[Farmall] Walk About

John Hall jthall at worldnet.att.net
Mon Jul 9 14:15:48 PDT 2007


Big Bud!?!? Our club has a video on those--really impressive machines.

John

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Currie" <tracturs at att.net>
To: "Farmall List" <Farmall at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 12:38 PM
Subject: [Farmall] Walk About


> I'm a little slow with the followup to Karls message last month, but yup, 
> it was time for another THT around the country. Some of you have met Sarah 
> the Wonder Dog on previous trips, and she was with me on this one too. We 
> took off from here in northern California on June 9th and spent three 
> weeks hauling the RV around 12 different states. First was a stop at 
> Karl's place in Southern CA for an update tour of Olmsteads acres, and to 
> pick up an O-12 fuel tank for Dwayne Hansford in Indiana. Karl has more 
> equipment that ends with 12 or 14, than anybody I know,,unless maybe James 
> Gall in KS. We also had time to sit by their new  pond and listen to the 
> bull Frogs, while talking tractors and other worldly things. From there I 
> zipped over to Las Vegas (didn't stop) and up through Utah to catch I-70 
> eastbound. Beautiful country across eastern Utah, Colorado, up the grade 
> and through the Eisenhour tunnel, over to Denver, and down into the flat 
> lands of eastern CO and western KS. I st!
> ayed on I-70 until I got through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and over to 
> Indianapolis, IN then swung south about 45 miles for the 16th annual 
> Johnson County Antique Machinery Assn show,,featuring IH equipment. Spent 
> 3 days there with some great Indiana IH folks enjoying that show and 
> watching something new for me,,tractor pulling with modified Garden 
> Tractors..They pull a regular size sled with highly modified Garden 
> tractors.I found those people in Indiana are very serious about their 
> Tractor Pullin'. I also talked with Harry Lee, and saw many of his various 
> Farmalls including that, 19,000 lb,  dual Farmall 400 diesel, with all 
> wheel drive, and operated with 2 hand clutches, one for each tractor. I 
> think it's called a Garrett. On to do some tourist stuff and visit "The 
> Brickyard" in Indianapolis, and on up to Auburn, IN for the WWII museum at 
> Kruse's place, and the extremely nice Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg museum. 
> There is also a brokerage house for Corvettee lovers if you li!
> ke that kind of thing. I'd say about 80 - 100 of them on display,,all
> for sale.  Then a little further north east to the 63rd annual National 
> Threshers Assoc Reunion there in Wauseon, OH at the county fair grounds. 
> Unbelieveable! Out here in my neighborhood we don't have any steam engines 
> but there were plenty of them at this show. They were featuring Port Huron 
> Steamers and this years feature tractor was IH, and Mike Androvich was in 
> charge of that portion of the display. It would have been another 8 hours 
> travel to get over to Bloomsburg for the RPRU, and travel butt was setting 
> in pretty good so I decided to hang out in N/W Ohio this time. Gave me a 
> great chance to spend 4 days hanging around with 40+ steam engines, some 
> enormous gas tractors like the 30-60 Aultman Taylor, and Wendell Kelch was 
> there with his 30-60 Titan, and the 30-60 friction drive Mogul. Now THAT 
> is an impressive tractor..Since I favor the older, unstyled machinery, it 
> was a hugh treat for me to be up close to some of the Androvich brothers 
> stuff, like an 8-16 Mogul, som!
> e International 8-16 chain drives, Farmall Regular wide front, W-30 
> California Orchard (hey........how'd that get there?) couple of 10-20 
> Titans, an International 15-30 chain drive, and a beautiful restored 
> Fairway 12 belonging to Paul Ganzel. A lot of these tractors you and I 
> have seen in magazines over the past couple years, so it was big time, for 
> a small time guy like me to see these machines up close and talk with the 
> owners. I left Saturday at noon and just missed seeing the Swissconsin 
> boys, Smudlach and Fayguy who slipped in on there way back from the RPRU. 
> On the journey home I took U.S. 20 and headed across northern IN, northern 
> IL, and crossed the Mississippi River at Dubuque IA and then over to 
> Dyersville, Iowa. I was on an errand for a club friend to try and locate 
> some die cast ERTL products..Struck out on that, but I did find the farm 
> where they filmed "The Field of Dreams" movie in 1988 with Kevin Kostner. 
> Looks the same as the day they did the movie. Open t!
> o the public, no fee, and the owners of the farm keep everything in ex
> cellent shape for those of us who wanted to visit. From there I headed S/W 
> and grabbed U.S. 30 so I could stop in Jefferson, IA and see Nick Foster. 
> He has a great collection of early stuff, plus 3 steamers, plus The the 
> largest tractor of it's kind. "Big Bud", plus his latest project, a rare 
> Rumley Gas Pull tractor sitting there in numerous pieces.  Nick had some 
> 8-16 parts that I agreed to haul for a guy back out this way. So early the 
> next morning we parted company, I headed south, caught good ol' I-80 and 
> spent the next few days getting back to the hills of northern CA. 
> Certainly a lot of fun, Sarah and I saw some great farmin' country with 
> beautiful corn growing almost everywhere we went there in the mid west. 
> Must be that Ethanol thing.  We averaged 12 MPG hauling that bigol RV with 
> the Duramax, and with diesel averaging $2.90 a gallon it was the most 
> costly part of the trip. I'm now properly inspired to drag my F-12 
> Waukesha out of the tractor shed and get it down to !
> the shop where it can get some deserved attention. It would be good to 
> hear it run again. Then theres that F-14 wide front I should probably 
> start on, and the W-12 won't fire, probably from sitting too much. And oh 
> yea,,I wanted to get the magneto repaired on the Regular..bobcurrie
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