(sassy rock music) ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ - Welcome to a "Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm the host.

What does a company do to preserve its history?

Well, John Deere hired Neil Dahlstrom.

He's their archivist, archivist?

- Either one.

- What do you say?

- I say archivist- - Archivist.

- Typically.

- Well, okay, what do normal people say?

- Archivist.

- Okay.

- I think I hear more often.

(Rob laughs) - Well, in a nutshell, what does that mean?

- Well, we manage the John Deere archives, which is historical records, so everything from photos to films to documents, anything that gives us some clues about something that happened in the past.

- So when was John Deere founded?

- 1837.

- Okay, so you still have like the CDs from back then?

- Yeah, I wish we did.

(Rob laughs) There's eight photos of John Deere to my knowledge.

- [Rob] Oh, the actual guy?

- Yeah, the actual guy.

- Okay.

- So black and white, typically from here up.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- Couple letters.

We don't have a lot from him.

I think he was too busy working to actually sit down and write anything down.

- [Rob] And do you have that stuff?

- We do.

- Okay.

- Yeah, yeah.

We've got a few letters from him.

We've got one written about six months before he died.

It was written in December of 1885.

He was in California.

He wrote a letter back to his son.

And the way I always say it is it's very on brand because he talked about weather and crop conditions.

(both laughing) - Well, a company like John Deere, I mean, when did they start, when did this whole thing, because apparently you got to a point, it's like, "You know what, maybe we should be saving some of this stuff."

- Yeah, so, company's founded in 1837.

1976 is when the archive started.

So it takes 130 years or so, and really that grew out of the US bicentennial in 1976.

A lot of Americana, a lot of museums start historic houses and archives.

- Yeah, Case, you remember your competitor?

- Vaguely.

- Yeah.

In 1976, they did a Case tractor that was red, white, and blue.

- Yeah, yeah, I've seen it.

My dad actually worked for Case.

- Yeah, they're no longer in business.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So I guess last laugh, right?

- Yeah, I don't think anybody's laughing, but yeah.

- All right, let's talk about you.

You're originally from East Moline?

- Yeah, that's right, yeah, born and raised in East Moline, Illinois.

- Okay, and I mean, how do you get into this?

- (sighs) Yeah, it's a good question.

I just remember as a kid my parents taking us to museums, places like the Rock Island Arsenal Museum in the Quad Cities, the Putnam Museum.

For vacation, we'd go to Chicago and go to the Field Museum or the Shedd Aquarium.

- Oh yeah.

- And I just kind of absorbed all of it, mummies and dinosaurs and American history.

- [Rob] You watch Indiana Jones?

- Yeah, I had a poster of Indiana Jones on my wall in college.

- X never marks a spot.

- It never does.

- Until it does.

- But we like to think that it does all the time.

- Well, for the people watching, let me give you a little idea of who Neil is.

I've interviewed you before, and I told you the story of when I went up to the Chicago League Club or something like that.

I found myself in a room alone with a Monet painting for some brand of, let's not get into it.

But I found myself alone in there, so I couldn't help myself.

I went over it, and I touched it, and I told you that, and there was a long silence.

And I think I honestly made you upset.

- A little bit, but the irony is the reason I went into archives is because I wanted to touch all the things.

It's just when other people touch the things, I get really uncomfortable.

- Okay, because what does touching something do?

- You transfer oils from your fingers- - I don't have any.

- To whatever it is.

I wash my hands all the time.

That's why conservators wear gloves, and they wear different types of gloves depending on what they're working on.

And so that's all kind of part of it.

- Yeah, well, I wanted to see if the paint would come off.

So I, (vocalizes) and then I... - Yeah, yeah.

- Scrubbed it a little bit.

- Probably frowned upon just for future reference.

- They've sold the painting, by the way, so relax.

- Possibly for less because it had been touched.

- I regret nothing.

(Neil laughs) I tell that story whenever I can just to upset people like yourself.

- I'm still a little uncomfortable about it.

(both laughing) - Your first job, though, you were dealing with space?

- Yeah, my first job in archives after graduate school was in the commercial space industry.

- Okay.

- So this was out in Virginia.

I was hired to help manage this small collection of documents tracing the history of commercial space, meaning private space exploration.

So there's companies going back post-World War II that were developing rocket systems, a really cool one called Sea Launch, where you're launching space vehicles actually from the ocean, from the water.

And then really through the '80s and '90s you get into space tourism and space exploration.

So that's really what they were doing.

- Okay.

- Really out of my kind of historical areas of interest.

- Does that matter though?

- Not really.

I was hired as an archivist to manage records.

- Yeah.

And then was to John Deere after that?

- Yeah, then it was to John Deere.

I was in Virginia for two years, and a friend of mine actually worked at John Deere and said they're hiring an archivist.

And I said, "I didn't know they had one," even though I grew up a mile down the street.

- [Rob] You've been there for 21 years.

- [Neil] 24 years now.

- 24 years.

- Yeah.

- That is, it's a four.

(both laughing) See?

That's what happens when you're getting old.

- Yeah, I had to think about that.

Oh, how long was it?

(Rob laughs) - I mean, you're from East Moline, but is there a passion for John Deere or for agriculture?

- I really didn't know a whole lot about it.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- I knew about John Deere.

I remembered learning about John Deere in school, but in terms of agricultural history, I can't say that I knew a whole lot about it.

So I came in first to do conservation work.

We had a conservation lab, so, working on historical materials.

I didn't do any art conservation but mostly paper and film objects.

And then I just kind of immediately was confused because the last biography of John Deere that I could find had been written in 1948.

And I thought, "There's just gotta be a lot more about this guy-" - That's surprises me.

- That we need to know about.

Yeah.

- As far as like agriculture, I'm struggling to think of a company that would have more of an archive, you know, because everything gets bought and bought again.

John Deere has not.

They're like that one constant.

- Right.

- So you kind of hit like the holy grail, at least in agriculture.

- Yeah, it's incredible, and it's John Deere, its partners, its acquisitions, and you just learn about everything that's going on.

And that's kind of the fun part of the job, is just exploring all these stories.

Learning about the people behind these companies and organizations is just really fascinating.

- You brought out books.

Tell me about the ones you have written.

- Yeah, I've written three books.

The first one... Well, actually I had two come out in 2005.

One was called "Lincoln's Wrath," which is a story of newspaper censorship during the Civil War.

Actually, my boss in the space archive in Virginia had been working on it for years.

- [Rob] Oh, you took his idea?

- I didn't take his idea, but he said, "I don't have time to finish the research.

Do wanna write a book?"

And I was young and naive, and I said, "Oh, yeah, that sounds fun."

- It sounds like a horror movie, like when they did that thing where Lincoln was a zombie and that.

- Yeah, I actually really loved that movie.

I was surprised.

- Says a lot about you, Neil.

(both laughing) - I wanted to not like it, but I thought it was pretty cool.

- So, the newspapers, were they pushing the man down?

- Yeah, so really it was focused on an editor in Pennsylvania who was very outspoken against the Lincoln administration.

His office was actually ransacked and all of his printing presses destroyed, and he ended up suing the Lincoln administration.

So it's really this battle of civil liberties during the Civil War, which was really fascinating.

- So the second book, what was that about?

- The second book was "The John Deere Story," which is a biography of John and Charles Deere.

- [Rob] So that was the first one since 1948?

- Right.

- Okay.

- Yeah, and what I learned really quickly, and I co-wrote it with my brother, which was a lot of fun, Jeremy.

And so he was a much better writer than me.

I was sitting in the archives doing the research, and so it was great.

We got to work on that project together.

But we quickly learned it was really hard to write about John without writing about Charles, his son and our second CEO.

So it was kind of a joint biography.

- Oh, I guess I hadn't even heard of Charles.

- Yeah, yeah, so Charles basically took over for his dad when Charles was in his early 20s.

- Ooh.

- In the 1850s and '60s to kind of be the general manager of the company while his dad got involved in politics and- - Really?

- Philanthropy and a lot.

And Charles Deere ran the company until he died in 1907.

- You know, Charles Deere doesn't sound like a great... I think John was the better thing to call it, though, John Deere.

- Yeah, I think so.

I get asked a lot if he'd be surprised to see his name on the side of a tractor or a combine.

- Yeah, maybe Chuck Deere?

- Yeah.

- Chucky?

- Yeah.

- Chucky Deere?

I don't know, yeah.

- Chuck and John.

- That's way too long.

- I affectionately call 'em Chuck and John because I've gotten to know 'em so well.

Does that sound creepy?

I don't know.

- Let's go back to touching paintings.

(both laughing) Well, how did that book go over?

Because, again, the first one since 1948.

- Yeah, it was pretty well received.

It was a fairly academic book I would say, very much a business history and just kind of exploring the father-son relationship, the evolution of the business.

It's a lot of just American history.

It's Civil War history.

It's the Panic of 1873.

It's the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893.

- What's the panic?

The panic of what?

- That's what they used to call depressions.

- Oh.

- So, before the Great Depression, there were panics, and so that's how they would label those things.

- I like the panic better.

- Yeah.

- Your third book was about tractors that turn into robots and fight.

That's cool.

- Wow, I don't remember writing that one.

- "Tractor Wars"?

- Okay, yeah.

Yeah, they may be in the future, but not so much in the 1910s and 1920s.

They were thinking about it.

- What was "Tractor Wars" about?

- Yeah, "Tractor Wars" is very much the kind of farm tractor origin story.

It follows primarily John Deere International Harvester and Henry Ford, who held the leading market share through the 1910s and 1920s, but kind of how the farm tractor came to be, the evolution from steam power to big prairie tractors to kind of the small general-purpose tractor built for the six million farms in the United States.

- Now, to farmers, this stuff is fascinating.

I mean, you wanna talk about getting a bunch farmers together and just something they can go on and drink beer at all night is like talking about the history of why John Deere made it and Case didn't, and Case IH, just all that stuff.

So I imagine the farmers were all over this book.

- Yeah, yeah, it's been a lot of fun, and everyone's got a different piece.

They wanna know about a particular brand or a company and why there's not more of them in the book or not, and that's where it gets really tricky.

There were 160 tractor companies in the mid 1920s.

- [Rob] Oh my gosh.

- And you can't write a corporate history of all of 'em.

- [Rob] You could.

- Well, you could.

They didn't all leave records.

They don't all have archives.

That's the hard part of actually writing history, is you need stuff.

You need someone to keep all the materials.

- What's this?

- Yeah, so this is a record produced by John Deere in 1975 called "The Great American Farmer."

- (laughs) No way.

- Yeah, random item from the archives, and I just think it's super cool, written by Ralph Harrison, lyrics, music.

- [Rob] Oh, it's got music?

- Yeah, oh, yeah, it's a song.

There's a long form poem in the middle of it, which I find kind of strange.

It's about a 4 1/2 minute track, but it's just a celebration of the great American farmer, and Deere produced this for the US bicentennial in 1976.

- Is it, 'cause everything back then was all, well, it's still, a lot of it, "Today's farmer is the most efficient in the world producing food."

Was it that type of thing?

- It's that sort of thing.

Then it goes down the road of just the pride in bringing in the harvest, the long winter, preparing for the next spring, farmer on his front porch with a tear in his eye.

You know, it's all of it.

- Because he just heard the markets.

(laughs) Who wrote the poem?

- I think Ralph Harrison did.

I think he wrote it all.

And he did a lot of this sort of Americana as a lyricist.

And I never found anything that said he was a poet, and I'm not listening to the rest of his music, but I assume there's some poetry worked into the music.

- So do you have like a museum?

- We have several.

We've got the John Deere Tractor and Engine Museum in Waterloo, Iowa.

We have the John Deere Pavilion in Moline.

- Been there.

- And then we have the John Deere Historic Site in Grand Detour, Illinois, which was the Deere family home in the 1830s and '40s, and we have a working replica blacksmith shop.

- Yeah, I have not been there.

You think I would be invited there.

- Yeah, I probably know a guy.

- (sighs) Yeah.

(both laughing) So where you work, it's not at one of the museums, is it?

- No, it's not.

- So do you like in the basement with all the, like, the files behind you, kind of like looking like Hogwarts, the post office?

- It looks like that.

We're not in a basement, but we're as close to being in a basement as you can be.

The archives was actually founded in the basement of headquarters.

- Was it?

- And it actually wasn't even the basement.

It's what they called the sub-basement, which was a mezzanine level, like a half level in the basement of headquarters.

- You're a interesting cat, man.

Tell me about standing in line to touch the trophy.

- Yeah, so one of the high points of my life was- - [Rob] Okay, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.

- Yeah, this is real, high points.

- Let's take a second to think about what he just said.

So as you listen to this story, this is one of the high points of his life.

- Also could be perceived as someone's low point, but I'll let everyone else interpret that.

- Now please continue.

- So, a lifelong Cubs fan, grew up in a St.

Louis Cardinals' house.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- But I think my great-grandmother was a Cub fan.

I pieced all this together after the Cubs won the World Series.

So, anyway, Cubs' World Series.

Part of the story is game seven, I actually blew my knee out running up the stairs to get my six-year-old son's Cubs hat 'cause he realized he wasn't wearing it.

So I like Army-crawled up the steps and got his hat and came down.

- [Rob] Oh no.

- My wife came home and said, "How's the game going?"

And I said, "Well, I have to go to the hospital."

And she laughed, and I said, "No, serious, look at my face.

I have to go to the hospital."

So I actually watched most of game seven in the ER.

- Oh.

- So that's the premise to this story.

- Yeah.

- Cubs win the World Series.

The bright side is I was laying on the couch half asleep watching celebrations all the next day instead of going to work.

So that was great.

- But for John Deere it wasn't.

- No, not for John Deere.

But the World Series trophy went on a little mini tour, and it came to Davenport, Iowa.

So the way it worked was you went and got in line.

Well, it was the middle of November.

I think I got in line at about 5:00 AM, and it was 10 degrees.

So I had my layers and my blankets.

I was I think second or third person in line.

- You're kidding me.

- I sat outside until they opened the doors, I think at 10:00 AM.

And we got to walk in, and I got to stand next to the trophy for about two seconds, take a picture.

Then we are ushered away.

- Did you touch it?

- I didn't get to touch it.

It was actually in a case (Rob chuckles) because people like me were there.

- You're Neil Dahlstrom.

Why didn't you, "Hey, man, I'm with John Deere.

Let me in, and I'll give you one of John's buttons or something."

- I would've, but I was so cold.

My lips were frozen.

I don't think I could actually formulate the words.

- [Rob] Was it worth it though?

- It was so worth it.

It was so cool.

(both laughing) But what I didn't know was six months later, I could just go to a Cubs game and just walk right up to it and not wait in line, and I could just go up and see it.

- Okay, that picture, did you at least have your eyes open?

- I did have my eyes open.

- That's good 'cause you would figure all that stuff, you probably... - Yeah, I mean, long-suffering Cub fan.

It had been 108 years.

Fortunately I wasn't alive for all 108 of it, but it had been a long time for me too.

- What do you want people to know about like the history of not just John Deere, but the company, and the importance of saving it?

- I just think it's important to know people because we talk about products.

We talk about equipment.

We talk about technology.

I don't think we talk enough about all the context that goes around all of these things.

I don't think we talk enough about the people who are involved.

And for me, archives, this is a record of people and their decisions and their lives.

So having handwritten letters from people who sat down, took the time to write a letter, if it's an email today.

Following someone's thought process, it's really important to have a record.

And I think for someone like me, like, I wanna feel like I made a contribution.

I wanna leave a memory, a lasting impression.

So it's really important to honor people who came before us, and I think that's what archives and history is all about.

So the fact that a company like John Deere thinks that's important I think is really an important message for everybody.

- But in today's world with the digital photos, you just put a SD card on there, you have 1,000 pictures, and it'd be good for 100 years, right?

- Yes, you just gotta migrate it to the next thing.

- What do you mean migrate?

- So when I started, you would scan and put it on a hard drive.

Then you put it on a floppy disk, then a zip disk, then a CD, then a DVD, and then an external hard drive.

- [Rob] No, I don't wanna hear this, no.

- This is why people like me exist though.

You don't have to think about it.

- In 100 years, anybody, they'll be able to read it without even plugging it in.

- As long as I take your SD card, and I migrate it to whatever replaced the SD card.

- You're not listening to me, Neil, because I got a bunch of stuff on these stupid SD cards, and I don't wanna mess with it again.

But I don't wanna lose it.

- For you, yes, it will be perfectly preserved forever.

- Was that so hard?

(Neil laughs) Seriously?

(laughs) - This is why when I tell my wife, "I'm gonna purge our photos," she just says, "I don't wanna know."

- You know, I'm not proud to admit, but whenever we run out of storage, and then it says, "You're gonna run out in 20 days, you're gonna run out in 10 days, you're out," and then I always just pay.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I do the same thing at home.

- I've got 7,000 screenshots of nothing that I need, but it's there, and it'll be there until the robots take over.

- I have a bad habit when I wanna remember to do something, I take a picture of it, and then I go to my photos to go, "Oh yeah, I was gonna do that."

Or if I'm at Lowe's or Home Depot, I take a picture of the price of something or whatever.

- Which is fine if you erase it.

- But I don't.

- You know what my Google does?

It shows you liked photos, and it came up.

There was like 20 photos of where I was parked in O'Hare, so I could remember where my parking space was.

- I do that, the parking garage.

Am I on the red level, level three?

- Exactly.

- A photo of these are the stairs I took to get down.

I do all the same thing.

- Do you love what you do?

- I do, yeah, and I also just feel really privileged to be able to do it.

At the end of the day, I kind of get to go through other people's things.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- I take it very seriously, and it's a big responsibility because I want people's stories to be right.

I want to understand what those stories are and kind of give everyone their say, whether they can tell me or whether they died in 1886 like John Deere did.

I think it's really important, and it's a privilege and a really great responsibility that I have that I take really seriously.

- Well, you must be good at it because, like I said, if you're gonna be an archivist, you hit a home run.

So do you get together with like the archivist from like Coca-Cola and Ford and just like, don't I know, sit at a bar and, like, trading cards, you're swapping stuff like this?

- We do.

We don't swap our things 'cause they're locked away in the archive.

So the fact that- - Why are you winking at me?

- I carried this out, like, you know.

- Of course he doesn't.

That would be wrong.

- But yeah, we get together.

We go to our conferences.

It's corporate archivists, business archivists.

- [Rob] Y'all have conferences?

- Oh yeah.

Yeah.

- What do you do?

- Yeah, so we talk about digitization.

We talk about conservation.

We complain about people who touch paintings when they're not supposed to.

You know, we kind of do all the above, and we try to figure out what's next.

What's the latest database technology that we should be using?

Should we be integrating AI into how we create metadata for old photos- - Oh yeah.

- To build chat bots for search.

We do that and then five minutes later talk about a 120-year-old pair of Levi's and how do you preserve 'em.

- You wear 'em.

(Neil laughs) - You could still wear 'em unless they're in the archives.

Then they're hands-off.

I don't know if I'm getting my point across, hands off.

- (laughs) It's fun to talk to you, Neil.

It's fun to get a guest wound up.

Well, Neil, if people want to find out more about you or maybe purchase one of your books about transforming tractors, where would they go?

- Yeah, just anywhere online.

Neildahlstrom.com is my website.

You can learn more and read some articles, but go visit the John Deere Pavilion website.

Go to the John Deere Historic Site, the John Deere Tractor and Engine Museum.

We got a lot of fun events lined up for last year, even maybe a tractor show next June to celebrate the 250th birthday of America.

- [Rob] Yeah.

You're in Peoria, Illinois.

- Yeah.

- Right down the street is the Caterpillar Museum.

- Yes.

- Wanna go touch stuff?

- I've been there.

I've touched things.

I chat with their archivist.

- Ah!

- Touch stuff we're not supposed to be touching.

- Well, you know, it's not my museum.

- Yeah, but you can get in.

You can't tell me you can't walk in there and say, "I'm Neil Dahlstrom.

Let me touch stuff."

- Yeah, I don't know that I'm a guy who pulls rank.

- I don't know who Caterpillar has for archivist, but I think you could hook us up.

Neil Dahlstrom from East Moline.

Neil, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, and thank you for all you do.

The history that you're preserving at John Deere is very much appreciated by all of us in agriculture.

Neil, thank you very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

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