HANK'S TRACTOR AND THE MUD HOLE

By Dr. Robert E. Plucker 

 

This is a story that should be read aloud, because the sound of the tractors is what makes it interesting.  John Deere tractors made in the 1940’s had only two cylinders and they had a distinctive sound: “pud-up, pud-up, pud-up.”  All the other tractors that I knew of in those days had four-cylinder engines like today’s small cars, and would sound about the same except much louder because the tractors usually did not have mufflers to quiet them down.  You can make this kind of sound by putting your tongue to the roof of your mouth fairly tightly, and then blowing it away with your breath.  What should come out is a sound like d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d – very fast – that sounds like a four-cylinder tractor engine. Here we go.....

Hank was out in the cornfield, in the early summer, cultivating his Dad’s corn.  Hank was a little older than I was; he was out of school already. 

You cultivate corn with a kind of steel framework that you bolt to the front of the tractor, and it has a number of small shovels hanging down from it that drag through the ground, plow out the weeds, and loosen the soil so that the corn can grow faster and better.  If you happen to have a muddy spot in the field you either have to go around it, or at least raise the shovels of the cultivator so that the little narrow front wheels of the tractor don’t get stuck.  This can happen very fast, and it is very hard to get all this machinery out of the mud.  So….YOU MUST NOT GET STUCK!!!

John Deere I

          Hank was not paying attention as he should have, and when he heard his two-cylinder engine start to go pud-up, pud-up - - - pud----up - - - - - -pud---------up, he knew he was in trouble.  Sure enough, the front wheels had sunk in so far that he could no longer lift the shovels out of the ground, the rear wheels were slipping, and their rough tread was digging them into the ground, too.

He tried to back up out of the mud-hole: pud-up, pud-up,    pud—up, - - - pud------up, - - - - - - pud-------up, but all that happened was that the rear wheels dug in deeper.  He should have stopped trying to get out of the hole right then, and gone to get help, but he was too stubborn.  He kept trying to get the tractor to move either forward or back, out of the mud, but everything he tried made the tractor dig itself and the cultivator deeper and deeper.  Soon the front wheels were completely buried, the back wheels were more than half buried, and the belly of the tractor was about a foot or so into the mud.  He was STUCK!

Allis Chalmers

Finally, much too late, he gave up and went across the field where his neighbor Wes Johnson was plowing his corn.  Wes had an Allis-Chalmers tractor (d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d).  So he came to help pull out Hank’s John Deere, and they hooked the two tractors together with a long chain.  The Allis-Chalmers went “d-d-d-d—d----d------d” and started to sink in the soft ground.  They tried to back it out, “d-d-d-d—d----d------d,” and it dug itself in deeper.  Just as with Hank’s John Deere, the more they rocked forward and back, the worse stuck they became.  Soon the Allis-Chalmers was in the soft mud about as deep as the John Deere.

Too late, they decided they had better go over to my Dad’s place and get help from him.  My Dad always was willing to help, so he went over to take a look.

John Deere II

“No,” he said, “We’ll never get these tractors out unless we get one more tractor.”

So they all jumped on my Dad’s Minneapolis-Moline and drove over to Reeks’s house.  (His name was Henry, but in Latin it would be Hen-reek-ious and so people called him Reeks [with a long rolling r-r-r-r-r-r-r in front].  That was silly because Reeks was a German.  People do strange things.)  By this time, the whole affair was getting to be funny with all these powerful tractors lying helpless in the mud, but after Reeks got over his laughing spell he started up his new John Deere to help my Dad and his Minneapolis-Moline try to pull out the Allis-Chalmers and Hank’s John Deere.

So, now we have two John Deeres, “pud-up, pud-up, pud-up,” and an Allis-Chalmers, “d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d, and my Dad’s Minneapolis-Moline, “d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d” all running at once and ready to pull.  First, they chained my Dad’s tractor and Reeks’s tractor to the Allis-Chalmers and pulled it out.  Then they chained the three tractors together to pull out Hank’s John Deere.  (Now, if you are reading this story aloud, you have to try to make the sound of two John Deeres and an Allis-Chalmers and a Minneapolis-Moline all pulling as hard as they can all at once.  Good Luck!)

Minneapolis Moline

With a great slurping sound and lots of racket from the tractors, Hank’s John Deere finally slithered out of the mud hole.  It was the deepest mud-hole I have ever seen.  There was water standing in the bottom of it and the farmers who lived around there talked about Hank’s tractor and the mud-hole for years afterward.  I shouldn’t be surprised if there are still some old-timers alive, who remember the time Hank almost buried his John Deere in the mud.

 

 

Note: All tractors pictured were built around 1950.

JOHN DEERES

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/machines_03.html

MINNEAPOLIS MOLINE

https://www.google.com/search?q=1950+minneapolis-moline+tractor&hl=en&rlz=1T4AURU_enUS501US501&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7ztXUOzTHeeW2AW54oDwDA&ved=0CEIQsAQ&biw=1600&bih=718

ALLIS CHALMERS

Jean’s photo collection