Toy Tractors
05/02/12 05:16
My father started out as a pilot. After World War II, he settled in a small town and began to run the local airport with a variety of aviation services. He sold airplanes and fuel, did repairs, sprayed crops, did charter work, ran an air ambulance, flew fire patrols, counted animals for the fish and game service and even hunted coyotes from his airplanes. Most days were consumed with working and thinking of new ways to ear a few dollars flying airplanes. It wasn’t easy to make a living. One had to plan carefully. In those days it took more than piloting skill to earn a living in the aviation business. It took an entrepreneurial spirit.
Somewhere along the way, he decided to expand his business interests beyond the airport and purchased Big Timber Farm Supply, the local John Deere dealership. John Deere was preparing for a major change in its tractors, leaving behind the old two-cylinder tractors that had been famous for their sound and reliability. The line of more powerful tractors was introduced as “a new generation of power.” It was a good time to go into the farm machinery business.
He quickly built his business into a service-based dealership. He purchased a truck to haul machines into the shop and developed an extensive parts inventory.
And he stocked a full line of toys. In the days before licensing of John Deere Products to lots of different manufacturers, Ertl Toys made all of the John Deere toys. They were die cast steel toys with rubber tires and they looked authentic. The Farm Supply kept all of the toys including tractors, bailers, combines, plows, wagons and more. The most popular toys were 1/16 scale. I think that dad enjoyed selling the toys as much as he did the full sized tractors. He began to take trade-ins on the toys. Kids in our town knew that they could get a fair deal from my dad and that he would give them a little something for their old Tonka trucks. He especially delighted in taking in toys that were modeled after Ford, Farmall or Case tractors. Each year he’d have a big box for the toys for tots Christmas drive. He’d usually have a few tractors of the competitor’s brands with broken wheels or other defects on display next to the shining new toys.
Over the years, my brothers and I had most of the available John Deere toys. We each had a tractor and there was an assortment of other implements in our toy boxes. I was a bit too old when he went into the John Deere business to have my turn on the riding tractor, but there was one of those at our house for the littler boys.
These days those Ertl toys are collectors’ items. I suppose that if we had kept them, they would have a great deal of value. But we played with our toys. And we played hard with them. Tractors were for outdoors work and ours spend nights in the sand box or in the dirt next to the swing set. They got the paint rubbed off of them and had plenty of signs of hard play. My dad appreciated that as well. He was proud of the fact that the first tractor he sold, a used model R, was still in the field and working 25 years after he went into the business.
As a teenager, I began to operate the real machines. I spent a couple of summers working summer fallow on my cousin’s place in the dust and heat behind a popping 2-cylander diesel. I learned the procedure for starting the diesel with a gasoline pony engine for a starting motor and the operation of the hand clutch. I worked mile-long strips with a 12’ toolbar. The tractor was rated at 35 drawbar horsepower. In those days anything over 100 drawbar horsepower was considered to be a big tractor. The big 8010 John Deere, sporting 215 hp was considered to be simply too big for our country.
The times have changed. The small farms began to disappear. The large farms began to get bigger and bigger. When I was away in school and during the first years of my career, the farm crisis deeply changed American farming practices. The result was that the tractors began to get bigger and bigger. These days, farmers work their fields with articulated 4 wheel drive tractors with over 400 horsepower. The machines are too big and two expensive to let a high school kid operate. With a price tag that tops a quarter of a million dollars for a used tractor, the farms have serious investments to protect.
I headed off to college with a small set of seven 1/64 scale toy tractors. It was a promotional set, designed to illustrate the history of John Deere tractors. The first tractor was a Waterloo Boy from about 1918, the year the John Deere bought the company and went into the tractor business. There were various other models including a GP, an AW and a 720 all the way up to the seventh toy in the set, a 4010 from the mid ‘60’s. Those tractors have been sitting on a bookshelf in my home since the early 1970’s. They’ve survived the moves from one home to another. Over the years, I have added another seven tractors to the collection, all 1/64 scale. My latest acquisition is a 2009 8295RT. While not the biggest tractor in the collection, it demonstrates advanced technology with the rubber track system. The “big” tractor in my little collection is a 9430 with triple tires on all four corners.
There is no practical reason for me to have a collection of tractors. They collect dust and they have to be moved to get the books off of the shelf. They are too small for young children to play with. The collection has very little value. They aren’t real antiques, just some toys that I have kept around. But there are lots of things in life that aren’t practical. The tractors remind me of a phase of my own life and of the joy of sharing an interest with my father. I can look at them and remember what it felt like to check out the new toys when they arrived at my dad’s shop.
And, once in a while, the tractors bring a smile to the face of a visitor. When someone comes into my library and heads to the tractors first, I know that we will have something to talk about.
Perhaps we all need a bit of silliness from time to time.
Somewhere along the way, he decided to expand his business interests beyond the airport and purchased Big Timber Farm Supply, the local John Deere dealership. John Deere was preparing for a major change in its tractors, leaving behind the old two-cylinder tractors that had been famous for their sound and reliability. The line of more powerful tractors was introduced as “a new generation of power.” It was a good time to go into the farm machinery business.
He quickly built his business into a service-based dealership. He purchased a truck to haul machines into the shop and developed an extensive parts inventory.
And he stocked a full line of toys. In the days before licensing of John Deere Products to lots of different manufacturers, Ertl Toys made all of the John Deere toys. They were die cast steel toys with rubber tires and they looked authentic. The Farm Supply kept all of the toys including tractors, bailers, combines, plows, wagons and more. The most popular toys were 1/16 scale. I think that dad enjoyed selling the toys as much as he did the full sized tractors. He began to take trade-ins on the toys. Kids in our town knew that they could get a fair deal from my dad and that he would give them a little something for their old Tonka trucks. He especially delighted in taking in toys that were modeled after Ford, Farmall or Case tractors. Each year he’d have a big box for the toys for tots Christmas drive. He’d usually have a few tractors of the competitor’s brands with broken wheels or other defects on display next to the shining new toys.
Over the years, my brothers and I had most of the available John Deere toys. We each had a tractor and there was an assortment of other implements in our toy boxes. I was a bit too old when he went into the John Deere business to have my turn on the riding tractor, but there was one of those at our house for the littler boys.
These days those Ertl toys are collectors’ items. I suppose that if we had kept them, they would have a great deal of value. But we played with our toys. And we played hard with them. Tractors were for outdoors work and ours spend nights in the sand box or in the dirt next to the swing set. They got the paint rubbed off of them and had plenty of signs of hard play. My dad appreciated that as well. He was proud of the fact that the first tractor he sold, a used model R, was still in the field and working 25 years after he went into the business.
As a teenager, I began to operate the real machines. I spent a couple of summers working summer fallow on my cousin’s place in the dust and heat behind a popping 2-cylander diesel. I learned the procedure for starting the diesel with a gasoline pony engine for a starting motor and the operation of the hand clutch. I worked mile-long strips with a 12’ toolbar. The tractor was rated at 35 drawbar horsepower. In those days anything over 100 drawbar horsepower was considered to be a big tractor. The big 8010 John Deere, sporting 215 hp was considered to be simply too big for our country.
The times have changed. The small farms began to disappear. The large farms began to get bigger and bigger. When I was away in school and during the first years of my career, the farm crisis deeply changed American farming practices. The result was that the tractors began to get bigger and bigger. These days, farmers work their fields with articulated 4 wheel drive tractors with over 400 horsepower. The machines are too big and two expensive to let a high school kid operate. With a price tag that tops a quarter of a million dollars for a used tractor, the farms have serious investments to protect.
I headed off to college with a small set of seven 1/64 scale toy tractors. It was a promotional set, designed to illustrate the history of John Deere tractors. The first tractor was a Waterloo Boy from about 1918, the year the John Deere bought the company and went into the tractor business. There were various other models including a GP, an AW and a 720 all the way up to the seventh toy in the set, a 4010 from the mid ‘60’s. Those tractors have been sitting on a bookshelf in my home since the early 1970’s. They’ve survived the moves from one home to another. Over the years, I have added another seven tractors to the collection, all 1/64 scale. My latest acquisition is a 2009 8295RT. While not the biggest tractor in the collection, it demonstrates advanced technology with the rubber track system. The “big” tractor in my little collection is a 9430 with triple tires on all four corners.
There is no practical reason for me to have a collection of tractors. They collect dust and they have to be moved to get the books off of the shelf. They are too small for young children to play with. The collection has very little value. They aren’t real antiques, just some toys that I have kept around. But there are lots of things in life that aren’t practical. The tractors remind me of a phase of my own life and of the joy of sharing an interest with my father. I can look at them and remember what it felt like to check out the new toys when they arrived at my dad’s shop.
And, once in a while, the tractors bring a smile to the face of a visitor. When someone comes into my library and heads to the tractors first, I know that we will have something to talk about.
Perhaps we all need a bit of silliness from time to time.