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!