WSJ -- Pursuing a Tractor, Mr. Gall Recovers His Family's Past .......................................
January 3, 2007
Pursuing a Tractor, Mr. Gall Recovers His Family's Past
Rescued From Junkyard, It Gleams; 'Like Grandpa Was There Smiling at Me'
By ROBERT TOMSHO
ETHEL, Mo. -- Kristin Gall can't look at an old tractor without wondering about the lives it's rolled through. "There's a story behind every one if you can find it," says the 36-year-old farmer. In 2000, he began trying to track down one that belonged to his late grandfather.
By then, Leonard Gall had been dead for 11 years and the tractor had been gone from the family for nearly twice that long. But Kristin Gall's memories were stirred after he stumbled across a tattered notebook in which his grandfather had jotted down the vehicle's serial number, along with the dates of each oil change.
The tractor was a Farmall 1206, the turbocharged pride of the International Harvester line when introduced in 1965. Mr. Gall recalled riding the powerful red-and-white vehicle as a boy and sneaking out at night to listen to its AM radio. "I just wanted it back," he says.
So he plunged into the world of restoring and collecting vintage tractors, where some antique models sell for more than $100,000. John Deere & Co. has a collector's center to help restoration buffs. The annual Red Power Roundup, for International Harvester collectors, attracts 25,000 visitors.
Twin brothers Mike and Pat Iott, of Ottawa Lake, Mich., spent nearly a decade tracking down the 1956 John Deere that their maternal grandfather was driving when he suffered a fatal heart attack while trying to plow his way to the main road during a 1976 blizzard.
The tractor "is part of my history," says Mike Iott, an inventory analyst for Ford Motor Co.
In and around Macon County, Mo., where the Gall family has farmed for four generations, a tractor is still often seen as a measure of its owner. Farm finances permitting, Leonard Gall, born in 1919, didn't hesitate to trade in a tractor when he needed something bigger or more reliable. And he was particular about his vehicles while he owned them, washing them down after a day in the fields and making sure they were parked inside a shed each night.
In 1957, a photo of him and his two young sons, Calvin and Larry, made the local paper after he became the area's first buyer of one newly introduced Farmall model. Later, when grandchildren were born, he sometimes got them pedal-driven Farmalls for Christmas.
Eye-Catching Contrast
The used 1206 he bought in 1973 was an eye-catching contrast to the all-red tractors International Harvester was known for. It had brawny white fenders and gold metal trim. Its engine was one of the company's most powerful at the time. "Plow bigger. Plant thicker. Harvest cleaner," International Harvester boasted in one magazine ad for the 1206.
A balding, smiling man who served on local church and school boards, Leonard Gall installed an enclosed cab on his 1206 to protect him from the elements, a rare bit of luxury that few local farmers indulged in at the time. In careful script, he documented its maintenance history in a spiral notebook that he kept in his repair shop, which stayed in the family after his death in 1989.
When Kristin Gall graduated from high school the previous year, his father and uncle didn't need another full-time hand for their farm. After trying welding, Mr. Gall spent four dreary years making hamburger patties at a Kansas City packing plant. He returned to Macon County in 1995 hoping to get back into farming. "He knew he wanted to, but I just didn't know if we'd ever be able to," recalls Marta Gall, who married Kristin that same year and is now an elementary-school art teacher.
Mr. Gall worked summers on a highway line-painting crew and spent the winters helping out in his father-in-law's auto-transmission shop.
He borrowed $6,000 in 1996 to buy a battered 1206 that had no connection to his family and which he began repairing for his own eventual use. In 1998, he took out a much larger loan to buy a 120-acre farm and rent some additional acreage for cultivation. Drought decimated his first crop of corn, soybeans and wheat. To ensure a steady income, Mr. Gall repaired auto transmissions in a garage behind his home.
In 2000, he came across the old notebook in his grandfather's shop. It reminded him of better times and of how, during the long days in the field, a tractor sometimes began to feel like an extension of a farmer's own hands. Having the serial number of his grandfather's meant Mr. Gall would know he had the right 1206 if he found it.
"It would be just like getting a member of the family back," Mr. Gall says.
Relatives remembered that an area farmer named Vernon Carnahan had come to look at the 1206 shortly before it was traded in. Mr. Gall says that, during a phone call, Mr. Carnahan acknowledged buying the tractor from a local dealer in 1979 and recalled who had bought it at a consignment auction about two years after that.
His son Jackie Carnahan now farms the land that once belonged to his father, who lives in a nursing home. Jackie Carnahan says the period was not a happy one for his father, adding that, like many other local farmers at the time, he was caught between several years of low crop yields and double-digit interest rates on his operating loans. "When he sold that tractor, he was definitely downsizing because of debt," he says.
Mr. Gall discovered that the 1206 subsequently belonged to a farmer in La Plata, Mo., for seven or eight years until its engine developed a nasty knock and it was left parked in an open field for several years. Vandals broke out the cab windows.
A used implement dealer eventually bought the rusting hulk and resold it to Houck Supply, a parts dealer in Corning, Iowa, about 250 miles from Mr. Gall's home. Owner Ray Houck told Mr. Gall he was welcome to come look through his 14-acre salvage yard but advised that if the 1206 was there, it had likely already been stripped of anything worth saving.
Haunted by a Tractor
Mr. Gall tried to concentrate on his farming but he was haunted by the notion that his grandfather's tractor was still out there somewhere. "I just wanted to put it to rest so that I wouldn't be looking for it for the rest of my life," says Mr. Gall, who called Houck Supply again in 2003.
This time, the young employee who answered remembered there was something unusual about one of the old 1206s out in the yard: It had an enclosed cab. The serial number, 14207, was the right one.
Mr. Gall purchased it for $1,000. It was a far different piece of machinery than he remembered. The cab was bent askew, the radio was gone and the engine was filled with ice. The body's sheet metal was bent and battered.
Mr. Gall spent more than a year overhauling its engine and smoothing out its body. He bought yet another 1206 to serve as a "donor" tractor for parts and found an antique radio on eBay to match the one he remembered as a boy. In 2004, he wrote an essay about his efforts for Red Power Magazine, a journal for International Harvester collectors.
"I sat on that tractor for about an hour listening to that radio through the scratchy air waves," he wrote, recalling the night when he finally finished. "It was almost like being taken back in time. I almost felt like Grandpa was there smiling at me."
These days, Mr. Gall doesn't use his grandfather's 1206 for hard chores, although it is in demand at vintage tractor shows and is featured in a 2007 calendar produced by Ageless Iron Almanac, a collector's magazine.
On his farm, the good years have outnumbered the bad since Mr. Gall began his search. Even so, the neighbors he rents land from are getting up in years and his own 120-acre farm doesn't produce enough revenue to support his family. With investors bidding up prices as they buy up local farmland for recreational purposes, Mr. Gall hasn't been able to afford to buy acreage that has come up for sale.
By looking for wrecks and bargains, he has bought and begun to restore a dozen more old Farmall tractors. They are jammed, tire to tire and hitch to grill, in a big storage shed on his property. "If I fall on hard times, at least I have something I can sell," he says.
Mr. Gall's wife, Marta, isn't sure their 20-month-old son, Hayden, will be a farmer. She says she wants him to make up his own mind.
Mr. Gall's hopes are clearer. Aiming to keep his grandfather's tractor in the family for at least one more generation, he revived a tradition his grandfather started: He bought his toddler son a pedal-driven 1206 for Christmas this year.
Write to Robert Tomsho at rob.tomsho@wsj.com
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