Fast-hitch drag finally finds a home

As I read an old issue of Farm Collector, I was instantly reminded of a recent experience. In November, my boys, Dave and Rick, my 2-year-old grandson, Isaac, and I attended the “going-out-of-business” auction at Balik Implement, an IH-Case dealership in Spillville, Iowa, that had been in business since 1924.

One of the items listed on the sale bill was a “new” 2-point, Fast-hitch, 3-section IH McCormick drag. It was a 15-foot-wide Model C4 peg-tooth harrow and will fit the Fast-hitch on a Farmall Super C. It was on a pallet just the way it had come from the factory, probably about 55 years ago. The three sections and some of the brackets and pieces were still wired together with the same painted wire that IH used for shipping back then. Four separate metal tags hung from each of the wired-together assemblies. They had what appeared to be serial numbers.

Owner Jim Balik took over the business after his father’s death in 1962, and he remembered this drag being in the warehouse then. I was amazed that, after all those years, all of the parts were still together.

In 1954, when I was 9, my dad bought a 1953 Farmall Super C with a Fast-hitch for $1,000 and his last team of horses. He purchased several pieces of Fast-hitch equipment, including a drag like the one on this auction. I dragged a lot of acres with that harrow while I was a young man. Dad later traded in that drag on a 4-section, pull-type harrow that we used behind our Farmall 504.

In recent years, my desire to own a drag like that again has grown. Needless to say, my boys and I were extremely excited at the chance of purchasing this drag, and even more excited when we came home with it. I have pictures of my dad using the drag in our field in May 1963, a picture of me as a boy with the drag in the spring of 1956, and some pictures of the “new” drag we acquired at the auction (still on the pallet).