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(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald, just North of Quincy, on a farm where there are a number of outbuildings.

The one right behind me here is one where a master tractor restorer works.

And the one next to it, is a 1930s Ag Museum.

Some of the tractors that are restored here end up in the museum.

Let's take a look at that process a little bit.

Marvin Hubert, you know, there are, as you know, there are a lot of tractor collectors.

- Many.

- Some of 'em have dozens and dozens of tractors.

A lot of those tractors are not in, are not in great condition because tractors sit on a field, they get old and rusty, and then somebody has to restore 'em if they're gonna be brought back to life, and that's what you do.

Isn't it?

- Yes.

I grew up on a small farm here in Adams County.

We had two cylinder tractors.

I had a love for 'em.

I went to Spring River Junior College, studied how to work on tractors.

And one of the first ones was a two cylinder John Deere worked for a John Deere dealer for 27 years.

- Is that right?

- Applied my skills there both to the two cylinders and the newer tractors.

- Yeah.

- Retired from there and went to work full time for my, with my wife for the next 30 years.

And then we sold our business two years ago and retired.

And now I've just... - Now you're back to the tractors.

- Yeah and enjoying.

- It some retirement, but this thing is a gem.

Now tell me now you just finish, this is the most recent one you finished, right?

- About six weeks ago... - Gorgeous!

Tell us about it.

- Well, it's a 1940 model A, John Deere, bought it off of a friend offered it to me, it was in bad condition.

Total did a total disassemble of it.

Every last, nothing bolt out of it.

- No kidding.

And then we reassembled it and brought it back to life.

- What do you do when you can't find exactly what you need?

For instance, you're taking every nut out of it.

And you find out that some of the parts are faulty.

What do you do?

- Well, you can either get 'em repaired, re machined, get new parts through John Deere.

If they're not available there, maybe a good used part, or they're a lot of really good reproduction parts.

Some of them, you gotta be a little leery of others, you get have people that sell 'em have a good reputation for quality parts.

And so I, I try to stick with them, those people.

- Well, if you've been in it long enough, you know who those people are too, don't do have a good reputation, - Right - Let's take a look around this because it's just, so it just gleams the way.

Now okay, everybody remembers John Deere as the, as, as, as the green tractor.

- Right.

But it wasn't always that way.

Was it?

- Well, the, the John Deere tractor primarily were green.

The early Waterloo boy had a lot of red on it, plus the green and yellow, but the tractors themselves primarily were green and yellow.

- Mm gosh.

It's beautiful.

Now do, did you do the paint job on this?

- My neighbor helped me with it.

He's got a heated paint booth and I would've painted it.

If my paint booth's not heated.

(both laughs) - That's right.

It was winter time right?

- I was lucky that he's only about a mile and a half the road from me.

So, we took it to him.

- Show us, did you have some challenges on this show us where you really had to, had to use your imagination and use your, your resourcefulness to get this done?

- Well, the, one of the key things and just step here, there's this clutch here.

There's a spine driver on it.

And that spine was beat off there.

It was bad shape.

We couldn't use it.

So, a friend of mine, I was talking to him one night and he said, he'd had a good used one that we could he'd sell me.

And he did at a reasonable price.

And so that was kind of the key to getting the thing back together.

Other the other parts were just parts that needed to be replaced... - This is, this is interesting.

Now you do you always name your tractors?

- You know, I don't, but my wife Kathy wants.

- Well, it's a good way to determine.

Okay, which tractor are we talking about?

So - right.

Let's call this one, Foster - Foster.

There's a reason why you picked foster and.

- Foster is what we named it.

I bought it from friend of the family who had foster children in his home.

When he asked me about buying it, the price that he quoted me seemed a little bit more than I wanted to pay, but I thought it was a good Christian thing to do.

Go on and buy it from him so that he could put food on the table for his Foster children.

- Foster children, okay.

- When I, I needed this key part here, the crank shaft, a good friend of mine, Gary Foster had this crank shaft.

So, when I got the tractor running, Cathy asked me, what are you gonna name it?

And I said, well, I bought it to help the guy feed his foster children.

Gary Foster helped me get the crank shaft.

And I fostered it back to life.

So we'll call it foster.

- It's perfect.

- Yeah - It's perfect.

Now I want to go next door too, because we don't see many of these.

- Yeah.

- Tractors are, there were a bunch of tractors and there a lot of 'em have been restored, but this, this is a, this is a corn planter.

- Corn planters yes.

- And we talked about the red and the green colors.

Now that the corn planters, a Deere corn planter, would've been red wouldn't?

- In this time period yes, this was number 9.

It was built between 1901 and 1916.

But this particular model one was 1901 to in 1906.

And I verified that by some casting numbers that were on it and they made some changes.

- Okay, and you can show us, can't you with this, this deer bucket here or this corn bucket.

- What I did was I looked up this casting number and my old catalog that I had.

And it verified, you know.

- That was pretty exciting for you.

- It was?

Yes.

'Cause this, I had looked for one of these to put into our museum, 1930s Ag Museum.

And they're, they're not plentiful mark.

- Right.

now when did you finish this one?

It's done, you painted it.

This, this is in the condition you wanted.

Right?

- Right.

Yeah.

It, I finished it last September, but I'm waiting for a guy, gentleman from Morton, Illinois is coming and he's going to hand paint the pin striping around the, the boxes, the hoppers.

- And that's the way it would've been.

Huh!

- Yes.

Pin striped on all the flat work here.

- And that's especially pin striper is especially.

- Oh yeah, that's that's getting to be a lost star to be able to do that.

- Would you show us how this would work?

Now you have these, you have these stakes that you would put to the side and you also have this arm that comes down.

- So you have two Check wire stakes.

You go put one at one end of the field, one at the other end of the field, you roll this, roll a check wire out that has these buttons on it and every 42 inches.

So, this is stretched across the field.

As that wire passes through here with those buttons, it trips this mechanism and it drops the seed.

- Oh.

So it only planted it every 42 inches.

- Every 42 inches, another button drops the seed purpose of that Mark was back then they didn't have herbicides.

So they to weed control, they would cultivate the corn this way and then turn around.

They could, they... - Had to get room to get through the field to get through the plants.

Okay.

- That was the purpose.

And it was successful.

It worked.

- Yeah.

That's brilliant.

Now, now how would this arm help you put this disc on the top?

- Let me put this back here.

This marker, would come down like this, Make the mark in the field.

Line's going forward.

So when that driver or that team turned at the other end, he could line his team up with that marker at mark and get a straight row through the field.

And then he got the other end.

He'd alternate it to the other side.

- Switch it to the other side.

Okay.

- But again, you had to move your wires.

- Yeah.

To get 'em out of the way.

Sure.

- It was a process.

- Plus you're driving horses.

Right?

You know, which, which is not everybody can do.

- Maybe, maybe if he was lucky he had two or three young men, he was raising to go with.

- He would sure hope so, I also find this fascinating and, and I were, these, were these added on later or were this tool and oil kit included?

- That was it.

It was it didn't come with the planner.

We had this and some of our parts that we had left over from a previous purchase.

- You know, and speaking of how valuable it is to save things, the, the wooden, like that arm that you just raised and lowered and some of these wooden pieces, you couldn't, they weren't, they weren't with this you had to find those.

- Right.

And basically what, when the planner came to us, was this part here, didn't have the roll of check wire.

Didn't have the planner checked wire steaks, didn't have the tongue or this marker didn't have the... - Well, almost all the wood was gone then.

Right?

- Right.

Didn't have the double tree or the evening or up front there.

None of that was with it.

So, as we got to talking one day, my father-in-law and I, he said, you know, I think I know where there's a marker over in one of the barns over here.

So, he goes and gets it.

And I said, well, I think we've got a couple rolls of check wires.

So, I go over and look and found check wires and wire and look up the part number in my catalog on the castings.

And they were the right one.

- That is so lucky.

- And then my wife said, well, I think we've got a double tree and a evening, but the key thing was this tongue.

It there was.. - The long that's we that's the real long, when it goes all the way up to the team.

Right?

- Right.

Well, horse on each side, pulling the width here, plus this thickness had to be a dimension.

And I thought, well, I could find something that I could modify to work in there.

So, we'd had bought a bunch of tongues at an auction.

And went to the barn to look, and we pulled this one out, 'cause it measured right.

And right on the side of it said number nine.

So, it was made for this.

It just.

- Now I, now I know why farmers never throw anything away.

- That's right.

Yeah yeah.

Absolutely, the wrenches in the toolbox, I had those that were in my collects.

- Took a little painting, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, this is sweet.

- Yep.

So, and once we get this pen striping done, we'll move this into our museum.

We have an evolution of corn planters in there and we'll, we'll show you the, that later.

- Good, good.

Let's do that.

And you also have a couple more tractors in there.

- Yes we do.

- Will see those too later, okay.

Thanks.

Well, Marvin, you'd probably always like to work on your own tractors, but sometimes you have to do a favor for somebody, right?

They, they want, they've got an old John Deere and they want it restored and, and you, I guess you say, well, I guess I got time for that now.

- Right?

Yeah.

Plus it gives me a little extra money that I can spend to.

- On your own parts.

Right?

- There you go.

- So what do you have to do to this one?

This is somebody else tractor.

- This one.

And we could look at it later, but the grill screens were beat up in it.

And so the guy wanted new grill screens and the medallion to go in the front of the front part of the hood.

So - Can I go get those?

Or you just stay right here.

I'll bring 'em over because I wanna show 'em and the grill screens are, you couldn't really find original ones.

Could you?

- No, these were reproduction grill screens that we were able to acquire.

I'll take this rapper.

- These are going in the front.

Right?

- Right.

They, and they, they go in like this, on this 730, they wrap around.

- Well, that would be kind of a trick getting those in.

- There.

It is I would think Yeah.

- 'Cause you could bend in those and make 'em fit would be kinda.

- and the little stiff this medallion is, will go in the center of the hood.

You can see it on this one, but they're they're expensive.

They're it's a reproduction.

The guy that makes em is licensed by John Deere to reproduce 'em.

- Yeah.

- So they're identical.

- Yes.

- It's not there right.

- A hundred dollars.

- Everything everything's expensive because it's a specialty item, only so many, few people.

- Right.

- That make em.

- But if you want to get it, it's authentic or looking up - Will this one get painted and all that, or will he be doing that on his own?

- He'll be doing that on his own.

He he's having me repair some oil leaks on it.

So the future he can go on.

There's a axle seals or leaking on the rear here.

I'm gonna have to pull the wheels off and the back end on.

- Well, you know, of pulling wheels off, let's take a look at the, some of these specialty things that you have to do because well, you work by yourself largely here.

Right?

And so pulling a 1000 pound wheel off is not anything you can just wanna do by yourself.

- Yeah, I've got a, a floor hoist here that you know, that I use to lift the heavy items with.

- That'll also raise an engine up for your own.

- Yes.

It sure would.

Yeah, sure would.

- It raises out the whole front of the tractor if you wanted it to.

I see - And it's depend upon the weight of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- And what, what about these?

- Okay.

These are, yeah.

I built these and they're adjustable.

I can adjust 'em up and down to fit different tractors.

If I want to, I take this wheel off and I want to support that axle.

I can put it under there and it's, it's a safety device.

- Yeah, and, and then you, then you can pull it out, but then you still need your hoist to lift that thing up after you get to get it.

- To take the wheel off and use the hoist.

And then once I get that wheel off there, then I get that safety stand under there right away and support it.

- Yeah and you know, this, this is also.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

That's one that I made - You built that too.

Huh.

- Right, right.

Made that.

- What would you use that.

For?

- Well, that to separate a tractor model, certain model tractor, it turns upside down the wheel can roll so you can separate it.

I've got another one back here, leaning against this tractor that it saddles up under the, the tractor and supports it.

If you wanted to separate that tractor in the middle.

- Well, let's take a look at this tractor.

- Okay.

- This is yours.

Right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

And are you gonna restore this one.

- Eventually, someday?

It, this was the very first Deere that John Deere or what they call it, the new generation of tractors.

They went away from the two cylinders to a multi cylinder engine, four cylinders.

What this one is.

They, they made 'em in gasoline, diesel LP and this, and.

- What year are we talking about?

- This is a 1961.

It was the very first Deere, and the, the reason I know that other than the serial number, the brake pedals are the later ones.

They put a device to lock 'em together so that if you're going down the road and you had to hit the brakes quick, if you hit just one brake here, it'll just swing the tractor around, you know, at a higher speed.

- Not good.

Not good.

- When they were locked together, when you were transporting on the road at, you know, road speed, you hit one pedal and it'll lock both of 'em.

- And then there's another one over here that you're working on as well.

Now this one says diesel, I guess I, I guess they're still making, are they still making diesels?

- Oh Yeah.

Yeah.

That's all they make now is diesel.

- Oh, is that right?

Okay.

- Have since about, about 1974 or 76.

- Yeah.

What's the year on this one?

- This is a 1959, 730 diesel.

It it's gonna take quite a bit of engine repair work, but it, this is my next project.

- It's like the engine's plum gone out.

- It's gone out of it.

Pieces are laying down underneath it.

- It's.

- Yeah.

Well you're an optimist.

Marvin.

You hope to live long enough to get all this done.

I mean that's - Yeah I always said I was gonna live to be a hundred.

So I know now why.

(both laughs) - This is one of the ways that you're able to do what you do.

These are, this, here's a, you're talking about general catalog that you look for parts in and, and this is, this is, I know this is an antique, so I'm gonna handle it very carefully, but not only are your tractors old, but your books are very old too.

And anything that you would for certain years, anything that you would need is in here, right?

- Yes.

And I've got other catalogs Mark that I keep in a, a dresser drawer over here.

Yeah.

I refer.

- For this one too.

The general catalog.

This one looks even older actually.

- Yeah.

- But I mean, it's a fascinating, just, just looking through here is fascinating to see, to see how, how, how everything was so advanced technically, even back then.

- It, sure was.

- You know, and of course they were, they were producing everything, mass producing everything.

Yeah.

What's going on here.

- Gentlemen from Wichita, Kansas sent that carburetor to me.

I, I rebuild a lot of carburetors for people.

I, so, you know, this is off of a actually like that 30, 10 over there, but I do a lot of the two cylinder tractor carburetor rebuilds, and I keep parts here.

This cabinet is full of just parts.

You know, if I come here in the evening working on one, I can just get the parts out, and then the replace some.

- whole place is small parts.

I don't know how you remember everything is.

- Yeah.

- I mean, just, just look, look right down here and you say, never throw anything away.

- Don't throw, - There might be something in there that you need.

- Yeah.

You probably know what you need.

- somebody else does.

Yeah.

So, but anyway, I'll get this rebuilt and shipped back out to him.

So, and these are just a couple of that I've redone, the two cylinder.

Yeah.

That's a two cylinder.

That would be like a carburetor like that.

A, that we looked at earlier, a mag needle.

And I rebuild those also here.

Keep parts for.

- Well, listen, you also have a couple of tractors you finished over in the museum and we want to talk about this museum a little bit.

It's the next building over, your father-in-law's Ag Museum, right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

So we'll meet him and we'll look at your tractors over there.

Okay.

And, and we'll, we'll, we'll learn a little more, - You bet.

- All right.

- Well, Marvin, we mentioned the Ag museum, so we're gonna take a brief look at it here.

And while we're, while we're looking at your other tractor, is this your father-in-law's museum?

You help him with it.

- Yes.

- We're gonna meet him a little bit later on, but we mentioned these two tractors that we wanted to see that you had earlier finished.

This one's older than we than the other one we saw.

We saw the model A, which was a 1940, right?

- This one's a little older.

- This is a model B it's a 1936.

Would've came out of the factory on this skeleton steel.

My father-in-law, his oldest brother was farming.

And he worked for his brother, cultivating corn with a tractor, identical to this, a two row cultivator.

And the reason he, could operate it because it had the hand clutch and his dad had farm house, and he couldn't reach the clutch pedal.

His legs weren't long enough yet.

Probably only seven years old.

- Yeah, Yep.

- So, he had a lot of good memories of running this model B and he told me, he said, I'd like to have one restored, just like it.

- Yep.

So you did.

I don't know if all his memories are good, but Now, and you mentioned the cultivator now that's these, these, these plough, like things that, that hang down into the field and that, that would dig up the ground between the plants.

Right?

- Right.

- It will do The weeding for you, I guess.

Huh?

- Your, your corn rows would be in here.

And these shovels on this cultivator would just weed out the weeds and, and kill 'em - Okay, we mentioned earlier, that's why it was important to, to, to, to plant your corn 42 inches apart.

- Right.

- That left your room for, to get your tractor.

- Right.

You bet.

- And look, we look at these wheels.

I mean, we're used to seeing tires now.

- Yeah.

And when they tires came along, the guys wanted to put tires on.

So, they would cut these off and then just weld a rim on 'em Mount tires.

Well the tractor he ran didn't have it had steel wheels like this.

So, we were looking for steel wheels.

He'd called over the United States and Canada trying to run down some wheels to put on here and couldn't find them.

And finally, one day a guy came to me and looked at it, a tractor I had on my shelf said, oh, I've got a model like that.

And I said, really real one.

He said, well I do.

But he said, I took the wheels off of it.

And I said, what are you gonna do with them?

He said, I'll sell 'em.

I said, where do you live?

And it's only three mile down the road from us.

- He went all over the world before.

- Yeah.

- Three miles away.

You had these steel wheels.

Perfect.

Okay.

And this one's even older and you, and you restored this one too.

It's a Huber tractor.

I assume that there's no relationship, huh?

- No relation or at least I haven't received any inheritance from the Huber family in Ohio.

I've met the direct descendants, nice people.

I bought this tractor on an auction in Niantic, Illinois.

It was a 1927 model year.

It was built in late 1926.

The original owner who I bought it from had bought it and took delivery of it.

The day my dad was born in 1927.

- Okay.

- My dad's name was Marion Huber.

This Huber tractor was built in Marion, Ohio.

- Hope he dug on - So it kind of a.

- Yeah.

In no relation.

That's interest's interesting.

Yeah that's very interesting.

Was this a trick?

I mean, this is older.

It's a different than what you're used to.

Was it difficult to restore It?

- It wasn't that difficult.

They were pretty crude made and I did overhaul the engine, tightened up a few of the loose joints.

So.

- You, you don't, you don't see a lot of Hubers, do you?

- No, you don't they only built a little over 13,000 in total tractors - And to compare that they built 300,000 to these model B's.

- Just that model B. Yeah.

- Yeah.

So, so yeah, you can see that, that wasn't and the colors striking, but there's a reason for that too.

- Right?

the Drag army green Huber did a lot of work for the military and world war I.

And so they painted a of the equipment and stuff, the Drag army green.

And so when the war was over, they said, Hey, we're not gonna throw this paint away.

So, they just painted their tractors, grab all of the green until they run out.

I think it was in 1928.

They finally went back to their color of a dark green.

But.

- Well, Don McKinley we've been spent a lot of time with your son-in-law.

And he mentioned a lot about, about you and the fact that, you know, you, you were driving a tractor like this as a little kid.

I like this, the fact that here we're in your museum and you wanted a tractor, just like the first one that your dad brought home in 1931 right?

- Yeah.

Bet.

- You're old enough to remember working with horses before there was a tractor - Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

In the, in the thirties people say they talk about the, when the tractors got on a farm, but you gotta be careful with that.

If tractors were invented in what the twenties, even in, in the late teens, there were tractors available, gas tractors, steam tractors, before that, but they were expensive and they were big heart per type thing, big old lumber and tractors, the horses needed to be replaced.

And, and, and the people like John Deere and all the other, all the other said, we gotta make a smaller tractor that will replace, that can replace a team of horses.

And so they started coming out with the A's and the B's and so forth.

And this is a B, 1936.

Not all farmers had tractors until the mid 1940s after the war In the thirties, they couldn't afford it.

And then the war come along and they weren't available.

- Right, right.

Nothing.

Everything was rationed there.

Nothing was available.

Yeah.

- That's right.

So, so most farm, there were a few out there, but, but tractors really didn't come to the farm until the forties.

And, and of course for, I like it because it's sitting here and it shows the guys that are riding around in the GPS, operated combines and tractors today, or they don't even have to touch the steering wheel.

it hasn't always been that way.

It started with stuff like this.

And if you didn't have this kind of a tractor, right?

It's an evolution.

It had to start somewhere.

And these are one of the early's.

- Yep.

Yep.

And I mean, you were talking about how much easier it is now to run a combine than a tractor, but think about how much easier it was to do this than a team of horses.

- I got.

- As you used to do, right?

- Yeah.

This was, we took this tractor as is up to mountain, to a show and a father and a son walked by, there was 600 pre 1939 tractors there, father and a son walked by and the son looked up at dad and said, yeah, dad, but what did they use him for?

And dad looked down at him and said, they farmed with him.

Period, that Was it?

I came home and told Marvin and the family, I wanna surround this tractor with all of the John Deere equipment.

It could have pulled or powered in the thirties 'cause I want that kid.

And I wanna be able to show that kid, this is what this tractor did.

It salvation of it.

- Yeah, I want to thank you for hosting us here today, okay.

- Great.

- And Marvin too.

- Yes.

And we will thank you for coming.

- Absolutely.

And we will be back because we have not been to the 1930s Ag museum of, of Don and Marv for, for many, many years, they've made a lot of changes here.

They're totally devoted to the education of agriculture from the 1930s.

And we're gonna be back with another program with another Illinois story near Quincy.

I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

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