Those Were the Days

Reader Contribution by Sam Moore
Published on March 20, 2015
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An IHC high-wheeled Auto-Buggy. Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Elmer J. Baker, Jr., (1889-1964) was once editor of Farm Implement News, a publication for farm implement dealers, Even though retired as editor he continued to write a regular column called “Reflections” for Implement & Tractor, which FIN had become, almost up until the time of his death. In the Oct. 7, 1963 issue of I & T, he responded to a letter he’d just received from a 2nd generation IHC dealer, Ralph Chalenburg, owner of Chalenburg Implement in Starbuck, Minnesota, who had written:

“My Dad once sold a Big Bull tractor. One was enough. Then it got to be Heider and later Huber. He also once sold a 45 hp Mogul and a Buffalo Pitts thresher for a custom operation.

He often told of going out every morning in an IHC high-wheeler auto-buggy. My first auto ride was in one, before I was born, when Dad took Mom to the hospital in it. Then there was getting the thing going for the day’s threshing. It was sometimes more work getting the little engine started than the big one.

(The Reflector vividly recalls watching C.W. Marsh, FIN’s first editor, cranking and cranking his IHC auto-buggy. The crank was at the side of the body below the front seat. But when it started, it got you through sand or mud, just so there was gravel deep down for those narrow hard-rubber tires on the high wheels to bite into. Where the IHC auto-buggy couldn’t go, only one thing could: A buckboard with a span of mules.)

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