Russ' Vintage Iron

Growing up on the farm, one of the pleasures for kids was using vintage farm machinery as one big playground. While it may not have been the safest place to play, it did encourage you to use your imagination.

Is this an old manure spreader? No, to an 8-year-old it could be a ship on the rough seas or even a race car winning the Indianapolis 500.

What about this old elevator? Well that is no ordinary elevator; it could be rocket deep in space or maybe you would climb up it like you were climbing a mountain.

My oldest son, Kyle, is now 8 years old. We have some old iron sitting around the farm place (a couple cultivators and some corn wagons mainly) but nothing like what I had to play on when I was his age.

I had the luxury of spending most of my childhood on a farm with machinery from two different farming operations. My dad and uncle had their own equipment and the old farmer we rented the farm from (until my folks bought it) never sold his, so those machines were still present as well.

There was a wide range of farm equipment to play on. There was wood and iron horse-drawn equipment, his two old tractors (an unstyled, mid-1930s John Deere B which never ran and a circa 1950 A which ran for a while) and then some of my family's older farm machinery.

Among the equipment my dad and uncle brought with them was a Paulson loader. I guess it was on our John Deere 620 tractor before my time, but I do remember them having the loader on the A.

By then they had the John Deere 4020 with the 148 loader, so the Paulson was more of a back-up loader. The all-hydraulic 148 was a big step forward, considering the Paulson had the tripping mechanism which dumped the bucket of the loader.

The 4020 and 148 loader were so durable and handy they have been our main loader-tractor on the farm for around 35 years now. We also have a mid-1950s International 400 and Dual loader as a secondary loader.

The Paulson loader was my dad and uncle's only loader from the late 1960s through the later 1970s. Before that when my grandpa was still farming, he had an International loader on his Farmall M.

The M was traded off for a John Deere 730 around 1968 and the loader went with it to town, so they found this Paulson loader and had it mounted on the 620. Its main jobs were to load manure in the springtime and pushing snow in the winter.

Things were a little different back then. All the hay they baled for the dairy cows (and then later for the beef cows) were in small, square bales.

Then in the late 1970s they bought a Gehl round baler. Because of this, they needed a loader able to handle the larger bales and that is when the 148 loader was purchased.

The Paulson loader was effectively retired at that point.

Like I said, I vaguely remember them having it on the A of the landlord in the late '70s/early '80s, but really all I remember is playing on the loader. It sat in the vintage equipment line along the fence in the pasture just on the other side of the fence from the cow lot.

The line became considerably shorter when my folks bought the farm and the previous owner's equipment was taken away. Some older steel-wheeled equipment, which was collectable even then, was saved from the scrap metal guy's cutting torch, but most of it was not.

This included the old Paulson loader, which my dad let the scrap guy have. The loader had not been used for many years and was worth very little.

Occasionally at a farm sale or just driving through the countryside when I am traveling to interview someone, I will happen across a Paulson loader. Our loader was a light green color but they made them in different colors, probably to match the tractor they were going on.

Most people who know what a Paulson loader looks like probably have memories of using the loader on their farm growing up. I, on the other hand, remember sitting in the bucket with my twin cousins pretending it was a spaceship.

They may not be memories of using that equipment for farm work, but they are memories nonetheless.

Russ Quinn can be reached at russ.quinn@telventdtn.com

(AG/CZ)

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