Much of the work on my parent’s dairy farm was done with a Farmall M tractor that included a Farmhand F-10 loader. We fed cattle, moved snow, changed storm windows and even painted with the old M. I remember my dad raising the bucket to the top of grain bins or the second level of our home, after which he would climb up to the bucket on the arms of loader. That little M helped shared the incredible load my Dad and our family took on in operating a dairy farm. This week I drove the M home to live at our place.

County Road 67 makes a fairly straight track from our farm west of St Hilaire to Viking. It’s the road I take when I want to go home to Viking and it’s also become an incredible internal metaphor for my efforts to reach out to my past and a youth spent in Viking. Bruce Springsteen has sung about his youth in songs that mention the 'Jersey Turnpike but in these songs it's the road he's using to leave home, not get home. I sometimes dream about traveling this gravel road and I always end up in Viking at some point in my youth. Monday, I drove the old Farmall M home on this same road and I thought, as I drove, how as I was hauling home a load of memories.

Mom and dad bought the M in 1961. It had been created twenty years earlier at a time when things were built well and quality was not adjusted for cost. The loader that is attached to the M still uses the original hydraulic pump although it was not the first loader the M carried. The original was purchased as a demonstrator in 1950 by my dad. The original loader was bourn by a Farmall H until the M came along with superior power which made it more useable. My dad used the M for everything and got good at quickly switching the mounted attachments. Dad and Uncle Jack Nelson (some may remember Jack from the parts counter at Northern Motors) did an overhaul on the M while Jack was at technical school in Thief River. Since that time, this World War II era tractor has needed little other than hard work and some fuel.

The M is home in our shed right now; I thought about what I should do with it the day I brought it home. I mean no disrespect to professionally restored tractors or their owners, but I don’t really want to make the M into something that sees sunlight only on parade day. It would be like taking a man who’s been a lumberjack all his life and making him into a ballerina in his retirement. I think the M will live the same life it always has lived, only a bit easier. I do plan to clean it up and then give it a coat of paint but otherwise its runs pretty good. It needs a new seat and I will probably do the easy things like plugs, plug wires and some new decals but I don’t see hiring a professional to do the work that is really my responsibility.

I guess you could say my mind reaches out to my past in dreams while the rest of me hits the road and brings home old things that remind me of the past.  Bringing home the M this week was good for both body and mind.