2986 Ridge Road, West Bend, Wisconsin 53095
Let me start this story with a little history of my father. Like
many of us in our 40s and early 50s, many of our fathers were in
either W.W.II or the Korean War. My father was in W.W.II in the
Philippines flying in B-25 bombers. It must have been a hoot
listening to those two 1500-plus horsepower engines starting up!
But, even before this, when he was a teenager he was already
building tractors from old car parts.
When I was a kid growing up on the farm in the ’50s, my dad
was always building things, either for me or for around the farm. I
was the first on the block to have a small tractor which Dad built
from lawnmower parts and a Power Products engine. I was also the
first on the block to have a motorized bicycle. It was Dad’s
old Schwinn with an old Power Products engine bolted to the front
fork. You just peddled to start it and hit the brakes to stop it,
or at least that was the theory.
I could tell you stories of that bike that would really make you
laugh! There was one time when I really took a flip and hurt my
frakas, it took about two weeks to heal.
Dad has been building things as long as I can remember, and is
never satisfied with just a plain old average restoration. He
always has to add a little something to make it different.
We had a doodle-bug on the farm and I guess he just had to have
another one, 40 years later. He placed an ad in the paper looking
for a depression tractor. A man by the name of Junior Holden from
Berlin, Wisconsin, called and said he had one, so Dad went out to
take a look.
We have all seen this before. When Dad got there, Junior took
him out in back, and there, under a pile of other iron, was what
looked like a Model T with a large beam resting on the radiator and
rear wheel. Just gotta have it! Right! Because, at the time, I was
living 90 miles away, Dad had to find some other suckers ( er I
mean guys) who were willing to go help pick it up. A guy by the
name of Don Jamison and his quite large friend, built like a brick
sheep shed, piled into Dad’s J-10 Jeep. Talk about 10 lbs. of
manure in a five pound sack! It was a good thing they had this big
guy along because, when they were loading the tractor, the front
wheels fell off the ramps and he just grabbed the crank and lifted
it up while they adjusted the ramps. After it was home, it stood in
the yard for about a year. You know the feeling; why did I buy this
junk? But eventually you get the urge to start working on it and
then it’s ‘Don’t get in my way!’ Then the usual
things get done, like removing all that grease and dirt, seeing
what needs to be replaced, and freeing up all those rusted
parts.
Now, like I said earlier, Dad is not content to have just a
depression tractor. One day at a show we met a friend of Dad’s
by the name of Vic Mac-Daniels, who sells things, and there right
on his trailer was a right angle drive that was made for the Model
T. Just have to have that right? Now, just have to find a sucker
(er I mean someone) to drag it two miles back to the car. This
person shall remain nameless. Dad also found a Warford transmission
for it. But this just wasn’t enough! You could see those wheels
turning in his head. He said, ‘You know, maybe I should add an
external oil pump for the main bearings and it should really have a
governor on it, also.’ After months of ciphering and trial and
error, it had both. I remember the first time I saw all of this,
and Dad trying to explain to me, a guy who doesn’t know the
difference between a box wrench and a Kanutin [sic] valve.
It all works pretty well and someday, if you’re lucky, you
may see it at some of the shows around the state, like Beaver Dam,
Chilton or Kewaskum.
Isn’t it great for many of us who have dads who like working
with their hands, willing to share their knowledge with us and
others. P.S. If anyone out there knows what a Knuton {sic} valve
is, please write in and explain.
