Written By John Caverhill
It was a late May day in 1948 and I had just turned twelve years old. Dad met me as I got home from school and said, “I’ve got a job for you.” We headed back to the field where, to my joy, the tractor and discs sat waiting. During the summer when not in use the tractor, Old Casey, sat under the walnut trees behind our house. I would sit behind the steering wheel and dream of the day when I would be piloting the tractor just like Dad and big brother Ron.
Three Caverhill families shared ownership of this tractor, a Case model C purchased in 1929, the year this model was introduced. Casey little resembled today’s tractors with their climate-controlled cabs and fingertip computerized controls. Tractors then were basically designed to replace the horse for field work such as pulling a plow or a cultivator. Advertisements emphasized the advantages of a tractor over a horse, e.g., ‘You only fed a tractor when it was working–not year-round like a horse’. All controls were hand-operated; crank, three-speed gear shift (2.3 mph to 3.7 mph), a clutch, throttle, and brake. Removing a screw nut from the crank case showed the engine oil level, and a dry stick inserted into the gas tank showed the fuel level. An iron seat was mounted on a flat steel bar extending out from the transmission case.
This bar flexed, providing some—but not much—cushioning from the jolting ride. A heavy steel steering wheel with a steering knob completed the controls. The tractor weighed two tons and was classified as a light-weight, still a relatively new concept at this time. The first tractors were intended to replace steam engines and resembled them in size and design. The Minneapolis Twin City tractor weighed fourteen tons. Much of the Case engine weight rode on the front wheels, making it heavy to steer, and the knob gave the driver better control of the steering wheel.
Anyone who has driven a steel-wheeled tractor on gravel roads has a special appreciation for rubber tires. As the wheels revolve, each steel lug contacts the road with a jolt that travels from your feet to the top of your head. We always drove in the ditch, where it was reasonably level, otherwise it was a jolting ride in low gear along the road.
For my first stint in the driver’s seat, Dad stood beside me ready to coach as necessary. We started off in third gear, the regular discing gear. There is absolutely no comparison between steering a steel-wheeled tractor bucking its way over the humps and hollows of a plowed field and driving a rubber-tired car on a smooth road. Halfway down the field, Dad with a big grin threw in the clutch, stopped the tractor, and looked at me. Looking at the zig-zig trail behind me, the only positive thing one could say was that I hadn’t driven into the adjoining hayfield.
“Drop it back into second,” Dad hollered above the roar of the engine (Casey had no muffler and the exhaust pipe projected only a couple of inches from the manifold, so the noise blasted straight into your ears). Moving at a more sedate pace down the field gave me more time to react and I learned to not fight the steering wheel or over-correct the swings. After a few rounds Dad left me and I settled down to enjoy the sensation of controlling this magnificent mechanical beast. After a half hour, I put Casey back into third gear and I felt at last like I was really driving old Casey.
We drove Casey until the spring of 1954. He still worked well in the field but the steel wheels had increasingly become a performance-inhibiting factor. Road travel had become a regular feature of farm work with wagons and farm machinery all mounted on rubber tires. We traded in Casey on a new Case SO which had a slightly higher horsepower rating but most importantly was on rubber and had a road gear of around 11 mph. We heard that old Casey ‘retired’ to Petrolia where for many years he powered the pumps on some of the oil wells.
