County Fair

Rusty Allis WD.

What a WD is supposed to look like.

WD 45 Diesel.

The county fair started last Friday and I started at the blacksmith's shop yesterday. I went down a little early to drop off the tools and get myself a porkburger - one of my must-haves during fair week - and to shop the tractors in the shed next door. Even though the featured marque is Oliver this year, I still dig the Allis-Chalmers. My older brother did a little farming and he had a couple of Allis's, including a WD 45 Diesel like the one in the above photo. I've got a WD myself, the condition of which is about half way between the ones in the other photos. It's amazing there's so many of these old tractors still around. The ones in the photos are from the 50's. As farms got bigger, so did the tractors. A lot of these were kept around to run a mower, elevator, pump or maybe do some cultivating instead of the mainstream field work. Probably the thing that kept most of them from going to the scrapyard was that they were so damn reliable. The engines are as simple as can be and were run at a very low state of tune, so they just kept working. There are very few farmers who want to part with anything that always works, especially if they can't get much money for it. Plus a lot of them are just big fans of machinery. Many of the tractors on display have been in the family since new.

Craig and I started off a little slow yesterday but we did hammer out enough metal to justify our existence. Craig made some brackets to get our stock up off the floor and I worked on a cooking set-up for a campfire. Nothing too fancy but good for openers. We're going to have another young guy working in the shop this week as well. Like Craig, Andy is also attending Purdue and is interested in just about everything I am - railroading, firearms, welding, photography. Should be a fun week for us. We'll be working 3 - 7 every afternoon. That way we can start in the heat of the day and get the shop up to over 100 real quick like.