4

The Tractor

1952

My name is Joe Bob Boyd. It is really Joseph Robert, but everybody calls me Joe Bob. I am the son of Little Jeff Boyd and the grandson of Henry Boyd. I am the fifth generation of Boyds to farm this land we all call The Home Place.

My family has been after me to write down my story like those who came before me. I am not much for writing, but my daughter Sarah has promised to help, and she’s a teacher. So here goes.

I was born in 1901, at the start of the 20th century. That’s just about 100 years after my great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Boyd, was born here after his parents moved from Virginia. I have seen more changes than any of my ancestors could have dreamed of in a million years. Our farm has been transformed in my lifetime by machines and new inventions. Farming has changed beyond belief, yet it still stays the same. We still depend on the forces of nature for survival, but now we help nature out with fertilizer and better ways of farming.

The Home Place was a fine farm when I was growing up. We had lots of crop land and three work teams of horses. My daddy was very good with horses. He was able to train the teams so they knew just what to do. We could drive them sometimes just by using our voices.

I do love horses. I learned to drive long before I was big enough to harness a team. I was able to do most of the jobs around the place by the time I was ten years old. I had seen the steam engines that ran the threshing machine, of course, and heard tell of tractors being sold to work on farms. Some folks were even predicting that one day farmers would have automobiles to go to town and tractors to farm the land, but I did not believe it.

When I was 16 I lied about my age and joined the army. America had entered the World War, and I wanted to go to France and do my bit for my country. It about broke my mother’s heart, but she let me go. The army used horses, and I thought I could work with them. Instead the army sent me to school to be a mechanic. I learned all about gasoline engines. I spent my time in France in a big repair shop working on military trucks and tractors. I realized then that these things were the way of the future. I was lucky to get in on the ground floor with my army training.

At the end of the war, as I was waiting to be shipped home from France, I got a telegram. It said that my daddy and grandad were both dead. The flu was spreading all over the world. Dad and Grandad both got it and died. They had been working so hard to keep the farm going that they were worn out and could not fight the disease. Many soldiers were sick, but somehow I stayed healthy. They say that the flu of 1918 killed more people than the whole war!

The army shipped me home right away. I had to take over running the farm, and I was not yet 18 years old. We had one hired man. As men came home from the army, we were able to get some more help. Still we barely kept the farm going. Good workers were hard to find because they could get better jobs in the cities. I knew that we could not hire the kind of people we wanted. We needed to get more work with less manpower.

The tractor solved this problem. We bought a Fordson tractor in 1920 from a dealer in Owensboro and shipped it by steamboat to our landing. It was a proud day when we unloaded it, and I drove it up the lane from the landing. It had rained during the night and the lane was slick with mud. The big lugs on the steel wheels of the tractor dug right in, and it did not slip a bit coming up the hill. It had a power take-off so we could use it to run other machines, such as a feed mill or little saw mill if we wanted. I worked in France with Fordsons and knew them to be good machines. I knew, too, that I could keep it running. If it broke down I would be able to fix it.

We had a big barbecue to celebrate the arrival of the tractor. Momma and I invited the neighbors and all the folks from our church to see it. A lot of the older men were doubtful. They said we would go broke trying to keep it running. Many of the younger men, however, were eager to ask me all kinds of questions. I could tell that they were thinking that some day they might get a tractor, too.

The barbecue was fun, but there were also some surprises. Our neighbors, the Bishops, were there, and they brought their daughter Betty. When I left for the army, she was a little freckle-faced girl with her bright red hair in pigtails. Now she was a beautiful young lady of 16. I was sure glad we had that barbecue!

A 1920 Fordson tractor.

The tractor was the star of the show that day. I was proud that ours was the first farm in the neighborhood to own one. I was so eager to put it to work. That night, after our company had left, I spent a lot of time thinking about Dad and Grandad. What would they have said about us being so modern? Finally I decided that they would have liked it, and I went right to sleep.

The tractor did an even better job than I had hoped. We began to rely on it more and more. I sold two of the horse teams, keeping only two mares and a horse to breed. I enjoyed raising and training horses. I guess I really didn’t want to think that the farm would change so much that horses would not still be needed.

We still used horses for lots of jobs during this time. We used them to break the garden and plant beds and to cultivate the garden and tobacco. We also used teams in wet weather to haul things with the wagon. The tractor tended to pack the soil down when it was damp, which was bad for the garden and plant beds. It made ruts in wet weather that tended to wash, causing little ditches. The horses still had a role to play, and I was glad of that.

The tractor changed our crop production, too. We did not have to grow as much oats, since we were feeding fewer horses. On the other hand, we had to raise more crops such as tobacco to sell for cash. We had expenses with the tractor that we did not have with horses. We had to have money coming in to pay the tractor payments and to buy gasoline and spare parts. I began to learn the problems of paying bills and keeping enough cash on hand.

We still shipped most of our products by river. I joined a group called the Good Roads Club to get the county court to improve the roads in our area. It was the same fight my grandad fought years before. We wanted gravel, all-weather roads so we could get our goods to town and get good mail service.

The post office began rural free delivery of mail right before I was born. But the roads were in such bad shape that the mail could not always get through. We needed roads fit to drive on, which meant a gravel surface and good drainage.

I got our first truck in 1923. It was a Model T Ford pickup. That truck really changed our lives. It was a wedding present for my wife, Betty, and me. We were married shortly after I got the truck. We drove all the way to Owensboro to spend the weekend for a honeymoon. I had been courting Betty ever since the night of the big barbecue to celebrate the tractor. She was 19 when we married, and I was 22 years old.

We have really been blessed in our married life. We have had three wonderful children: Frank was born in 1925; Billy in 1927; and Sarah in 1929. Our life has been so much easier than my parents’ life. Things we take for granted would have been luxuries for them. We have store-bought bread all the time and fresh meat all year round. We get newspapers and magazines by mail. We are able to talk to people by telephone whenever we want.

We also have a radio. Our first radio was a crystal set that I got in town one day and put together. It ran off a battery that was charged by a charger hooked up to the windmill. We could get a Louisville station and a Nashville station most of the time. It was really a miracle to be able to hear music being played in Louisville or Nashville while we stayed right in our kitchen. Now we have a newer radio.

Yet some things are still the same. We still put up most of our food. We have our garden and orchard, and Momma and Betty can hundreds of quarts of fruits and vegetables every year. We still butcher hogs for our own use and cure our own hams and bacon. You just can’t beat a good ham that has been properly cured and aged. Some homemade things are just better than store-bought.

When the children were young, I wanted to get a telephone. Some of us got together and paid to get the poles and wires so we could get phone service. It was a happy day when we got our telephone. The phone hung on the wall in the living room. It had a crank on the side to call the operator. We had an eight-party line. All of us were on the same line, but we each had our own ring, so we would know who the call was for. Our ring was two longs, a short, and a long, like a locomotive whistling for a crossing.

We have better schools now. Our school is still a one-room building, but we have a teacher who has taken some classes at the Teachers College in Bowling Green. Every summer she goes back to take more classes. Soon she will leave us for a better-paying job in a school in town, but the kids are gaining from her knowledge while she is here.

The school is a real center for our community. We still have our baseball team, and the women have all sorts of activities that take place at the school house. They get together for quilting and gossip every month. They also have a home economics teacher who teaches new ways of doing things around the house, cooking, and such. She gives out some good recipes, and once in a while the men are invited for a cakewalk or some other festivity.

We like to go to the high school to watch the basketball games. Every little town has a high school now, and there are bitter rivalries in sports. I never got a chance to go beyond the eighth grade, but I hope my kids can go to high school. They can learn a lot of practical things. The government has a program to provide classes in vocational agriculture and home economics, so boys and girls can learn things they can use in their daily lives. They can also learn bookkeeping, which you need to know if you are going to be a successful farmer these days.

Our church is the real cornerstone of our little community. We can go every Sunday now that we have our truck and the roads are graded more often. The county has finally bought motorized graders to keep the roads in better shape. The motorized graders are a lot faster than the old graders that were pulled by mule teams. They have also begun putting rock on the roads. It’s about time, I say!

We finally got the pickup paid for. We were completely out of debt by the time our daughter, Sarah, was born in 1929. I began to think about getting a more powerful tractor and a new truck. Every time I would get my mind made up to do it, a little voice inside me said to wait, so I waited.

Thank Heavens I did, because late in 1929 the stock market crashed. The economy of the whole country began to fall apart. We entered what came to be called the Great Depression. Prices for farm crops fell to just about nothing. People who had borrowed money or had mortgages on their farms were in real trouble. Before long, banks began to foreclose on mortgages and loans. A lot of people lost their farms and homes.

I was glad I had listened to that little voice. I could keep the old Fordson and the Model T running a lot cheaper than I could pay off loans on new ones. We cut down on expenses and were able to get by. We made fewer trips to town and ate what we grew. Betty made a lot of our clothes, and little Sarah wore a lot of feed-sack dresses growing up, but we survived and kept our farm.

Some of our neighbors lost their land and became tenants on the land they once had owned. Others made room for relatives who moved back home from the cities after they lost their jobs in factories that shut down. Everybody just did what they had to do to help one another.

The steamboats on the Green River were a casualty of the depression. The last of the Green River boats burned in 1930 and was not replaced. There was not enough business to support even one little boat. Most goods went by truck or train, and the boats just could not survive. It was truly the end of an era.

The main highways were paved between Owensboro and Bowling Green and between Elizabethtown and Paducah. Road improvements continued even during the depression. At last we were able to get out of the mud for sure. Good roads made it a lot easier to ship products by truck. We could get baby chicks by express from hatcheries, so we expanded our chicken production. We built a new henhouse and began selling lots of eggs. The better roads made it possible to get to the market in town twice a week with eggs, which brought in much-needed cash.

Franklin D. Roosevelt got elected president in 1932. He promised a “New Deal” for the American people. Soon a great number of government programs started up. The U.S. government gave farm loans so people would not lose their land. Farm prices leveled out and even began to go up a little. Finally we could make a little profit. New government plants provided cheap chemical fertilizers to improve crop yields. Times began to perk up a bit, and we were able to save some money.

I took a big gamble in 1936. I bought a new tractor, a big green John Deere. I also bought a used 1934 Chevrolet sedan. Betty needed the car because the kids were getting bigger and needed to be taken to school and to other activities. I kept the old Fordson, but the new John Deere took over the heavy work on the farm. It was more powerful and easier to drive.

Our older son, Frank, learned to drive the tractor right away. He was 11 years old and a natural mechanic. He loved anything with a motor in it and took to the tractor right away. Soon he could plow a furrow as straight as any grown man. When Billy got to be 11, I taught him to drive, too. Of course, Sarah demanded to learn as well, so when she got old enough I taught her. Soon she could do as good a job as any man. My mother knew how to drive a team, and my wife could drive a car, so I couldn’t think of any reason why my daughter should not drive a tractor. When World War II came along, we were all glad she could!

We listened to the news on the radio. When the war broke out in Europe, we all prayed that America could keep out of it. We had enough problems at home, we thought. The war did help the farmers because the demand for all kinds of farm products increased. Prices rose, and we began to make more money.

We heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor after we got home from church on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The next day we forgot all about stripping tobacco. We sat around the radio to listen to President Roosevelt ask Congress for a declaration of war. Betty and I were worried sick about our kids. Frank was 16—the same age I was when I went off to World War I.

As soon as he turned 17, Frank joined the Marine Corps. I signed the papers so he could join, even though I would rather have cut off my hand off. I knew what pain my parents went through back in 1917. Frank went off for training and then came home on leave before being shipped overseas. We never saw him again. He got killed in the South Pacific on some little island that is not even on most maps. We hung a little flag with a gold star on it in the front window in his honor. We were proud of him for being a brave soldier and doing his duty, but all of our pride and his bravery would never bring him back.

Billy and Sarah did the work of grown men on the farm during the war. Billy was drafted out of high school in 1945, right at the end of the war. Thank Heaven the war ended before he was sent into combat. He was sent overseas to Germany as part of the occupation forces.

Sarah stayed in school, and in 1947 she became the first member of our family to graduate from high school. She won a scholarship to Western Kentucky State Teachers College. We drove her to Bowling Green to register. She studied home economics and graduated in 1951. She got a job teaching at our high school and moved back home so she could help out on the farm.

Billy stayed in the army until 1947. He married a girl from Cleveland, Ohio, whom he met while he was in the service. They came back to the farm after he was discharged. His wife, Sally, was a city girl, and she was not happy on the farm. After Sarah graduated, Billy and Sally moved to the Cleveland area. They bought a little home in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland. Billy got a job in a big Ford Motor Company plant not far away.

So with Frank dead and Billy in Cleveland, it is now up to Sarah to keep The Home Place going. She is engaged to a fine young man named Richard Wines, her high school sweetheart. Richard went to the University of Kentucky, where he studied agriculture.

They plan to marry in the summer of 1953 and live here. Sarah will keep her teaching job and Richard will operate the farm. Another generation of Boyds will keep The Home Place going. All the Boyds in the family burying ground up on the hill must be smiling at that thought!