Little kids usually take a stuffed animal to bed. Not me! I took my toy John Deere farm tractor with me. My mom removed it from the crib after I fell asleep so I wouldn’t get stabbed by the exhaust pipe. This was not unusual, since I spent most of my youth on my grandparents dairy farm in Budd Lake, New Jersey.
My big thrill was riding on the tractor with my grandfather or Uncle Burt. The “special ride” was the seat on the manure spreader ( which I called a “doodang” ) when we went out to the field to spread the “fertilizer.” By the time I was ten, I drove the tractor myself, while I pulled the hay bailer and attached wagon. When I baled hay it was quite difficult at first to get the mouth of the bailer with its pickup tines to the middle of the hay windrow, especially on the turns at the end of the field. My uncle stood on the hay wagon and pulled the compressed and tied rectangular bales of hay from the rear chute, then stacked them on the wagon. The hay bales weighed from forty to seventy-five pounds each. Quite a workout, loading then unloading the wagon with fifty plus bales into the barn. I loved the sound of the old number 50T International baler made as the gasoline engine struggled to compress the hay and then the click of the knotter tying the bale.
The farm had several tractors. Two McCormick-Deering 10-20’s, one on steel wheels and one on rubber tires. The 10-20 designation meant it had ten horsepower at the drawbar and twenty horsepower on the belt pully (used for running a hammer mill, cord wood saw, etc.) The oldest was of the early 1930’s vintage. Steel wheels were used with lugs jutting out of them. These wheels gave good traction in the field, but rode rough and put divots in paved roads, which were becoming more prevalent, even in rural areas as the automobile lobby demanded paved roads. The first tractors to use rubber tires was the Allis Chalmers model ”U” in 1932. Harvey Firestone and Allis Chalmers launched a campaign to convince farmers that rubber tires were superior to steel wheels. At county fairs across the country noted racing legends Barney Oldfield and Ab Jenkins ran tractor races with the rubber tired tractors reaching 60 miles per hour. Before he died in 1938, Harvey was able to see his vision a reality, since then rubber tires were standard equipment on the majority of farms.
Back on the farm, another old tractor was set up for a specialized use. The McCormick-Deering Farmall “F-12” was a row crop tractor. The wheel spacing made it possible to cultivate row crops such as corn and other vegetables. This was the prevalent way to remove weeds before the wide spread use of chemicals. Before becoming a dairy farm, my grandfather raised vegetables, a “Truck Farm”, and sold them at the farmer’s market in Newark, NJ once a week. This is where all the grocers came to by their produce. That tractor reduced the amount of hand labor required for this type of farming.
In the 1950’s, the farm bought two newer tractors (they never could afford new ones), an International “M” and an International “H”. These were the tractors I drove. I asked my uncle if they could buy a smaller tractor like an International “A”, like the neighboring farmer Stanley had or a “Cub” with a mower, so that I could mow around the fields and keep the farm neat and tidy looking. Even though these tractors cost less than $500 used, I never got a positive response.
About twenty five years later, my wife and I bought our own little farm. I wanted a “Cub” tractor. The International Farmall Cub was built from 1947 to 1979, quite a span of time during which over a quarter of a million were built. They were designed to replace a horse on a small farm or for supplemental power on a larger farm. Finding a good one in 1981 that was reasonably priced was a challenge. Cubs used-to dot the countryside before Kubota and other foreign made tractors took over the small tractor market. I scoured the newspaper ads in Sussex, Warren, Somerset, Hunterdon, Mercer Counties, the weekly Lancaster Farming News, old dealerships, and The Want Ad Press Some I found were junk, some way over priced at $4000., and some did not have a mower, which is what I needed. Finally, one day I was driving north on Route 202 to Morristown for an appointment, I spied a Cub with a Woods rotary mower and snow plow in front of the Pine Motel in Branchburg. No for sale sign on it, but I thought that I should check things out later. On my way back a “for sale by owner” sign had popped-up on the tractor. I stopped and looked at it. The tractor was in great shape and ran well. It was a 1949 and came with the motel when the woman I talked to and her husband bought the business in 1961. Her husband died and she had a lawn service taking care of the grounds. She wanted a reasonable $1,800. for the tractor and equipment. I went home and got on the phone with my father, who lent me some of the money and then went to my neighbor, Jerry Brown, another motor head who had a trailer. We hurried up to the motel before she changed her mind. She had put the tractor in the garage. When she opened the garage door all I can say is “wow!” Next to the tractor under a car cover was a 1955 Mercedes gullwing coupe, way more than I could afford then, I didn’t even ask the price. These cars are now worth over 1.5 million dollars. We got the tractor back home, it ran like a fine Swiss watch. This acquisition led to the purchase of a second Cub tractor, a 1953, from my friend Brian Danner, whose mother was selling the family farm in Liberty Corner, NJ. The family bought the tractor and various attachments brand new from the International Harvester dealer in Califon, NJ. I like this tractor for the history of the family farm it came from. More recently, I bought a 1979 International 184 with a Woods mower, which is basically a modernized Cub with more horsepower. This is great for cutting the tall grass in our field. I had the 1949 Cub restored with the engine rebuilt and the tractor repainted by Everitt Farm Equipment just down the road from me in Ringoes. I won first place at the antique tractor display at the Hunterdon County Fair. As you see, I have 30 weight oil in my blood and the scent of hay on my clothes.
Terence Golda
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