This Old Tractor: A Treasury of Vintage Tractors and Family Farm Memories

by Michael Dregni (Editor), Ralph W. Sanders (Editor)

For many farmers their farm tractor is almost a part of the family. This Old Tractor is the ultimate oral and visual tribute to the classic farm tractor. The text is made up of humorous and sentimental tractor stories, essays, and memories about such momentous events as a farmer's first tractor, learning to drive a tractor, and the "art" of collecting and restoring tractors. Part family farm nostalgia, part reminiscences about faithful old tractors, This Old Tractor is chock-full of endearing pieces written by all the well-known tractor book authors and Randy Leffingwell, Ralph W. Sanders, Robert Pripps, C. H. Wendel, Bill Vossler, Don Macmillan, and CBS Sunday Morning's Roger Welsch. Other writers and farmers, such as John Hildebrand (author of Mapping the Family Farm), Sara De Luca (author of Dancing the Cows Home), and Patricia Penton Leimbach (author of several farm life books and considered the Erma Bombeck of the farm), also contribute. We've even tracked down historical tractor poetry! The text of This Old Tractor is enhanced throughout by a variety of artwork, including farming paintings by Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, cartoons by Bob Artley (author of the syndicated cartoon series Memories of a Former Kid), historical photos, and full-color photos by Ralph W. Sanders, Randy Leffingwell, Andrew Morland, and others. Colorful old ads, tractor catalogs and magazine covers, and tractor toys are sure to bring back warm memories of cherished days spent on the family farm. Also Vintage Farm Tractors, The Complete Cow, Soda Pop!, Harley-Davidson Collectibles . Town Square Books from Voyageur Press provide entertaining, in-depth coverage of popular cultural icons, collectibles, nostalgia, and Americana. Town Square Books have an appealing balance of lively text, crisp full-color photography, and careful reproduction of rare archival material.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought it as a gift for my dad, read it before I gave it to him, and found myself surprisingly engaged. I grew up in the city/suburbs, and all my knowledge of farm life comes secondhand through family stories. (Man, we've got some good ones, though!) My dad grew up on a farm, though, and a while back he took to buying antique tractors like the ones he drove and worked with when he was young. Before I went off to college, I got dragged along to tractor pulls and shows multiple times per year, and I never found them particularly exciting. I've managed to dodge those trips for several years now and haven't really missed them. But reading through this book, I found myself recognizing a lot of the photographs (whoa! A Rumely Oil Pull! A Funk conversion!) and being able to picture a surprising number of details in the anecdotes and essays from stories that my dad and his family and friends have told. Family legacy is a pretty weighty concept, and not something I think about very often, but this book surprised me by putting me back in touch with a piece of mine that I hadn't expected to feel that close to.