Tractor Man Sold on Vintage Olivers
With a collection of restored Olivers and other old tractors, Al Mevissen lives up to his nickname: tractor man
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Al Mevissen at the wheel of his Oliver 77, which he uses to haul lawn tractors for his lawn care business.
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Nicknames from childhood can be eerily prophetic.
Certainly Al Mevissen’s was: His friends tagged him “the tractor man” as a boy. “My friends used to make fun of me,” says the Anoka, Minn., man. “They’d be riding their bikes and I would be cruising around on a tractor.”
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Al’s first cruise was an old Case VAC his dad, Merle Mevissen, bought him. A couple of years later, Merle replaced the Case with one that had a loader bucket. Finding he missed the VAC, Al saved his pennies and bought an Oliver 66 for $600.
The 66 provided plenty of entertainment for a teenage boy. One of his friends dared Al to drive it through the bank’s drive-up window. Standing to win a dinner out, Al didn’t look back. “I thought, ‘Well, heck, a free meal,’” he says, “and my bank was pretty secluded out in the country, so I did it. The gal who was at the window of the bank that day still talks about it.” Now in his mid-30s, Al still has a wild hair or two. “I’d like to drive the 66 into downtown Anoka one of these days and park it in front of the music store where I teach guitar lessons during the winter,” he says.
Adventures in tractordom
Al gained a working knowledge in old iron from a neighbor, Daryl Peterson. “Every morning I’d help him tear apart whatever he was working on,” Al says. “He got a junked Oliver 70, and we redid it: unstuck the motor and overhauled the engine, an early Continental.”
Daryl became Al’s mentor. “I learned how to rig stuff if you didn’t have the right part to fix it, making anything that you had work,” Al says. “He taught me about points and condensers, different ways to get motors unstuck, that kind of stuff.” Daryl also convinced Al to join the Nowthen (Minn.) Historical Power Assn. and attend the club’s annual threshing show. Merle followed suit and began buying “all kinds of tractors,” Al says with a laugh.
The Mevissen collection includes a pair of Oliver 88s, an Oliver 60 row crop, Massey-Harris 20 and 30, Case VAI and VAC, as well as an SC, a Farmall Cub, Farmall H and an industrial IH 2400 with a loader bucket.
The Oliver 60 row crop (dating to the mid-1940s) came from Scandia, Minn. A newspaper classified ad listed it as a 3-speed, but it was actually the model with two transmissions with two neutrals. “It was in original condition, all weathered and pretty ugly,” Al says. “It had been painted once, but it still looked bad, and the tires were shot. We put in new rings, bearings, seals, everything, and new tires, and then repainted it. That’s the last one Dad and I did together.”
Al bought the 1947 Case VAC from a relative. “They always say you miss your first love,” he says, “so I had to buy it since it was like the first one I had.” It’s been painted, but needs a new coat. “We used off-the-shelf paint and it looked good for about a week,” Al says. “I’m not a ‘pretty tractor’ guy. I like them to run good and, when I want to do anything with them, have them ready to work.” The VAI is pretty much the same as the VAC, he adds, except with a wide front end and high road gear, propelling the machine down the highway at 25 mph.
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