My wife received a call from one of our friends and wanted to know if we knew anyone interested in buying an old tractor. They did not know if it ran because it had been sitting for about eight years. I decided to go look at it because I thought it would be a fun project for me with the help of my two sons. We fell in love with it even with the flat tires, the fact that it was not running, and rust everywhere. I told my wife I was bringing it home and her first question was “does it run?” and I said no and she said “well why are you bringing it home?” She asked how I got it on the trailer and I said by putting it in gear and using the hand crank to back it up a few inches at a time for which I got the awkward silence.
The rest is history we had a wonderful time learning as we went and watching Steiner videos on how to fix it up. I bought it in October and pulled it out of the garage on Christmas night when my oldest son was home from college. I waited so he could help me put the wheels back on.
There were a whole lot of late nights in between and a whole lot of head scratching. It turned out to be a 1956 Farmall Cub and I was only the third owner. I bought it from an elderly man’s family and his father bought it new. The best thing about the tractor was the family time we had restoring it. My wife even gave up her car’s spot in the garage because she did not want it in the rain either.
Jeff Starkey
Greensboro, North Carolina