Campbellsburg, Indiana 47108.
I came up during the transition from horse and buggy and steam
threshing to automobiles, gas tractors and later combines.
My Daddy had a 16 HP New Huber steam engine and pulled a sawmill
with it. He later bought a No. 2 Geiser cable feed mill making a
complete sawmill he owned for some time.
The first gasoline tractor we ever owned was a 5-10 HP Avery
built at Peoria, Illinois. It was one of the first with 4-cylinder
automobile type motor. The wide seat was set ahead of the drive
wheels. It had a friction drive located under the seat with a fiber
pulley which contacted a smooth disc pulley. The fiber pulley was
on a square shaft and was moved in or out from the center of the
disc pulley to give it some 20 speeds forward and several speeds in
reverse.
For belt work, you simply removed a cog which drove counter
shaft (from the square shaft) and you also had your choice of the
many speeds for the belt pulley.
I was 14 when we got this tractor back in the early twenties. My
smaller brother and I drove this little Avery home the day we got
it and we operated and cared for it. I wonder if anyone around
knows about this kind of a tractor. Several large Averys were
around here at the time.
We also had a 1917 model 2 cylinder Moline Universal, the kind
you sat on the plow and drove.
Later I’ve had 4 Allis-Chalmers tractors. With all the steam
reunions, I well remember how nice our neighbors double Nichols and
Shepard ran while threshing, as did a double Gaar-Scott and even my
daddy’s single cylinder Huber and other makes.
No one could like their engine better than I like my
Allis-Chalmers W. D. 45 with power steering, live power and a good
hydraulic system. I do my limited amount of threshing with my A-C
pull type combine and accomplish in one afternoon what it took
weeks to do in the good old days. No wonder I love my machinery as
much as one could love a very obedient servant with no soul.