"It would be just like getting a member of the family back," Mr. Gall would know he had the right 1206 if he found it.
#HAPPY FARMER MODEL D TRACTOR FOR SALE SERIAL NUMBER#
Having the serial number of his grandfather's meant Mr. It reminded him of better times and of how, during the long days in the field, a tractor sometimes began to feel like an extension of a farmer's own hands. In 2000, he came across the old notebook in his grandfather's shop. Gall repaired auto transmissions in a garage behind his home. Drought decimated his first crop of corn, soybeans and wheat. In 1998, he took out a much larger loan to buy a 120-acre farm and rent some additional acreage for cultivation. He borrowed $6,000 in 1996 to buy a battered 1206 that had no connection to his family and which he began repairing for his own eventual use. Gall worked summers on a highway line-painting crew and spent the winters helping out in his father-in-law's auto-transmission shop. "He knew he wanted to, but I just didn't know if we'd ever be able to," recalls Marta Gall, who married Kristin that same year and is now an elementary-school art teacher. He returned to Macon County in 1995 hoping to get back into farming. Gall spent four dreary years making hamburger patties at a Kansas City packing plant. When Kristin Gall graduated from high school the previous year, his father and uncle didn't need another full-time hand for their farm. In careful script, he documented its maintenance history in a spiral notebook that he kept in his repair shop, which stayed in the family after his death in 1989. Harvest cleaner," International Harvester boasted in one magazine ad for the 1206.Ī balding, smiling man who served on local church and school boards, Leonard Gall installed an enclosed cab on his 1206 to protect him from the elements, a rare bit of luxury that few local farmers indulged in at the time. Its engine was one of the company's most powerful at the time. It had brawny white fenders and gold metal trim. The used 1206 he bought in 1973 was an eye-catching contrast to the all-red tractors International Harvester was known for. Leonard Gall with his sons Calvin and Larry on a Farmall 450 tractor in 1957 Later, when grandchildren were born, he sometimes got them pedal-driven Farmalls for Christmas. In 1957, a photo of him and his two young sons, Calvin and Larry, made the local paper after he became the area's first buyer of one newly introduced Farmall model. And he was particular about his vehicles while he owned them, washing them down after a day in the fields and making sure they were parked inside a shed each night. Farm finances permitting, Leonard Gall, born in 1919, didn't hesitate to trade in a tractor when he needed something bigger or more reliable. In and around Macon County, Mo., where the Gall family has farmed for four generations, a tractor is still often seen as a measure of its owner. The tractor "is part of my history," says Mike Iott, an inventory analyst for Ford Motor Co. Twin brothers Mike and Pat Iott, of Ottawa Lake, Mich., spent nearly a decade tracking down the 1956 John Deere that their maternal grandfather was driving when he suffered a fatal heart attack while trying to plow his way to the main road during a 1976 blizzard.
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