1939 Farmall M – Think Pink

My dad pulled and collected several tractors, but his favorite was a 1939 Farmall M. He was quite good at tractor pulling and it began to take priority in his life. You could find him following the pulling circuit every weekend. My mother began to resent the time he was spending on the sport and one day my dad stopped going. It wasn’t until years later that I knew the reason why. My father was always a quiet man about his faith, but he explained that tractor pulling was making him skip church and becoming too important to him that he lost a balance in his life. He didn’t get rid of the Farmall M, it just served a new purpose. He would use it to haul a load of firewood out of the woods, or pull a load of kids in a parade. We photographed the tractor for the cover of one of our tractor repair DVDs and it modeled in a photo shoot with some tractor quilts I made. When my father was dying of cancer he asked each one of his children if there was something of his that they would like to have. When my turn came, very tearfully I said, “I would like the M”. He replied “ I wondered what I was going to do with it”.

I drove the Farmall M home and it sits in my barn. It has been to a tractor pull, but my most proud moment was using it to pull a wagon load of kids to Vacation Bible School. I think my dad would approve.

Jennifer Gingell
Lapeer, Michigan