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
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