[AT] Ford 8 N

[Billy Hood]

N Fords--either love or hate them.  There were thousands of them around here as I grew up, but we never owned one at home--JDs or Allis.  I went to work for a large custom farmer up at Garden Valley the summer I was 14 baling hay and digging costal bermuda sprigs.  He had 20 or more N Fords and T Fergies along with lots of other tractors of whatever color he could buy cheap.  We raked many thousands of bales of hay with N's and  Dearborn 3pt rakes.

The best story on N Fords is one that I heard from more than one source in Bowie Co Texas.  Back in the mid fifties two brother in laws farmed some Sulphur River bottom in cotton and milo--one with an 8N and one with JD A.  They both were proud of their tractors and always bragged about how theirs could outwork the others.  The one with the Ford was on the Board of his Methodist church and had to go to Conference in June to select a new pastor as is the custom with the Methodists.  His BIL, as soon as the family left, sent the N Ford to town and had it painted green with yellow wheels and delivered it back to the farm before his neighbor/BIL returned.  He could not wait to see the reaction to the Green N.  But to his chagrin, the neighbor returned and went to farming with the green Ford and never said a word.  The joke backfired and and the story was that the Ford owner farmed with the green one until he retired.  

I once painted a 8N Maroon with white wheels and called it the Aggie N.  
Bear
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Cecil E Monson<mailto:cmonson at hvc.rr.com> 
  To: Antique tractor email discussion group<mailto:at at lists.antique-tractor.com> 
  Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 8:27 AM
  Subject: Re: [AT] Ford 8 N