A brief warm up

el6147

Member
For an Oliver.
a253505.jpg

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Great picture. I like those Oliver tractors and machinery. It was a sad day for agriculture when Oliver could not stay in business. They were a progressive company with many ideas to make farming eaiser.
 
el6147,

Great pics!

Really a neat old thermometer...
And neat old tractor from what I can see of it (like Olivers!).
 
Don't know if you are from Galien or not, but the whole town has faded away much like the Oliver tractor company, unfortunately. Once a thriving little farm town, there's not much left. The mill, grocery store and even the high school closed. Grandpa's older sister and her husband owned a creamery there,he used to tell of walking a small herd of cows from Derby to Galien down the side of the railroad. Back in the days when he knew every farm along the way. Still see some nice Olivers and even a Cockshutt or two in that area.
 
Galien is located west and south of me , I don't think I have been there since the auction
at the Bob James dealership, If I remember correctly at the time of the auction the town
was pretty sparse then. In the day I attended many of the dealer close outs, certainly
hated to see those dealers close one by one as they did. bought parts in the day from the
Bob James dealership, was a unique old fashion dealer type building, not 100 percent sure
but I think the flooring was wood like all the parts bins. Nothing but memories now.
 
That's where we are from. Dealer building is still there although it's empty now. Bob James Jr. Was the last family member to operate it and he passed just a couple years ago. His wife is still alive and doing rather well. Bob ran it a few years into the White era until he lost the franchise because he wasn't moving enough equipment in Whites eyes, then he switched to Ford for 2 or 3 years but Ford never had a following in our area and that never took off so he finally had to shut her down. Landis Zimmerman bought a boat load of Cletrac parts when the auction finally happened. I guess according to bob back when his dad Bob Sr. Was running the dealer they were one of the biggest cletrac sellers in the Midwest. He said his dad had a 2 ton flatbed that could haul 3 or 4 crawlers loaded sideways depending on the gauge and he would make a couple trips a week down to Cleveland to pick up crawlers directly from the factory and drop them off at the farms on the way back. He said his dad probably sold upwards of 100 HG's and OC3's over the years but he never actually had one at the dealership because every time he tried ordering one to have for stock it got sold right away. Most of them went down to the muck groud just south of the state line here. We have a 60, a 77 and a super 77 diesel and some implements that were sold out of that dealership.
 
this thermometer hung on the wood parts bins behind the counter, auctioneer grabbed it and sold it, Bob was standing there saw it sell went into his office grabbed another one handed it to the auctioneer and I bought that one also.
 
I'm east of Stevensville- back then we had the JD dealer and what became the Oliver/White dealer in Baroda, five miles south of us, then another ten miles to Galien where Bob James was, with Hinchman having the IH dealer along the way, and Case in Eau Claire just the other side of the river. All gone now.
 
Galien back maybe 8 years ago had a small industrial park. There was a reel company and plastic factory that I picked up out of.
 
Dad would probably remember it, he was in there a lot before bob sold out. Unfortunately it was before my time so I never got to see the building as a dealership. I've always had a pipe dream of buying the building one one of these days and turning it into a shop with tractor storage in the front and dressing the place back up like a dealership. Maybe someday......... Wish I could have got my hands on one of those thermometers.
 

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