Through the Tractor Grapevine!
Sometimes a trip comes about all through connections. This fun day trip came about through the tractor grapevine. What is especially cool is that the tractor friends were all from different brands. The connecting factor between these friends was the love of old iron!
The call from Dave our longtime friend
The other day I got this message from our friend Dave Elmore. He is part of the Graham-Bradley and Sears Sold Farm Tractors Club. He said he had a tractor story for me. Since I haven’t been traveling for stories, I was thrilled. Even though I have only been looking locally for stories, I still have deadlines, so a story is big news! Especially the fact that this story was in Bureau County, a day trip.
I heard it through the tractor grapevine!
What made this fun was it was an International Harvester story.
The International Harvester story was coming from a Sears tractor collecting friend, but that is only part of the story. Dave was contacted by a Minneapolis Moline friend. “David Doty, (yes another Dave) called me and asked if I would contact you,” Dave our Sears friend said.
I did a story about David’ Doty’s dad Charlie years ago. The story was about his Minneapolis Moline dealership replica that was set up at the Sublette Farm Toy Show
David Doty had been contacted by Terry Swearingen, the owner of the International Harvester tractors, thinking maybe I would want to write a story about their tractors for Red Power Magazine. It is a wonderful family story.
So, Dave Elmore called me and said I should call David Doty.
Calling David
After catching up with our longtime friend Dave Elmore and finding out about his family, I hung up and called the David Doty. He shared that Terry Swearington had two Farmall tractors, both bought at local dealerships and that one of them had recently been restored by his grandson. Family owned, a sentimental story, this had all the markings of a great story!
Terry and the story
I called Terry Swearingen and made the connection and plan to come his direction. Yesterday, Keith and I loaded up and visited with Terry, his grandson Ben and brother Jay. Stopping at their farm we were able to maintain social distancing and interview the family.
We saw the beautiful family Farmall 450 and the Super MD.
The story will come out in Red Power in a future issue! But it was so cool to find a story, and travel on a day trip all because the tractor grapevine worked so well.
With tractor shows mainly cancelled for the summer, this helped us get our tractor fix.
Pie
On the way home, we drove through Princeton and made a stop at Myrtles Cafe and Pie and had a piece of pie. It was the first day in Illinois for outside dining and we enjoyed a piece at a table and chairs outside. Yum!
Tractors, road trip and pie! What a fun day. Stay tuned for the upcoming story in Red Power, it is a good one! Thank you Dave and David and Terry for sharing it with me, keep up the tractor grapevine!
