Johny Poppers

When Dad bought the farm in Atkinville we also got a John Deere tractor with one front wheel. It started on gas and then when it got warmed up you could switch it over to diesel. It was a hand crank to start. You had to remove the steering wheel and use an adapter on the fly wheel on the side to crank it. I think this was where parking on the hill started. If you parked it on the hill you could roll it down and pop the clutch with it in gear and start it without having to crank. The problem was it had a hand clutch so you really had to think, if you were used to a foot clutch pedal. It did have hydraulic arms that would lift but only float down. It had a 2 cylinder engine and would pop when each cylinder fired. I always thought of it as Paula’s tractor because she was the one who drove it most of the time. She got to be real good with the hand clutch. She was the only person that didn’t have trouble running it. Dad put me on it plowing once. I had been driving foot pedal clutch and first thing down the row I loaded it up and hit the brake instead of grabbing the clutch handle. Well there I was with it dead in the field. Dad came over and was quite calm at first then after he had cranked on the steering wheel a few times he started to yell and cuss. Well I didn’t take that real well and when he noticed I was crying he said I’m not yelling at you. I am yelling at this tractor. That dam hand clutch is just too confusing. I would have done the same thing if I would have been driving. As I remember it we ended up getting the big tractor and pulling it to get it started. I think that was the only time I ever drove it. It had a belt pulley on one side and we used it a lot to turn a long belt and saw wood.

We used to haul any wood we could find mostly from the river that the floods would bring down. We would stack it at the house. Then we would saw it up to stove lengths with the tractor. All we had for heating the house and the water heater was a wood stove. Dad used to get so excited when he would find a nice big piece of pitchy pine. He would drag it home with the tractor and it would be sliced off with the ax to start fires with. One nice big knot or stump would last for years. It would be so heavy with pitch you couldn’t lift it. In later years dad bought another old John Deere that didn’t run. It had 2 front wheels.

It was a little newer than the one we got with the farm. Dad rebuilt the engine and we got it running but I don’t remember using it much. It had a battery and a starter. The starter pedal had a square nut holding the spring on. It still had the hand clutch. Both of these tractors were stolen from the farm when we were moving down to Beaver Dam. To this day every time I see an old John Deere I look at the starter pedal for a square nut.

After I was married and was working for the Hughes Brothers Dairy in Mesquite I traded for this old 40. It had a history of its own. It was the first tractor the Hughes Brothers bought. They told me in the winter it was the only tractor that would start so they would use it to pull the other tractors to get them started. It had a 6 volt battery and an electric starter. It didn’t have a PTO so it was mostly used to rake hay. I traded some wages for the tractor then I over hauled the motor and even painted it. When I took it home Dad was like a kid with a new toy. He got so much enjoyment out of that old tractor. He worked it every day. I think it was the only tractor we had that you could just get on and start any time anywhere. Dad literally worked the tires off of this tractor. I had bought and rebuilt it for me but dad kind of took it over. I have always cherished my memories of how much he liked that tractor. I guess that is kind of how I was when he bought the new Farmall at the farm.