OPEN FORUM: Tractors

By DELMAR LEATHAM

I have always enjoyed tractors and farm equipment.
As a young boy I watched my grandfather thresh grain with a very old threshing machine. The wheat was hauled from the field to the thresher and fed into the machine with a pitchfork.

The County Fair always occurred just after the harvest. So Grandpa Chambers would select his best shock of grain, tie it up and hang it from a rafter. That shock of wheat was later entered at the county fair to be judged against other shocks of wheat that had been grown that year. It was judged according to its yield per acre and the plumpness of the wheat kernels.

My Grandpa Leatham was a dry farmer and grew wheat on the Rexburg bench. His threshing machine was pulled through the fall wheat field by four horses. In the late 1930s he reached into the thresher to clear some chaff and got his hand caught in the gears. His right arm was pulled off and his oldest son rushed him to the hospital.

Two of his other sons, he had eight of them, buried the arm on the dry farm. Grandpa always said he could feel that arm turning over.

Grandpa was able to get dressed and tie his shoes with his remaining hand. I have tried to tie my shoes with one hand and quickly developed a preference for slip-ons.

When I was eight, I was playing outside when the ground began to shake. I ran to the corner and watched an ancient iron wheeled, steam driven tractor being towed to the local park. It became a favorite attraction to play on at the park. We were able to climb from one end to the other with no adult supervision. The furnace door was welded shut for our protection but if natural selection had been allowed to take its course, many of Rexburg’s future problems could have been avoided.

My grandpa Leatham eventually got a D5 caterpillar tractor to pull his farm equipment. I guess the caterpillar tractor got its name because if you squinted really hard while you were having a sun stroke, the tractor could look a lot like a giant caterpillar.

I remember sitting on my father’s lap as he plowed the field and watching a hawk circle above us.
As a young man I learned to haul hay the old-fashioned way. You put the tractor in gear, set the throttle to the right speed, jumped off and loaded hay until you got to the end of the row. Then you hopped back on, turned the tractor down the next row, jumped off and loaded more hay. Again, an opportunity to improve the gene pool was missed. I’m sure this was one of the motivations to form OSHA and save us all from ourselves.

Tractors have always been a part of Valley life. You could always count on being stuck behind either a school bus or a tractor on your way to get the mail. Some folks moved to the Valley to enjoy the rural lifestyle only to develop road rage after slowly following a tractor down the road. I guess that extra minute it took to follow a tractor to its field was just too much to put up with. Green fields and the smell of new mown hay come at the expense of that extra minute behind a tractor. I’m sure there are those drivers who could use that extra minute to speed themselves to their next life-changing experience.

These are the same folks who wanted to try their hand at rural life so they get some chickens, a cow and a horse. The chickens die, they eat the cow and they have the hay burner for the next 20 years. Those horses helped to keep the local hay farmers in business.

On a summer’s night in mid-July as you entered the Valley there was a freshness to the air and the temperature dropped 20 degrees as you passed by irrigated fields of alfalfa.

One of my first paying jobs was irrigating alfalfa, onion and melon fields. If I was irrigating on a summer night, I would set the water and run to the end of the field. I would lay down and nap until I felt the water on my arm.

When my good friend, Lloyd Marshall, was young and ambitious, he collected old tractors. He tore them apart and put them back together. He got most of them to run again. They were always on display at the Clark County Fair.

His good friend, Dave Robison, also participated in this tractor obsession. He used a four stroke, single piston engine to produce a donut shaped puff of smoke that soared from the smoke stack. It was a favorite for all observers.

At least once a day Lloyd would drive through the Valley at 25 miles an hour. He would reminisce about the fields and the crops that grew here when he was young.

I have taken the responsibility upon myself to keep this drive down memory lane alive. I have termed it the Lloyd Marshall Memorial Drive. I hope he is allowed to come down from above and ride along with me. I enjoy his company and a pleasant drive through the Valley is something I always look forward too.
Honk when you pass me to show your support for the good old days. Spend your saved time wisely.