Russ' Vintage Iron

Mowing the lawn is one chore I have never really minded. Of course, sometimes I was using a riding lawn mower; I suppose my tune would have been different if I was always using a push mower in the sweltering Nebraska summer heat.

Despite being a John Deere man through and through, I have never owned a John Deere riding lawn tractor. But, at the same time, I have been using this brand of lawn tractors for over 30 years.

Let me explain.

We lived in town when I was younger so we didn't own a riding lawn tractor. My grandparents, who also lived in town but had a larger yard, did.

I remember them having an orange rider of some kind, but I could not tell what it was. Then in the late 1970s they decided to purchase a John Deere 111 riding lawn mower.

My cousins and I would literally fight over who would mow for my grandma after my grandpa passed away. Most of the time, they won because they were older and lived just down the street from grandma. But I got to mow once in a while.

Even though I was not even 10 years old, I was hooked on running the lawn tractor. I would beg my dad to borrow the mower to mow our yard and occasionally he would give in and drive the mower the roughly 10 blocks to our house.

After my grandma died, my aunt and uncle ended up owning the 111. Once I began to mow yards in my teenage years, I would borrow it to mow some of the larger yards. I would have borrowed it to mow ALL my yards but sometimes it was too wide to fit through the backyard gates.

During this same time, I also started helping one of our older neighbors, Chuck, mow his yard. He was in his 80s at the time and not able to get around much. He had a John Deere 110 lawn mower.

For those of you not familiar with John Deere riding lawn tractor models, the 110 models were from 1963 through 1974 while the 111 was produced from 1979 to 1985. I found this data on the Internet.

We moved to the farm at the same time I was occasionally using the 110 and 111. My dad went to a local farm equipment auction and bought a Murray riding lawn tractor. I couldn't tell you what the model number was but it was probably from the 1980s since this was during the late 1980s.

We used that mower for many years at the farm. It was a fairly good mower and it even had lights on it so I could mow into the darkness.

While the Murray was okay, it was no 110 or 111. I would have really liked to end up owning at least one of these tractors but it just didn't work out.

After Chuck died, his wife Martha had an estate sale and moved to live with her sister. I was in college by then and I had plans to buy Chuck's 110 since I had used it so much in the past.

My plans were foiled as one of the nephews outbid me ($800 was WAY too much for this poor college kid). As for the 111, my aunt sold the 111 after my cousins left the house and she hired out her lawn mowing. I didn't know she sold it until years later when I asked about buying it.

The Murray mower's engine had major issues one year, so we had to retire it and we bought a new John Deere STX38 lawn mower in the spring of 1995. This is the riding lawn mower I still use to mow our farmyard today. With regular maintenance over the years, it has managed to make it to its 19th mowing season.

Earlier this spring, I went to the local John Deere dealer to get oil and an oil filter for the STX38 and looked at the brand new mowers on display. Present were traditional riders as well as the mowers with two levers for zero-radius turning.

After examining the price tags of the new riding mowers, I think the Russ' Vintage Iron title may also have to apply to my riding lawn mower. I do have three kids who will want to mow someday, maybe I will have to see if there is a good old 110 or 111 out there still in decent mowing shape.

(AG/BAS)

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