Call me a sniveling dope or an idiot or whatever you want, but I really miss my pet tractor. I'm so jealous of anyone who still has a real pet tractor. I used to have one. Then I left Rush and it wasn't possible any more. If you have land and the means, I highly recommend getting a pet tractor.
I was the first in the next generation of my family in the early 1960's, with a Dad who took too many pictures, and relatives that did too. What is cuter than a little kid on a tractor?
This tractor was around our home property my entire life in Rush. I guess it was the safest one for me to be on, so there are dozens of pictures of me on it. I'm not sure if it just made a good subject, or if there was some kind of hope that maybe I would be the next farmer in a long line of farmers like my ancestors before me.
The red tractor was an International Harvester Farmall model "H". It was first built in 1941, and my dad bought it along with a whole collection of other farm equipment in the late 1950's. Great grandfather was running the farm and my grandfather had asthma plus particular distaste for farm work. Dad took over and tried to make a go of it in the late 1950's until the late 1960's. I don't remember much, but there are lots of pictures.
Most vivid is the memory of driving my pet as a very young teenager.
There was always a trailer to be pulled around our house that had a purpose. One trailer had a big wooden flat bed that could be dumped. We used it to plant and harvest the garden and to move anything big. Another trailer was the back end of an old dump truck from the 1920's. The engine and cab were cut off and the frame was welded to form a hitch. It had a hand crank for dumping.
About backing a trailer:
"You put your hand on the bottom of the wheel and turn it in the direction you want the back of the trailer to go"
And it really works! You turn a little and the back swings the right way, lining up with where you want to pick something up, or where you want to dump. It takes practice, and I marvel at those who can back a trailer accurately.
It wasn't good enough to have only one tractor around. We had two. The other I was forbidden to drive because it was my dad's pet tractor. It was way more powerful and known simply as "Alice".
"Alice" was an Allis Chalmers model WD-45 wide front end tractor. Dad plowed and cultivated fields with it and it was his pride and joy. I maybe drove it twice.
Alice had a bucket on her front. Each fall we did the annual "switching of the bucket" from a narrower dirt one to a wider one for snow. Grandpa lived next door and would come out when he saw Dad head for the spot in the hedgerow where the bucket was hidden. The operation required pry bars, hammers, big wrenches and grease. A few extra hands never hurt, and Grandpa knew when to come and help.
Having a front loader with a snow bucket is important in Rush, when in the 1970's we got an average of 120 inches of snow a year. After the snow stopped falling and the wind died down, you needed to dig the tractor out.
Then came the ritual of "plowing the yard". Dad would make huge 20 foot high piles. He started in the center and pushed the snow towards the sides. The huge piles became perfect "fortresses" for the epic neighborhood snowball fights that would ensue. From mountain ranges on the east and west, troops would dig bunkers and fabricate caches of snowball ammunition. Cars and tractors in the valley between served as cover as assault forces sprang to attack opposing mountain strongholds. Snow bombs would rain down on anyone caught in "no man's land". Forces would fight from their alpine redoubts as long as their snow pants would repel water. After hours of battle, wet and exhausted troops would retreat to the warm house for dry clothes and hot cocoa.
We weren't the only family to have pet tractors. Jack Gaffney, another member of a long time farm family had a pet Farmall "M" (bigger letters meant a bigger tractor). What else would the head of the Rush-Henrietta Central School District's Transportation Department be expected to do other than drive the children of Rush around for a hay ride?
The only downside of tractors meant farm type work was expected. Dad indentured me as a quarry slave to build the driveway for our house. Our property was along the Honeoye Creek and nature left us a small gravel bed. Dad and I would shovel gravel through a screen over the bucket of the tractor. Big rocks rolled down the screen as the bucket filled with finer gravel. I drove the "H" with the "half a dump truck" trailer, and dad would fill it. When the trailer was full, we would dump it in the driveway. This went on for hours. Maybe days. My teenage brain has only recently recovered from the trauma.
The only thing worse than shoveling rocks for hours is the horror that grips you when you lose your pet tractor. I parked and went to work shoveling gravel. My back was to the tractor and trailer so I didn't see it as we worked. Soon the bucket was full and I turned as dad went to dump the bucket. How exactly does a tractor and a trailer disappear?
It didn't get far. The "H" rolled down the hill and dove nose first into the embankment of the Honeoye Creek. My heart dropped into my shoes. I ran and saw the tractor undamaged, stuck in the eddy. Dad slowly walked over and climbed into the seat.
"What did I tell you about setting the brake! You could have left it in gear after you shut it off too you know! Ahhhh, that's alright. The last guy that did this broke the front axle. Just be careful next time. You were lucky."
Last guy? I never got to hear that story.
I grew up and got a pet car, and left Rush after college in 1984. Having a pet car is way more useful, and I had outgrown the pet tractor. Coming back home once and awhile I would take the "H" out for a spin, but it felt too much like work. The tractors didn't have a barn to park in, so they rusted in the yard.
Dad not only had a pet tractor, but a he had a whole menagerie of pet farm equipment. He really couldn't let go of it. It was becoming evident that the machines would probably outlive him.
The neighbors wrote letters to the town and complained about the rusty junk laying in the yard, but Dad it was probably just as pretty as it was when he bought it in the late 1950's. Its destiny and disposal would not come before my Dad's death.
Dad started to show age in the late 1990's. The tractors sat dormant, settling into the ground and unable to move. I tried to celebrate his love of the pet tractors and bought him a very nice replica of the "H". When we cleaned the house years later, I found the model still in the box, untouched.
Dad passed away in 2009, and Mom sold the tractors. Years later, when we were selling off the rest of the things in the Rush house in 2018, a man approached me. He introduced himself and said he had bought all our tractors! Grandpa's too! I gave him some parts and we traded phone numbers. Dad had kept the manuals and other paperwork. I packed it up and mailed it to him with a picture and a note:
You may have that tractor, You may own that tractor, But that is my tractor.
All of them are being restored. I hope to see them someday. If I am really lucky, I'll drive my "H" again. For the moment I have models and memories of our pet tractors.
In 2017 had a chance to drive an "H" once again (thanks to my friend Chris)!
And then in 2018, Chris let me borrow his pet tractor so I could get some work done around the house. It made me so happy. If you have never mowed with a tractor, here's your chance.
Enjoy the farm life if you have it. Seek to share it if you can in the hope to preserve it. But at the same time it is poor and pedestrian and unsustainable as our ancestors knew it. It's precious and fleeting and rare. If you want to promote it, be mindful that it isn't a lifestyle without cost. As much as my nostalgic mind remembers the good parts, the hard work is something I personally would not wish to go back to.
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