
factory-built lawn tractors may pull more, as I am using direct
belts. But I’ll wager it can do a pretty good job with the old
1-horse Delco–and still bet I have more fun doing it. You can buy
a modern garden tractor at any store, but not a ‘Joe Dear’.
Oh yes-that’s a W-18 Champion plug in the head.
Then came the working out of the clutch. I went back again to
Iddings’ Junk Yard, where I found two old Terraplane balance
wheels, and I also got two old Pontiac connecting rods, out of a
set of six, for which I got bawled out by John Iddings before other
customers for getting the rods out of order. Those were the days
when wrecking yards had ‘everything’–even that ancient
Baker Electric Car that Iddings had sitting in one store room, and
no doubt wound up in some collector’s exhibit. Next I found an
old Dodge throw-out bearing that 1 picked up, paid for, and fetched
along–just in case. You see, I was beginning to
‘visualize’ how I wanted my garden tractor to look and
work–just like that blacksmith artist, Wes Duvall.
1 unloaded everything in at Conner Miller’s machine shop in
Greenville. I showed Conner the two Terraplane balance wheels, and
he made a pattern for me to have the Union City Mold Company to
cast. This piece was to have double grooves cut on it by
Conner’s lathe, for the double V-belts, serving as part of the
clutch on the Delco drive shaft. Conner said the piece was
imperfect, that the Mold Co. had welded some cavities shut and it
would be too hard on his lathe tool. He asked me to return it and
demand a re-make. This the Mold Co. foreman promised to do. But
when I went to get the second piece, Conner said, ‘They
didn’t remake it, but sent the original piece. I’ll just
cut it anyway, despite the welding.’
Conner Miller did a wonderful job. We finished the clutch, even
to the clutch facing. Then I took the tractor back to the farm,
where I proceeded to fit the two Pontiac connecting rods onto the
frame as supports for the Dodge throw-out bearing. Having found an
old iron pedal on a shoe-cobbler’s outfit at a junkyard, I
fashioned some linkage and hooked up the clutch which has worked
ever since. I then proceeded to mount an old Pierce governor I
found in my father-in-law’s barn, and connected it by linkage
to an improvised ‘throttle arm’ that I had taken off an old
planter. Then I had a gas pedal made and welded, which I connected
independently to the throttle linkage, so either the governor or
foot-feed could operate independently of each other. After this, I
made two templates of cardboard, for the foot brakes, which I had
Duvall heat and pound out of iron.
These I mounted onto bearings which I improvised from some kind
of implement parts made to serve another purpose, but which
performed perfectly the function I intended them for over the
years. Then I clamped rubber peddle treads onto the forged brake
pedals, and linked them up to the rear brake drums. I had nice,
professional-looking brakes, for either right or left rear wheel,
or both together for straight stopping.
Twenty-five years later, I visited Wes Duvall’s old
blacksmith shop and found him still pottering at odd jobs in his
shop. ‘The tattered weatherboarding looked the same as it did
when we made the ‘Joe Dear’ at the close of World War II.
Wes looked the same too. I got a picture of him at the door of his
shop, hammer in hand, holding his pet cat.
After everyone has left the Rushville, Indiana Show, I tried to
climb the big grassy hill and the ‘Joe Dear’ made it. Early
next morning I did it several times again. The wife got one picture
in the dim dawn’s light. It’s steeper than it looks and
long, with heavy grass. It reminded me of my first hill climb in
the woods, long before seeing a threshermen’s hill-climb.
I was the envy of the neighborhood farmers, who watched me use
my little one-cylinder tractor to pull a farm wagon up to the next
job, tow the car when the battery was dead, or drag out a
fair-sized apple tree trunk, which my father-in-law didn’t
think it would do, but it did. One time the fellows unhitched a
team and let me hook onto the hay fork rope. ‘We’ll really
put on enough to stall him,’ I heard them say up in the mow.
But the little tractor slid its wheels, then gripped the driveway
and pulled their heavy load right up till they yelled,
‘stop’.
Later I found an old used corn-cutting sled at Iddings’
Wrecking Yard, and we took it home, repaired it, and for several
seasons we pulled it, cutting corn as fast as my father-in-law
could yell ‘Stop’ and ‘Go’ to me, driving the
little tractor. This saved much hand work and arm aches over the
years. On more than one occasion I took the little tractor and
hitched the family trailer to it, going either to Greenville, Ohio,
or Union City, Ind., to buy lumber, or get gravel, or cement, when
we added a room or two to our house. I could go ten miles an hour
in high gear, once going around an old John Deere, as my son and I
headed for Union City, ten miles away, for some roof joists. This
was long before the companies began production on the little lawn
and garden tractors we know today. I was looked upon as sort of a
‘little king’ chugging on my little homemade tractor up and
down the roads. One farmer called up one evening and wanted to know
if I’d sell my tractor. Another neighbor started to make one
like it, but gave up before he got started.
Many an evening I would hitch my son’s soap-box racer back
of the little tractor, and race in high gear around the barnyard in
big circles. During the day, it would serve well in various odd
jobs, such as stretching fence, by placing it in first-gear and
turning the big heavy fly-wheel. I always started it by turning
over the fly-wheel, and this made me feel it was somewhat akin to a
John Deere. More than once I’d drive it, along with the farm
trailer, back to the woods, half a mile down the lane, pick up fire
wood and fetch it back to the house. Once, when I had loaded the
trailer, I picked up just one more piece of wood, and out flew some
yellow jackets. This was my first encounter with them, and the
first sting pushed the flesh of my hand back like a seven-penny
nail. 1 ran up the hill, with several clinging to my sweater,
leaving the little tractor still running and attached to the
trailer at the bottom of the hill. Finally, after twenty minutes, I
crept back to the tractor, waving my arms and fighting off those
sadistic critters all the way. I gingerly got onto the seat, threw
it into first, and proceeded to pull my trailer of firewood over
the hill and back up the lane, to the house. But I noticed one
solitary yellow jacket had perched himself on the front
steering-column, like a figurehead on an old ship, and he rode that
way clear up to the house as if to make sure I got home–and never
came back. On more pleasant occasions, I would drive down to the
woods and goose the old Delco Engine, then see if I could climb the
steep hill, out of the natural ravine. And I always made it, even
though it was rough. 1 had my own hill-climb long before I ever
heard of a hill-climb at a threshermen’s reunion.
Some years later, Maurice Warvel, a neighbor friend, told me,
‘If you don’t clean that little tractor up and paint it and
put it in The Darke County Threshers parade, then I will.’
‘I’ll just give you that job,’ I replied. We took it
to his farm, out in the country, and he proceeded to clean the old
rust off of it. I pitched in and helped what I could. When it came
to painting, Maurice was an expert. He said, ‘What colors do
you want it?’
I replied, ‘It’s always reminded me of a John Deere.
Just paint it green and yellow, like a John Deere.’
After Maurice got it painted, he then asked, ‘What name do
you want on it?’
To which replied my wife, ‘Well, why not call it ‘Joe
Dear’, spelling it ‘D-E-A-R’,’ she laughed. I saw
the joke immediately, whether Maurice did or not. But he eventually
caught on. I was so proud of the pretty, shiny green and yellow
‘Joe Dear’ that I drove it into our place in Greenville,
the whole five miles, across the public square and right through
traffic. It was always the nicest little tractor to ride on. You
could either drive it, sitting on the seat, or stand and drive it
just as easily.
If I had to do over, of course, I would have put a more powerful
engine on it. For years I thought the heavy old Delco was around
71/2 horse. Then one day Carlton Weisel, at
the Darke County Threshers, almost insulted me by telling me,
‘That Delco’s only a horse-and-a-half.’ Sam Schnur, who
heard it all, said, ‘Let’s settle it once for all.’
Grabbing one of Jack Egbert’s shingles, he tried what he called
his ‘trusted old method’ of figuring horsepower.
‘According to my method, it’s only one-and-a-half
horsepower,’ said Sam. ‘But it develops a lot more,
(torque), after it goes through your pullies, transmission and
rear-end.’ After attending gas engine reunions, and seeing what
the older, low-compression, slow-firing gas engines will do, I
resolved to resign to my fate, and be happy that the old ‘Joe
Dear’ can do as much as it does on only one-and-a-half horses.
Over the years I’ve never changed a bolt, a piece of linkage,
or anything, to preserve the antiquity of the old ‘Joe
Dear’. I never tried to file out the anvil marks that old Wes
Duvall’s mighty hammer beat into the pieces. To me he will ever
remain a grand old soul, a great old smithy whose work was a credit
to the blacksmith’s art. Though I still plow a large garden
every spring, pulling a 9-inch plow, little did I ever envision the
‘Joe Dear’ would someday participate in so many parades, or
grace the engine show grounds where it has stood beside ‘Uncle
Elmer’s’ IRON MAN and GAS ENGINE MAGAZINE subscription
stand. To me, the thrill of the old engine is its slow-firing,
through the long exhaust pipe which seems to add twenty more horses
to its chugging power. For the crowds that have come to congregate
around it, to fondle the steering wheel and controls–year after
year–it has become the best leaning post and place to lolligag on
the reunion grounds. Little boys have begged me to take them a
ride, or just let them sit on the seat. Once, early in the morning
at Bluffton, Ohio, a little boy who had been gathering firewood for
the steam engines, came up with an armload. He looked all around
the ‘Joe Dear’, then said to us, ‘Where’s the
firebox? I have some wood for it.’
15-30 Hart-Parr Tractor an 8 Ft. Moline Binder. I am next to the
tractor and a boy I hired to ride the binder. Photo was taken in
1924 on a 280 acre farm which I operated in Benton County Iowa,
near La Porte City. I own and operate a Hart-Parr, 3
Internationals, and a John Deere, a Twin-City and a
Minneapolis-Moline. They were all good.
This is a 60 HP Holt Cat which I operated while grading roads
for Ben-ton County, Iowa. In 1916-17 until the war started then
Uncle Sam had a different job for me. I worked with tractors and
steam engines until my retirement. I have 11 gasoline engines which
I gathered and restored as a hobby.
30-60 Aultman-Taylor Tractor used for threshing near lona,
Minnesota. Photo was taken in 1923. I am standing beside the rear
wheel while visiting relatives.
At Rushville, Ind., this summer, I heard an old John Deere climb
the high, grassy knoll, and his engine slowed down considerably
before he reached the top. Memories of my old ‘hill-climbing
days’ back in the woods with the ‘Joe Dear’, riled my
blood a little. After everyone had left the grounds that Sunday
evening, I crept alone down at the bottom of that knoll, gunned the
old Delco, and surprisingly I climbed right to the top. I could
hardly believe the little old tractor would do it. Next morning, I
tried it several times again, before the crowds arrived to clean
the grounds. I told my wife to take a picture with my old
blunderbuss, and she did, but it was still quite early in the
morning for picture taking.
Several years ago, I tried a set of reduction pulleys on the
‘Joe Dear’, which gave it a third more power, made it plow
easier, climb hills, and do chores with less effort on the engine.
I thought my tractor troubles were now over, but then the belts,
being single each way, wore out very quickly. One hot day, at the
Darke County Threshers, Greenville, Ohio, I had promised to pull
John Burocker’s gas engine trailer in the afternoon parade.
Fred Leather-mon had just taken a ride on the ‘Joe Dear’,
with the hand-brake on. This wore out what was left of my chewed-up
belts. I took the clutch apart, removed the double-pulley reducer
and worn belts, and resorted back to my original direct pulleys
with the double belts. The mighty ‘Joe Dear’ does well
enough that way, and I am still preserving the originality as we
worked it out the first time, over a quarter century ago.
No-the ‘Joe Dear’ is not a ‘toy’ I hastily put
together to show at the reunion parades. It appeared on the horizon
and was doing odd farm chores, as well as lending fun and
recreation, long before I ever heard of a steam threshermen’s
reunion or a gasoline alley.
And, many a time, I give the old ‘Joe Dear’ fly-wheel a
whirl, just out-side my door, plop down in a comfy old chair, and
have my own one-tractor gas engine show, listening to the
‘music’ of the old Delco chugging through its long,
organ-pipe exhaust. Glory Hallelujah.
Pictured is part of my antique cuyme collection, I thought it
might be of interest to the GEM readers. There is an 8 HP Fairbanks
Morse Model N, 6 HP Galloway, 6 HP Waterloo Boy, 10 HP Witte, 2? HP
International Famous, 7 HP Economy. Three model engines in front
and 12-20 Model W Cletrac at the left.
I show my engines and models at Rollag, W. M. S. T. R.
2 HP side shaft Domestic engine I recently found and bought. I
do not think this is the right color and would like to ask the
fellows what color it should be–On photo it is a medium
yellow.
