6236 Stateline Road, Springfield, Tennessee 37172
For the past 15 years my father and I have been looking for a
W-12 to restore and show. When my father was a boy, a custom
thresherman used a 32′ Keck-Gonnerman separator pulled by a 21
horsepower Keck-Gonnerman steam traction engine to thresh their
wheat. A W-12 tractor was used to pull the binder to cut the wheat
on my grandfather’s farm.
In December of 1990 Mr. Jack Mulford of Lodi, New York, had an
ad in the GEM on a W-12 he had for sale. I called him and
subsequently bought a tractor over 800 miles from my home. In March
of 1991 my friend John Briley and I went to pick up the tractor. We
left home at about four o’clock in the morning and arrived
about nine o’clock that night. The next day we loaded the
tractor, then headed back to Cleveland, Ohio, and spent the night.
The third day we arrived home and had driven over 1800 miles in
three days.
The tractor was just like Mr. Mulford had described it. It is
the 315th tractor made in 1934. It had always been kept inside and
only needed cleaning of rust from the fuel tank to put it in
perfect running condition. One thing unusual about the 1934 is that
it has a dip stick to check the engine oil instead of the petcocks
on the oil pan. The tractor had been painted red and black so I
repainted it the original gray color.
My father, Al Fuqua, and I have been buying, selling, and
collecting antiques since 1971 and we now have 29 antique tractors,
two threshing machines, and a large collection of farm implements
and tools. We have been members of the Tennessee-Kentucky
Thresherman’s Association, Adams, Tennessee, since 1971. We
have been the coordinators of the old time farm show at the
Tennessee State Fair for the last four years.
