When The Going Gets Tough

7148 Dodgeon Court Cincinnati, Ohio 45231

What makes a tractor get up and go is a mystery to many. But
it’s no mystery just hard work for five exhibitors at the
fifteenth Ohio Valley Antique Machinery Fair in Georgetown,
Ohio.

Combining brawn with brain, five mechanical craftsmen face
lifted the old iron dinosaurs of the field restoring them to full
power. Having their tractors on display, they talk of their
sporting adventures and the lessons they learned getting these old
metal hulks running and rolling again.

Mike Rohrich

Mike bought his Minneapolis-Moline at a local consignment sale,
a 1949 4-plow model U which does its share of farm work. ‘Me,
my Dad and my brother farm about 400 acres,’ Mike says,
‘and we have ten altogether.’ A litter of ten
Minneapolis-Molines! His old-timer belongs to the series that sold
under the slogan ‘vision line design.’ The seat stood high
on these VLD’s and could be swung off-center by jerking the
hips. The operator could sit and see all around, every planted row,
from his swivel seat. Minneapolis-Moline built one of the
Army’s first ‘jeep vehicles.’ They were tractors scaled
down with truck wheels. Molines haven’t rolled off assembly
lines since the White Company absorbed them and Oliver and
Cockshutt. Like Molines in general, there are few model U’s
around. ‘Extinct…gone,’ Mike says of his favorite
tractor, the ‘prairie gold’ Molines are scarce as the big
grass prairie itself whose sod they helped rip, a prairie which
stretched one time across miles to Batavia, Ohio, where Mike
farms.

Don Carlier

Don Carlier began a hobby and career at the same time. He left
the Navy (years ago) and joined Anstaett, the Case dealer. He left
Anstaett, but he hangs onto the old Case workhorses. It’s been
a lively past time with him ever since. ‘I liked them,’ he
said, fondly remembering the old tractors, ‘They were the
best.’ Don was looking for PTO parts to repair his Dad’s
’37 Case when he found his ’38 RC in Afton, Ohio. ‘It
was in too good a’ shape to part out,’ he recalls. He
bought it and he keeps it in just a hare’s hair of mint
condition. Case made three models in that era: a small RC, a
three-plow DC and a big LA ‘wheatland’ tractor for the
rugged, rolling prairie lands.

Delbert Parker

Delbert Parker of Sardinia bought his 1942 John Deere in 1982.
His grandfather had one, and he wanted an LA model ‘like
grandpa had.’ The LA is a small tractor, easy to garden, easy
to transport. He found one between Mount Orab and Williams-burg
which he keeps for show. . . (and for looks!) with a buzz saw on
front and a chain-driven Milwaukee mower on back. With the help of
his neighbor Glen Pindell, he made the rip saw. Raising it up from
the operator’s seat by crank, he explains, ‘All you do is
drop it down with the belt in place and it works.’ With the
technical savvy of an expert engineer, he pointed to the lefthand
thread on the sawshaft, then the ‘piece from the phone
company,’ and finally to a triangular brace made ‘from
Allis-Chalmers cultivators.’ Each was a standby part that
slipped into his ‘from scratch’ design. ‘LA’s start
easy, run easy, are easy to handle and John Deere makes parts,’
he says. Tapping a freeze plug on the engine block, he adds, ‘I
could order a new one.’ He went on with his story about his
freeze plugs but in a different light. When one of his freeze plugs
started to leak, he popped it out, brushed off the rust and
resealed it in place with epoxy glue. The plug hasn’t leaked
since not a drop. Delbert participated in the antique power show
for his ninth year, but it was the first year he was forbidden to
go in the uptown parade. ‘Cleats,’ he says, pointing out
his mower wheels. The old ‘Gay 90’s’ mower had a
four-foot bar, a wooden tree, and unlike any mower he’d ever
seen, a lightweight chain drive in place of a worm gear box. The
mower is a one-of-a-kind and more than double the age of his
Deere.

Paul Miller

‘I don’t use them, I just show them,’ Paul Miller
says. Paul is President of the Highland County Antique Club which
had their first show in June at the Rocky Fork State Park. ‘We
had 37 tractors and we had 16,208 people go through.’ Standing
beside him, Amy Mills of Fayettesville, an honorary member of the
Highland County Club, had a word or two to say about the model B,
1935 vintage, he was driving. ‘It was a big hunk of rust like
the one I’m driving over there,’ she says. The
rust-blistered ‘gas pull’ came out of the Clinton County
area in ’81. Tretz well drillers of Hillsboro own it and keep
it looking new, cultivators and all. Paul is as partial to John
Deere as his Dad is. His Dad was in the John Deere business at
Moorse Hardware and Implement in Feesburg. Evidently some of his
Dad’s likes rubbed off on Paul, because he stays with John
Deere, too.

Tom Burer

Tom Burer is owner of an Oliver 80 Row Crop, which he paid
$800.00 for. Water pumps in the old Olivers tend to develop sudden
leaks. Tom took the dribble from his own rather coolly,
‘They’re not hard to repair,’ he says. To give his
Oliver a ‘like new’ look, he switched the core around and
put the best side of his radiator out front. In rebuilding his
Oliver his toughest problem was finding the right color. For that,
he called Lyle Dumont, an Oliver collector in Sigourney, Iowa. The
mix he recommended was $40.00 per gallon. Tom had the color made
up. But the company doing the mixing slipped and substituted a
paint number. The first time Tom painted his Oliver, he painted it
the wrong green. The old Oliver came to Tom on rubber. ‘I spent
more than fifty dollars in long distance calls for front
steel,’ he tells. He found a set in Mishawaka, Indiana, but the
fellow he sent after them returned with a rusted out pair. That was
no good for Tom. He drove back with the fellow himself to dredge up
a better pair. Together they hunted and hunted for four hours among
endless rows of tractors. As they were getting ready to leave, he
found some. ‘The trip up there is 250 miles,’ Tom says,
‘We drove it twice, both ways, so I can say I drove a thousand
miles for these wheels.’

The Fair at Georgetown

The fair, now in its fifteenth year, is one of Ohio’s
finest. During its special weekend in August, the fairgrounds come
alive with hit-and-miss engines, flea-market merchants, homemade
ice cream and a Saturday evening square dance. No one misses the
‘noon whistle’ or the line-up and parade around the
grandstand. The kids take turns shimmying up a larded pole; older
ones join in the tobacco-spitting contest. The top event of the
fifteenth season is the egg crack. Operators back their grandaddy
tractors to an egg in a vice. They try to crack the shell with the
drawbar and not spill the yoke. In the first years of the century
the Case Steam Engine Company advertised their giant steam machines
touting that engineers could crack an egg with the drawbar and not
punch out the yoke. And that’s just what the drivers in the
antique league try to do… back into the egg but keep the hen from
sassin’. (The Case, by the way, lost!)

The Fifteenth Anniversary Ohio Valley Antique Machinery Show was
held at the Brown County Fairgrounds, Georgetown, Ohio on August 9,
10, 11, 1985. Officers of the Club are: Frankie Carrington,
President, Jim Gifford, Vice President, Caryl Carrington,
Treasurer, Wanda Griffith, Secretary. Board of Directors: Floyd
Reveal, Roger Neal, John Metcalfe, Don Housh, Ronald Klein, John
Kleinmann, Wendell Kelch, Danny Hardyman, Bruce Egbert, Stanley
Mack, Greg Dyer, Maxwell Murphy, Ronnie Griffith, Earl Pringle and
Tom Kattine.

Butterfield Show

‘Here are a couple of pictures of rare gas engines that were
at the Butterfield Threshing Bee, in Butterfield, Minnesota on
August 17 and 18, 1985. These very nicely restored 1905 or 1906
Gade Brothers 1 HP (top) and an inverted 5 HP 1905 Hart Parr are
owned by Ed Streich of RR Mt. Lake, Minnesota 56159.’

Submitted by David Nelson, RR #1, Mt. Lake, Minnesota 56150.