Should have posted yesterday - St. Patrick's Day

leon

Well-known Member
I never gave any thought to having to be in school on St. Patrick's day 75 years ago. In fact, until reminded, I didn?t even remember that my two oldest brothers got to stay home. Still I remember like yesterday seeing that brand new, shiny, John Deere Model H tractor on a trailer behind a pick-up going down the dusty road in front of the one-room country school house during recess. I knew where it was headed - our place. It was about the first rubber-tired tractor in the neighborhood. I would have been a second-grader and 6 years old. Little did I know that some 24 years later I?d be working as an engineer for John Deere in Moline, IL. At this point in life I am amazed to think what a pleasant surprise all that must have been to my parents. At age 17, a year out of high-school, they hauled me to Lincoln in the fall, dumped me out, I suppose with a suitcase, and said, "go to school.? OK, it wasn?t quite that way, but in essence it was!
 
My older son has been offered an engineering internship with Deere in Waterloo. He's a junior, straight-A's in mechanical engineering. I am trying to very heavily encourage this. I take it Deere makes two of the big tractors in Waterloo.
 
Most of the 7000 Series, and to my knowledge all of 8000 Series (save Russian assembled ones) and 9000 Series tractors are made in Waterloo. The bigger engines are made in Waterloo too. So are lots of cabs, transmissions and axles. There's a very large product engineering center too.
 
I worked in Moline for 10 years, engineering research and engine product planning. Then transferred to the "new" Waterloo Engine Works on the first day of production there, 2 Feb, 1976. Then moved to the Product Engineering Center after a couple of years, doing engine application engineering. Then back into product planning - components, then finished the last 15 years of my 33-year Deere career doing worldwide planning of small ag tractors. I visited with farmers, converting their wants and needs into specifications for tractors that Deere might make a buck manufacturing. It turned out to have been a wonderful career, playing tractors, getting paid well to do it, and traveling the world. Not bad for a Nebraska farm boy who never dreamed of ever getting any further east than the mail box. God is good!
 
That sounds like the career I dreamed of. I guess I never should have shared that with my high-school girlfriend, she said East Lansing was a long way from her house, so I stayed closer to home. She dumped me shortly thereafter.
 

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