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

by Michael Dregni (Editor), Roger Welsch (Foreword)

Part family farm nostalgia, part reminiscences about faithful old tractors, this visual tribute is full of endearing pieces written by several well-known tractor book authors and historians, including Ralph W. Sanders, Roger Welsch, Randy Leffingwell, and Don Macmillan. 85+ color photos.

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.

160 pages, Paperback

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.