Dad's first tractor

fixerupper

Well-known Member
I found a pic of dad on his first tractor, a late 47 A with single front wheel, long rear axles and 42? inch rears. He worked for farmers during the war and saved up enough money to buy his first tractor and plow with cash, and he wanted a new one. This pic was taken in oct of 47 and it looks like it doesn't have all the paint burned off the muffler. He said it burned valves so Deere put rotators on the valves and that solved the problem. He was told by the mechanic the first gas A's burned valves but Deere quickly solved the problem.

He ended up with this oddball tractor, at least for Northwest Iowa because of a shortage of new tractors caused by the war. The dealer, Johnson John Deere-Chevrolet, in Newell, Iowa got this tractor in so dad bought it out of desperation so he could get his fall plowing done. He never did like it, the axles stuck out too far and would snag the fence when he was trying to plow up close and being a taller tractor than normal the mounted cultivator would tend to pull up on the shovels. He laid it on it's side one fall when he had a Caswell loader on it. The rear wheels were set in narrow for plowing and he drove over a rock with the loader up high (for a Caswell, anyway). Nothing was hurt, it laid over easy.

In the fall of 51 he traded it for another new 51 A and it's still on this farm sitting in the barn ready to go to work.

The first pic is dad sitting on the new 47 A. The plow hooked to it is probably the one I have in the barn beside the 51 A. I'll have to ask him about that. The date on the second pic is 2002 but I doubt if it was that long ago? My son was plowing with the 51 A and we had a three generation pic taken with dad in the seat. That was probably the last time he sat in that seat. He's 90 now and using a walker since he broke a leg last spring and probably will need the walker for the rest of his days, which I hope is many. This is the first time I've scanned pics to post on this site. Sizing and cropping are something I have yet to learn. LOL Jim

mvphoto13267.jpg
 
Some have probably seen this a few yrs ago when I posted it but here it is again. This is my Grandpa's 1939 "B" the day they delivered it new to his farm. That is my Dad sitting in the seat at 12 yrs old.(Grmpa starting it) It's the first tractor they ever owned . I have pics from a year earlier of them still using horses. Great Grandpa hated tractors so that's probably why it took so long to get one. Of course they are all gone now (as is the tractor) but that must have been a happy day on the farm for them.
a174760.jpg
 

The fenders and cast wheels probably made it one of the fancier B's in the neighborhood. I assume the fella with the flat topped hat was the dealer or delivery guy. Jim
 
Not sure they fixed that burnt valve problem on all the 'A's - our '49 burned the valves more than once - was always a thirsty devil, too.

Stan
 
That would be a strange one in this neck of the woods. My Dad got a G in '47, because his neighbor was top on the list for a new tractor, and he wanted a B, They traded places on the list. He never liked that G either, said it burned too much fuel for the work it did. That came from the dealer in Odebolt, Ia.
 

Dale, I have a 35 A that came from the dealer in Odebolt, only a few years earlier than the G. LOL

I hesitate to call dad's tractor an ANH. It could be just a regular A with a single front, long axles and tall wheels. Maybe some of you experts could chime in. I've heard some discrepancy about ANH's.

About ten years ago I think I could have had the chance to buy that tractor on an auction south of Newell but I didn't figure I had the money to spend on a tractor I didn't need for my farming operation. I should have gone to the sale just to see if it was indeed the one. It would have been easy to identify. Dad cut the end of the left axle off with a hacksaw so he could plow closer to things. I still have the stub. Jim
 
Wow, that would have been a tuff job to cut back then..having the stub is a nice keep sake..
 
(reply to post at 17:28:48 11/22/14) [/quot

And I wonder how many blades it took. I'll betcha he didn't do it all in one setting. Dad would have been 23 years old at the time and in his prime. He played basketball on the town team till he was 32.
 
Interesting story... reminds me a lot of my
grandfather.

He too had a 47-48 A, but not for long. He
complained the PTo made a lot of howling right
from the start.

It got traded for an early single shift lever
model as soon as they came out-- #648122.
And she's still here. Used it yesterday to
move the last of corn gravity boxes around.
 
By the time I came along in 1951 , it was all "brown". At age 4-5 I remember about once a month Grandpa would wake us up on Sunday morning out pulling the field cultivator working up the 1 acre garden between his house and ours. Sold it sometime in the mid '60,s. I was into muscle cars by then and could care less about that tractor. Hindsight is 20/20.
 

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