THE ORIGINS OF PHRASES Did you ever wonder where some of our commonly used phrases came from? Most of them sprang up as part of the vernacular of whatever industry they were used in. For instance, in the early days of manufacturing when factory machinery was operated from line shafts, the term “Bull of the Woods” came to be used in reference to a person’s boss or company owner. It came from the fact that if you were running a machine on the manufacturing floor, and you looked up and saw the boss coming, he looked somewhat like a bull coming through the woods, particularly if he was mad about something and was coming to put things right! Mining had it’s share of catch phrases, too. Some that are mentioned frequently at the Western Museum of Mining and Industry are listed here with a brief description of their origins: The Real McCoy: Elijah McCoy was the son of a pair of slaves who had come north along the underground railroad and after arriving in an area where slavery was not practiced, they made enough money to send Elijah to Europe to go to school. When he returned to the U.S. however, he could not find a job other than as an oiler, and soon he invented a drip oiler to make oiling the machinery of the day easier. It worked very well, and it soon became general knowledge that if you wanted the best drip oiler available, you needed “The Real McCoy!” Sticky Fingers: Although we take our present day monetary system for granted, in the early days of our country, there were many different currencies around, and in some places there was no paper or coin money at all. A good example of these places would be mining camps, especially in their early days of existence. There the medium of exchange was often gold dust from the purchaser’s poke ( or purse). An unscrupulous merchant would sometimes distract his customer long enough for the merchant to run his fingers through his slicked back hair just before the gold dust exchange took place. This caused more gold to stick to his fingers than if they had been dry. Soon people would become aware of this and the merchant would get a reputation for having “Sticky Fingers”! “Balls to the Wall” has come to mean going as fast as you can because of the way fly ball governors work. As the speed of a steam engine would increase, the balls on it’s governor would be flung farther and farther outward by centrifugal force until they reached the point at which they would cause the steam inlet valves to slow down the engine. Since the balls were firmly attached to the governor drive (you hoped!), it would only let them go so far out and then they would stop as if they had hit a wall. Also they would look like they were as close to the nearest wall as possible, hence the term “Balls to the Wall” “The Can”. Have you ever referred to going to the bathroom as going to the can? In the days before electric lights were widely available, and before miners used electric lights, acetylene miner’s lamps and home lights were the way to go. Acetylene would be delivered to your house or your mine in 3 gallon cans. When they were empty, they quite often found a second use as chamber pots in houses and as early day “Porta- Potties” in mines. Of course you had to be sure all the acetylene was gone if you used one in this fashion in a mine, lest you earn the nickname “Hot Cheeks”!

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 3 POINT HITCH Even before Henry Ford made the model T, or even his first car, he wanted to develop a machine to make the life of farmers easier. The term “tractor” had not been coined yet, and all that were available at the time were either steam traction engines, or the very first “gas traction engines”. Steam traction engines had been around since the 1870’s , and were very large machines that were essentially steam locomotives adapted to run on open ground instead of railroad tracks. They were a vast improvement over working with horses, especially on the vast open fields of the great plains, but they had a few major drawbacks. They used large quantities of fuel, required at least 2 people to operate them (at least when plowing) , and had a tendency to collapse the flimsy bridges of the day when crossing creeks and rivers, which usually had disastrous, explosive results. If you took the safer route of fording the river, there was a good chance of sinking into the river bottom mud until you couldn’t get out without enormous effort. They also were known to start a prairie fire or two with sparks from their exhaust. The fuel and fire problems caused the development of the early gas traction engines, which were essentially large stationary internal combustion engines (most of which started on gasoline and then switched to kerosene for their main fuel) that were mounted on the running gear of an old steam traction engine. Their size was very close to that of the steam traction engine, and they cost a pretty penny at first, too. Henry would have been aware of these early tractors, but he was so involved in getting cars made that it took until the 1916-1918 era for him to get his solution, the Fordson tractor into production. But when he did, he used the same techniques that had made the model T such a good seller and applied them to his tractor. Before long, Fordsons were made in Dearborn, Michigan, in England, and in Ireland. Like the model T, they were affordable and reliable, although they soon earned a reputation for being cantankerous starters unless they were maintained very well and the operator was skilled. They also developed a more sinister reputation as “widowmakers” due to their habit of flipping over backward if a plow bottom encountered an underground obstruction or a bit of really hard ground. This was caused partly by the worm gear differential they used, which tended to allow the worm gear (pinion) to “climb the ring gear” if the tractor’s forward motion suddenly stopped. In the UK, this tendency to flip over came to the attention of an inventive young man named Harry Ferguson, and he developed a parallel link hitch system that could be attached to the Fordson tractor and would automatically raise the plow if it began to pull too hard, thereby keeping the tractor itself and it’s operator right side up. By the time the Fordson went out of production in the US in the late 1920’s, the Ferguson System had grown quite popular in the UK. In 1939, Harry Ferguson traveled to Michigan and met with Henry Ford to propose a joint venture to produce a new tractor which would incorporate the Ferguson hydraulic 3 point hitch system as standard equipment. Henry thought the system was great, and the two shook hands on the deal, whereby Ford Motor Co would build the tractor and sell it in the US, and Ferguson would sell it in the UK. Ferguson would get a share of the profits and the tractor would be known as the Ford-Ferguson. In reality, the tractor became known almost universally by it’s model number- 9N. 9N’s and their wartime variant, the 2N were made until 1947. The 9N had a 3 point hitch system in which the 2 bottom links lifted the implement, while the center or top link kept the implement parallel to the ground and, through a spring loaded valve system, automatically caused the implement to raise if the pull (or draft as it is called) became too great. The hydraulic system that powered the hitch was driven by the power take-off (PTO), and so it only worked if the PTO was engaged and the main clutch engaged. The tractor had about 18 hp, a 3 speed transmission, and individual turning brakes, with the left brake pedal and the clutch pedal on the left and the right brake pedal on the right. They had wide front axles that swept back in such a manner that if you wanted to change the wheel spacing, you did not have to interfere with the steering links, of which there were 2, one for each wheel, with no common tie rod between the wheels. The operator sat with his legs straddling the transmission, thereby giving a low, safe center of gravity. Today, we call this type of tractor a utility tractor. The famous “handshake agreement” held up until Henry Ford turned over control of Ford Motor Co to Henry Ford II in 1948. One of the first things Henry II did was dissolve the agreement and replace the 9N with a slightly different model, the 8N. The 8N used a slightly more powerful engine, had a 4 speed transmission, and had both brake pedals on the right side of the tractor and just the clutch on the left. This was a much handier arrangement. It still had the hitch hydraulic pump driven by the PTO, and still used the top link to control the depth of the implement, but with some minor changes to the system. Everything else was pretty much the same as on the 9N. Ferguson was not happy with Henry II or FOMOCO, and he sued the company for patent infringement in the amount of $250,000,000, an unimaginable sum in that day and age. After a lengthy battle, Ferguson won the suit and then began building the Ferguson tractor, a tractor that looked remarkably similar to the Fords, both in this country and in the UK. Later, Ferguson would merge with the Massey Harris company, to become (eventually) Massey Ferguson- but that’s another story!

OLIVERS Olivers were snazzy looking tractors! At least the row crop models from the 60 to the 88 were. When the “Super” series came out in (I believe) 1949, Oliver couldn’t resist the urge to “improve” the tractors by going from their signature red wheels to the same “Meadow Green” as the tractor bodies were painted. I think they look much less appealing than those with the red wheels. In about 1960, the White corporation bought out Oliver and changed the color scheme to green and white-period. No yellow grill, no red or yellow stripe surrounding the model number where it was cast into the frame below the radiator. Yuk! My Uncle Wilson’s “big” tractor when I was a little kid was an Oliver 70 or 77, I don’t know for sure which. Probably, it was a 70, but there are little shreds of a couple of memories in my head that lead me to think it might have been a 77. One of those is of a picture in one of my coloring books of the front grill of a tractor that looked suspiciously like a 77’s nose, with horizontal bars and so on. I colored the grill yellow and added a red 77 beneath the grill and showed the picture to my Dad and told him that it was Uncle Wilson’s tractor. He didn’t believe me, but was surprised the next time we went to Wilson’s farm, which we did almost every Friday night. It’s one of those “I’m almost sure this is right, but not quite 100%” feelings, if you know what I mean. The other memory is more concrete, at least in part. Wilson’s farm was mostly side hill, and it was about a hundred yards up his driveway to the house and barn from the road. On one of our Friday night visits, the Oliver was parked above the barn facing down the driveway. Wilson was milking when we arrived, and after getting our usual tin cup full of warm milk from the Surge bucket milker, I asked if I could climb up on the Oliver and pretend to drive it. He said okay and away I went! I was “driving” up a storm when I managed to step on the clutch and now I was REALLY driving, and scared to death! We were gaining speed at a good clip, and somehow I managed to take my foot off the clutch, and we came to a stop just as Dad and Wilson came running out of the barn to see what all the yelling was about! My dad would have tanned my hide, but Wilson told him that I had asked if it was okay and he had told me it was, and he hadn’t checked to see if the brakes were wet, which they hadn’t been. What makes me think the tractor had to be a 77 is that the clutch pedal on a 70 is on the left side of the transmission case, and the one on the 77 is on the left also, but comes up above the operator’s platform, and it would have been much more easy for me to step on it if the tractor was a 77. Another memory fragment, though is of riding with Wilson on the Oliver when he was plowing on of the fields. I seem to recall standing between the fender and the transmission case, which would have been more likely on a 70, because the operator’s area on a 70 has floor pans placed on either side of the transmission case, and the 77 has an operator’s platform above the transmission case and has just the axle housings between the platform and the fenders. Whichever model it was, I guess I will never know for sure, since Wilson and anyone else who might have known for sure are all gone now. My Dad is still alive, but he doesn’t know. On one of my visits back home in the late nineties or very early 2000’s , I asked Wilson if he knew where it had wound up after his farm sale in 1961. He told me he did, and we went to see if it might be for sale, as I had by then begun collecting tractors. Unfortunately, the man who had bought it was not home, and his wife said he had Alsheimer’s disease and would probably not know where it had gone when he traded it for a 770. I tried to contact a tractor collector in Cortland County by the name of Roger Cairn(s), who my relatives told me had several Olivers, and might know where the tractor was, but there was no response. So Roger, if you are still out there, and you happen to read this and know where the tractor is, and what model it is, please let me know!

MY FIRST TRUCK DRIVING EXPERIENCE The first truck I ever drove was not a pick-up. It was a 1955 Ford F600 with a home-made 12 foot grain dump box. At the time, I thought it was a BIG truck, although one just like it was sitting on the farm the last time I visited, and it looked pretty small to my post- semi-driven eyes! In case you haven’t gathered it from my other articles, I was a kid who was wowed by almost any mechanical thing, and the bigger the better, or the more off beat the better. I also had trouble with allergies and asthma- not a good thing for a kid who would be on a farm all the time if he had his ‘drothers. I usually stayed in the truck during wheat or oat harvest, at least until it became apparent whether or not the dust would bother me that year. (The wetter the year, the more the dust would get to me, generally, but we didn’t yet know that at the time of this event.) Usually, Lynn Taber’s father Caleman would drive the truck and Lynn would run the combine, but for some reason, on this particular day, Caleman wasn’t with us. I had ridden over to the field with Lynn in the Ford Truck, which was how this truck was always referred to. Usually, Lynn would drive the combine over to the truck to unload, but for some reason this time he just stopped and stood up and waved for me to come over. (There were no cabs on combines or tractors in those days!) I started out on foot, thinking Lynn just needed something such as a tool, but he shook his head and made steering wheel motions with his hands. My heart leaped almost out of my chest and I ran back and climbed into the driver’s seat and stepped on the clutch and turned the key, hoping the truck would start. It was known to be hard to start when it was up to full operating temperature, but it had only been driven the two miles from the farm to the field where we were, so it obliged me by firing right up! It was parked in low gear, but I had seen Lynn start out in second many times, so I tried to do the same, and got the timing of the accelerator pedal and clutch release wrong and stalled it. My mind went AAAAAAAGH! And I hurriedly got it running again and then put it back into low and we moved slowly over the edge of the field to where Lynn was waiting with a grin on his face. I waited with the truck in neutral while he unloaded, and then he came around and said “I thought you might do that! Low gear is probably fast enough in this field anyway, especially when I get a couple more bins on you.” That made my heart race, because it meant that I had the job of moving the truck to wherever he needed it for the rest of the afternoon, or at least until the truck was full anyway. He also told me to leave the truck running because he couldn’t make a complete round of the field before his bin filled up, so it wouldn’t be long between dumps. Just before he went back to the combine, he told me to back up a little way so that the dust cloud wouldn’t get me when he started out again and made sure that I knew how to apply the parking brake, using the lever between the shifter and the dump hoist lever. Of course I knew how, since I had watched both Lynn and Caleman do it countless times! All too soon, the truck was full and Lynn came and told me to move over and he got behind the wheel. I didn’t mind though, because we went on past the farm and headed right up to Culver’s Mill, which meant we might get to do another load that day. It was also about 5 or 6 miles from the field to the mill, and took probably 10 or 15 minutes to get there. We pulled up onto the scale (another contraption that fascinated me) and then were sent to a spot to unload. When we got there, we had to back the truck’s rear wheels up on some blocks so that the bottom of the box wouldn’t hit the auger we were dumping into. Lynn explained that the truck’s frame was too short, so the hinge point made the back of the box almost hit the ground when it was raised completely. The trip back was much faster, except that we stopped at the farm to get a couple fresh jugs of iced tea to go back to the field with. Once we got back, I got to drive again in the field, and then a storm started to head our way, and Lynn wanted to take the combine back to the farm, so that left me to follow him in the truck! WOW!!! The combine wasn’t very fast, so I only got up to second gear (low range), but it was still COOL! Both the truck and combine lived in the building we called the shop, and they both got inside just as the first drops of rain started falling. That was a really neat day for me. I think I was about 11 or 12, and had just gotten tall enough for my feet to reach the pedals that previous winter. My last visit to the driver’s seat of the Ford Truck came many years later, after Lynn had sold it to a friend of his who had started farming a place a mile or so from the Taber’s farm. Lynn’s friend was known to have problems keeping brakes in any vehicle he owned, and we were using this friend’s combine one year during corn harvest (ours did not have a corn head) , and we were bringing the corn from the field to the dryer in the Ford Truck and using our truck to take the dried corn to town. The Ford didn’t have any brakes , and the owner asked Paul, Lynn’s youngest son, to take it to the field for him. Paul refused due to the lack of brakes, and the owner told him “Well, the pedal’s there. You can step on it if it makes you feel better! But Paul still refused, so I took my old friend the Ford Truck to the field-SLOWLY! By the time my last drive of the Ford Truck happened, it had been replaced not once, but twice. The first truck to replace it was an International CO1850 (I think) with a 16 foot grain box built on the farm and an AUTOMATIC TTRANSMISSION! (Ugh! It should be illegal to put automatics in any truck larger than a !/2 ton wannabe truck!). When the “gutless wonder” in this truck died violently, it was then replaced by another International CO 1850, which is still in use with the same grain box, but has a more respectable 5 and 2 transmission arrangement! But the largest truck on the farm nowadays is a Mack 10 wheeler with a 350 hp Cummins and a 9spd Road Ranger in it. This truck was parked next to the old Ford that was brought to the farm to move silage and matches our old Ford Truck, and that no doubt made the Ford look even smaller to me. I should also state that I don’t much care for Fords today, but I do miss the old Ford Truck!

THE CRANE AND I AND A GOOD FRIEND In 1986, I had a really good day! To begin with, it was a Saturday, and I didn’t have to work. Next, I was at the Western Museum of Mining and Industry, which was and still is one of my favorite places in the world. I was at the front desk to get the key to the blacksmith shop, because we at that time had a blacksmithing club going, and I was the first to arrive that day. While I was there, Larry Frank, who was the curator of the Museum at the time, came in and began to complain to the person at the desk about the director wanting him to clean up the yard at the shop, but not being willing to hire a crane or decent forklift for him to do the job with. Being a crane nut myself, and knowing the museum owned an old Lorain truck crane, which had been sitting outside the exhibit building since the building had been completed, I couldn’t help but pipe right up and ask why we didn’t just use the crane we had. Larry looked at me like I was nuts (he told his wife Christy that some nut had suggested it to him that day) but told me that they all thought the crane was in too bad a condition to do the job. He said he’d been told that when the crew used it to set the pieces of the Corliss steam engine, it had tried to tip over and nobody liked it because of that. I implored him to come with me to take a look at it, and he reluctantly did so. It turned out that the crane was in very good mechanical condition for a machine which was 40 years old at that time and had obviously been used hard and put away wet quite often during it’s lifetime. It had what appeared to be brand new boom hoist and main hoist cables on it, there was very little rust on the boom itself, and the oil and antifreeze in the house engine looked like new, too. The swing gimbles appeared to be in excellent condition, too. I told Larry that I wouldn’t be scared to use it, and that the crane probably tried to tip because the people who had set the Corliss parts had probably tried to reach too far for the weight of the parts they were lifting. It had 50 feet of boom and a jib about 30 feet long on it. The crane even still had it’s original capacity versus reach chart and it was still very readable. In the end, Larry, who likes tinkering with mechanical contraptions as much as I do, agreed to give it a try, and I agreed to help with the clean-up project, and I wound up with one of my fondest wishes fulfilled and one of my very best friends, so it was a very good day. I don’t recall if I ever got to the blacksmith club that day or not, though! I don’t recall if it was that very day or a week later, but Larry and I put a battery in the crane house and drained the old gas out of the tank and put fresh gas in it, and then I climbed into the operator’s seat and hit the starter button while Larry kept an eye on the carburetor, and in not much more time than it takes to tell the story, we got the house engine started. At that time, we didn’t know that the museum had the crane’s operator’s and service manuals, but I had taken a gander at the control levers and there linkages and had a pretty good idea what was what. The boom had been left hanging horizontally off the rear of the truck, and the first order of business was to raise it up to a good working angle (it’s usually around 77 degrees above horizontal, which gives a good safety margin away from vertical and a fair reach). I found that the boom hoist was set up with power up and down, which I liked. Then I tried the hoist ropes, which both worked fine. Swinging was faster than I would have liked and took a good amount of power and some getting used to, but worked as advertised! Having nothing to lift where we were setting, it then became time to consider getting the truck engine running and trying to move the whole unit to a more convenient location. This proved to be quite a job! Later, once we found the books, I found out that both the truck and crane engines had been replaced at some time in the machine’s distant past, and that the job on the truck engine and transmission etc. wasn’t quite as well done as the one in the house had been done. We got it started, but couldn’t keep it running unless Larry dribbled gas down the throat of the carburetor. Also, it had air brakes and while the compressor worked fine, there were several major air leaks. The worst thing about that turned out to be that the clutch had been set up with an air actuator and that was one of the more serious leaks. It also had Armstrong power steering (which, for those of you who haven’t heard the term before, means that it had manual steering). Eventually, we also discovered that it wouldn’t stay in reverse unless Larry used a crow bar to force it to stay put. We moved it away from the Exhibit building with Larry looking very uncomfortable sort of laying across the top of the engine dribbling the gas into the carburetor and parked it beside the barn where we keep the museum’s tractor and mower, etc. I wanted to remove all but the head and foot sections of the boom to reduce it’s weight, but after removing the jib, Larry refused to do any more. We put the jib in the bed of the museum’s 1960 Ford F600 truck and called it quits for that day. The next day, we robbed the fuel pump off of a boom truck that the museum had up at the shop site. It turned out that the boom truck and the crane truck both had International “diamond” series engines in them and the pumps were the same. The museum also had a couple brand new 11:00-20 tires at the shop and Larry got a local tire company to replace the right front tire, which wouldn’t hold air. I crawled under the crane (not an easy fit!), to locate the air leaks and see if I could fix any of them. The worst of them turned out to be a completely missing drain valve in one of the accumulator tanks for the brakes, which I replaced from the parts bins at the shop. The clutch actuator cylinder was also leaking, but didn’t sound too bad. Having used up another Saturday doing these repairs and putting in about 20 gallons of fresh gas and test-run the engine for long enough to get the air pumped up, we planned to move the crane to the shop the next morning. Sunday morning, we backed the crane into the main driveway, swung the boom around beside the truck cab and headed for the shop. The driveway passes through a white picket fence gate about half way from the barn to the road. The engine died and the air leaked out of the “not too bad” leaky cylinder right in the gate! No way would it start again, and no way would the transmission come out of gear, either! Nor could we get the hood open to pour gas in the carburetor because the boom was in the way, and couldn’t be raised and swung out of the way because there are some huge old cottonwoods along the driveway. The Museum was due to open at noon, and it was now around ten am. Somehow, with both of us on the lever, we got the transmission into neutral, but even though it is a slight climb through the gate, the crane wouldn’t roll back down the hill by itself. Larry finally ended up towing it with the F600, which was really more than the truck wanted to do! We managed to get it out of the trees and swing the boom around And get the engine to start by pouring gas down the carburetor again, and put it back beside the barn just in time for the museum to open. It turned out that the sump on the fuel tank was plugged up with crud. It had a large opening, and Larry got it cleaned out during the following week and we tried again the next Sunday morning. This time we left the boom hanging out the back of the crane (as today’s largest truck cranes do). While Larry had been getting the tank cleaned out, I took the leaky air cylinder to work and took it apart and got the leakage fixed by replacing the piston seals and packing and fixing several worn parts. This time before leaving, we made sure that the engine would run for a much longer period of time and that the air pressure would stay up, etc. It was going to be uphill most of the way to the shop, and we didn’t need any more excitement! The truck transmission was a 5 and 4- meaning that it had a five speed and a 4 speed all in one gearbox, giving a total of 20 gears forward. I stabbed it in low low and headed for the road, talking to it all the time! Getting on the road was touchy with 50 feet of boom hanging out the back, but I made it, and on the 2 mile trek to the shop, I got all the way up into 4th gear and maybe up to 8 or 10mph. But we made it in one piece, and the engine seemed to run better and better the farther along we got. Needless to say, we were both relieved to have it at the shop at last!

THE D14 AND I- GOOD FRIENDS! When I first met the Allis Chalmers D14, it was one of 2 AC tractors on the Taber Hills farm in rural Schuyler County New York. I remember it well because I was standing in front of the tractor with my cousin Lynn Taber when a cow with a mostly black face with a white streak down the middle of it walked straight up to me and nuzzled me in the stomach! It was the very first day I had ever spent on the farm which has been my favorite place on earth since then. I didn’t know what to make of the cow and her actions, because she’d knocked me right into the tractor’s grill, but Lynn told me not to be concerned- just scratch her topknot and she’d go away happy. I did as he said and so did the cow, whose name was George! (And no, George was not a bull or steer!) The other tractor on the farm was a WD45 diesel, and both were being used to gather up a huge pile of crabapple trees that had grown up in the day pasture on the farm. They were going to be burned so that they wouldn’t cause problems with the cows and their milk. About the time George left, we heard Caleman, Lynn’s father, calling us to begin pushing trees up into the pile again, so we did. By the end of the day, they were burning well and I was driving the D14 slowly down to the barn with Lynn sitting on the fender ready to take control if he needed to. The pasture was quite rough as most cow pastures in Since that day, I have spent most of my vacation time on the farm, and for many years, the D14 continued to be a major player in the field work. I spent many happy hours (and a couple scary moments) hauling hay and gravity wagons, harrowing with a 12 foot spring-tooth harrow, and trying to stay awake cultivating corn. The tractor continued to be the number one chore tractor even after the WD45 was traded for a new JD2510 diesel and an old Farmall H came to help out. I liked the D14 because it had a wide front end and more power than the H, and it had 8 forward gears (a 4 speed transmission with a hand clutch operated 2 speed which could be pulled from high into low on the go when pulling wagons, etc.). It also had Allis Chalmers’ Snap Coupler hitch for mounted implements. The Snap Coupler was a 3 point hitch, but instead of the center link being on top, it was underneath the tractor and was the main link between the tractor and the implement, with the lift links used mainly for lifting and leveling the implement. To use it, you opened the lift link latches and backed up to the implement until the center link was guided into the actual snap coupler by a funnel shaped device. The coupler would snap closed over the implement’s center link, then you would reach behind you and connect the lift links and snap their couplings closed, lift the implement and drive off. It was not perfect and didn’t work as advertised all the time, but it was more convenient than the now common 3 point system. The farm had a 4 row planter, a back blade, and the rear gang of a 4 row front mounted cultivator that used the Snap Coupler, as well as a sprayer that had been converted from a drawn implement to a mounted one. I liked harrowing with the D14 because it was a job done faster than cultivating, and I got pretty good at it. You always had to be careful not to turn sharp enough to tangle the harrow’s hitch cable onto the rear tire, but I don’t remember ever doing that with the D14. One day, though, I was in a field almost right across the state highway from the farm. This field is level, but has a fairly step entryway up to the highway, which is going uphill at that point. I had stopped and unhooked the harrow at just about lunch time so that I could drive the tractor home for lunch and fill it with gas before going back to work that afternoon. The brakes were not working that year, and when I came up out of the field, there was a car coming. I tried to stop on the shoulder where it was less steep and I hoped the brakes would hold, but they didn’t, and we rolled back into the field. When the rear tires hit the furrow at the edge of the field, it jarred my foot off the clutch and the front end came up a couple feet as we started back up the hill again. It scared me quite a bit when it came down hard, but when I got to the gas pump and shut it down and looked at everything, there was no damage. Whew! Thirty or so years later, I had a “guest” D14 in my barn, which I used occasionally at the Western Museum of Mining for some driveway work with a back blade. This tractor had been converted to an aftermarket 3 point hitch and I had my own back blade on it when the owner called and told me she’d had an offer from someone to buy the tractor. She offered it to me for the same price, but I didn’t have the money at the time, so it went to the other guy. I had left it in the barn at the Museum, so I went down with my flat-top fifth wheel trailer to get it. This trailer lacks a dovetail and came new with 2 channel iron ramps that were so heavy you couldn’t hardly lift them, but I needed 3 ramps for some of my tractors, so I shortened the 2 ramps by 1/3 and welded the 2 cutoff pieces together to make the third ramp. Of course this made the ramps somewhat steeper, but they worked. When I went up the ramps with theD14 and blade, though, the blade caught on the end of the ramps and up came the front end! It felt like it was nearly vertical before I managed to turn off the ignition. Turning off the ignition is a trick I learned when pulling tractors that lift their front ends. It usually will let the tractor down easily due to the engine compression acting like a brake. It also keeps the driver from having their foot bounced off the clutch and causing the front to lift again. In this case, though the front end stayed stubbornly raised until I hit the clutch, which finally let the blade unhook and the front end come down- with a crash! Surprisingly enough, though there was no damage! So I guess Allis built them “Hell for stout”! As to the farm’s D14, it is still there, but it is waiting forlornly for a new set of rear rims and tires, sitting outside. I have told the folks that I would like first dibs on it if they ever want to let it go, though!