Remembering the KTA
Nice tractor in Josephine Roberts’ column on a 1937 Twin City KTA Tractor. I had one: a 1937. But these KTAs were painted battleship grey on steel wheels (and grey with red rims if on rubber tires) from 1934 until the middle of 1938, when they were painted Prairie Gold with red wheels, the same as the Minneapolis-Moline Model U, which came out the middle of 1938.
Another thing: KTAs were not available with the dual-cam 16-valve engine. They were single-cam eight-valve and that 283-cubic-inch engine was also used in the Model U. The dual-cam engines were used in the Twin City 17-28 and the 27-44 (not built by Minneapolis-Moline). The featured tractor in this article, being a 1937, was painted grey with red rims from the factory. Somewhere under that yellow paint is grey paint.
Terry Yust, Viola, Minnesota
Heard of a wobble gear mower?
My cousin has a Champion mower with a short pitman rod. It is referred to as “a wobble gear mower.” I am looking for any available information about this mower. Any assistance will be appreciated.
Norman Letsinger, Scottville, Michigan
letsinger.windyhills@gmail.com
(231) 757-2373
Colors for a Deering New Deal mower?
I’m trying to find the correct paint colors to properly restore a horse-drawn sickle-bar mower. The only identifying information I can find on it is the word “Deering” on the casting that the pitman drive shaft goes through, and the words “New Deal” on the toolbox lid. Any help will be much appreciated.
Lee deVries
lcdevries@centurylink.net
(541) 367-8666
A polished solution
I enjoyed Memories of a Former Kid in the October 2022 issue of Farm Collector. Back in the mid-1940s, I was on a date with a nice gal in my 1938 Chevy. We ran through a big water puddle and the Chevy died. As I checked the engine, I had my date try to start the car. A spark was arcing down the side of the ignition coil. There was a crack in the coil tower that water had splashed into. I wiped off the coil and asked my date if she had any fingernail polish. She said yes, so I painted the coil crack. When the polish dried, the Chevy started and we went home. Try that with modern cars.
A former kid,
John R. Heath, Sullivan, Ohio
Remembering Prince Albert the bookkeeper
My grandparents purchased a country store in 1917 in eastern Ohio. It was a typical store of the era, complete with a potbellied stove surrounded by chairs. A hand-pumped, glass-top gasoline pump sat at the edge of the porch along the hitching rail. Although the store was closed on Sunday afternoons, young men of the community assembled on the front porch, where self-taught musicians sang and played guitars and banjos. The store provided a place where farmers could barter farm produce for store supplies. My mother made regular trips to the store carrying eggs, and I assume visited with my future father.
During the late 1920s, my uncle (who had become a successful businessman in the “city”) purchased a Ford TT truck for his dad. Grandpa made two trips a week to an Ohio river town about 15 miles away. He picked up separated cream at farms along the route for delivery to a creamery. On the return trips he brought supplies back to farmers. Every two weeks he traveled to another river town where he picked up store stock delivered by river boats to the town wharf. The TT struggled on the steep river hills but my dad kept the truck operational and it is still in the family.
Grandpa smoked a pipe. Prince Albert is all I remember but stove-side stories indicate that Prince Albert had been a long-term choice. Grandpa attached empty cans to the dash of the Ford TT by the lids. He kept receipts, orders and pencils in the cans, excellent bookkeeping for the time. Although I was small, I travelled with him some and clearly remember those Prince Albert cans and their contents.
My grandparents closed the store in about 1948 and the new owner demolished the building. The clapboard-covered, two-story log house adjacent to the store that my grandparents lived in was torched in about 1990. The heat from those burning logs scorched the ground for an estimated 50 yards, but my memories are vivid.
Edward R. Jones, Dover, Delaware
Remembering the challenges of life before blinkers
I can certainly relate to my friend Clell Ballard’s recent article, Before Blinkers. Our farm was along a major two-lane highway, US 93 in northwestern Montana. I grew up on the driving end of those darned slow-moving farm trucks. We didn’t have a well, so we made frequent trips 3 miles into town with our 1-1/2-ton Ford with a straight-six engine and a three-speed Brownie auxiliary hauling a 1,000-gallon water tank.
It was definitely a slow trip on the return to our cistern at home. I would ride the barrow pit line (a wide, deep gutter dug along the roadside for drainage purposes) as much as safely possible and wave cars around if I could see a safe distance in front. But impatient drivers were sometimes rude and wouldn’t let you back in the driving lane if you ran out of safe barrow pit.
I always thought that if they knew where their food was coming from, maybe they would be a little more patient. When you have a heavy load, you need to try and keep it moving forward as steady as you can. Highway engineers are mostly to blame by not figuring in an occasional deceleration and acceleration lane to make traffic flow smoother.
As far as signal arms and blinkers go, we have three rigs in our museum collection with arms on them. The 1939 Ford 1-1/2-ton fuel truck also has one of the early signal lights as well. With the stylish arrow on the photo above there should have been no doubt on which direction you were intending to turn.
The 1926 Model TT wrecker truck has another style of arm. By the way, this is our version of the famous Tow Mater from the Disney Pixar movie Cars. (If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it with your grandkids.) You may notice the reflection in the side mirror. I have a pair on this truck and they were made with a mirror on each side of the unit. I don’t know why they were made that way. These trucks shown are part of the collection at www.miracleofamericamuseum.org, Polson, Montana. We have a lot of kid-friendly interactive exhibits and interesting and educational fun for the whole family. One teenage girl said we were “the awesomest.” You can’t get much better than that.
Regarding arm signals, I don’t think they teach them anymore in driver’s ed. In fact, I’m beginning to believe they don’t have driver’s ed anymore.
Gil Mangels, Miracle of America Museum, 36094 Memory Lane,
Polson, Montana
Loading the hay loft with Jackson forks
Clell Ballard’s article on old fashioned turn signals brought back many memories. As a boy in the late 1940s, I drove trucks hauling hay from the field to the barn that was equipped with Jackson forks. Although our loads were never as large as in the photo in Clell’s article, it always amazed me how these loads were created. As the flatbed truck traveled next to the shock row, a farm hand would pitch a shock up to the load, where Uncle John would place it properly to hold the load together.
When the load was complete, we’d head over to the barn and I would park the loaded truck properly under where the Jackson fork would drop, then run to the back of the barn, where a 1-inch lift rope was hooked to the front bumper of a 1939 Dodge pickup. When Uncle John got the fork inserted in a load, he would yell and I would back the pickup, lifting the load up to the trolly rail where vertical motion was converted to horizontal down the rail. Inside the barn, the person stacking the hay loft would yell and Uncle John would yank the trip rope opening the fork to drop its load.
In most cases, I could not hear the “drop” yell, so I backed all the way to the corral corner where the Jackson fork would be at its loft limit. Then, bringing the pickup forward to the beginning point, I watched as the rope was slowly relieved as Uncle John pulled it from the other side. At some point the rope would begin zinging by, no doubt the result of the Jackson fork falling after coming to the limit of horizontal travel on the rail. I look back on this now and wonder why I did not bring the ’39 Dodge up to a point where I knew the fork would be hanging, and then move ahead slowly so it would not come down at breakup speed. It wasn’t bad so long as there was hay on the truck where the fork would land, but it was a different story when the fork had to land on a hard surface such as the truck bed.
I have that fork yet today and it hangs in the barn on the rail where it was used for the last time in the 1960s. From its last use, Uncle John went to square bales and I went to a job after college.
In his excellent article, Clell also talks about the trucks of that era on the highway. That brought up memories also. We had International KB-7 and L7 trucks, and they had plenty of power. However, we had to haul down a major highway 8 miles to the elevator. Our travel speed with about 200-240 bushels was limited to about 20mph because the grain would blow out of the truck. I guess it never occurred to us that tarping was an option. We did not have time to tarp anyway, because the ’51 IH would be waiting, unlike today with bankout wagons and Class VIII combines.
I love Clell’s articles and always look forward to his and those by others who write for the magazine.
John Liebermann via email
“Only one quality: The best”
This is a copy of a letter my great-grandfather received from the Wm. Galloway Co. in 1917. Although it is not signed by the president, the letterhead graphics are interesting. My family had both a Galloway gas engine with a saw blade and a Galloway front unload manure spreader. I remember my grandfather using both of them when I was growing up. Both have been restored and are on display at the Faribault County (Minnesota) Historical Society.
Bill Eckhardt, Blue Earth, Minnesota
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Originally published in the February 2023 issue of Farm Collector.