Take a tractor born in the 1940's, add a boy that was born in the 1950's, and put them together in the 1960's. What do you end up with? A great, warm memory!

Back there in 'them old days', there were a lot of letter's on farms. There was 'A', 'B', 'M', 'H, and probably more. And the letter's I remember came in two colors, green and red.

My dear departed Pa had a couple "B's", a red one (Farmall) and a green one (John Deere). In my memory, the B Farmall is pulling a scoop shovel on a rope. There's a bunch of Minnesota snow on the ground, the B Farmall was the smaller and faster of the two, so that served mighty well, as my older brother drove and I sat in that scoop shovel sliding from here to there and back. You see, back then we kind of made our own video games.

Now, the B John Deere, well I can still hear that magnificent machine. You'd turn that big 'ol wheel on the side (I know, I know, it's a fly wheel, but it's just a big 'ol wheel when you're ten years old) and then it happened:

Plup, plup, plup, plup...

Well, it doesn't look as good on the page as it sounded in the ear. But that thing was a noisy one and it was our mechanical horse on that little 80 acre farmstead south of Leota, Minnesota.

Of course many of the bigger farmer's back then (a bigger farmer was one that might have had a half-section and milked more than 20 cows!) were one or the other, red or green. But for our little, uh, operation we had one of each and each about 20 years or more old.

But they were magic, at least in the mind of a ten year old and the memory of a sixty year old.


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