PART ONE
THE INNOVATIVE YOUNG FARMER
GROWING UP

Born in the late summer of 1916 in Snyder County, Pennsylvania, Aaron B. Stauffer was the second oldest son in a family of thirteen. It was an Old Order Mennonite home where light was provided by coal oil or gas, and horses powered their transportation and farming needs. Their ageless faith stood in the path of encroaching modernism. Farming first in Osceola County, Iowa, then Snyder County, Pennsylvania, Grandpa Eli Stauffer settled the family on a Lancaster County farm just southeast of Ephrata. Dad and his brothers Dan, Amos, Phares, and Eli, planted, cultivated, and harvested with their dad’s horses. A 1919 Model “N” Waterloo Boy Tractor was used around the farm and neighborhood for threshing, dragging brooder houses, and other belt power jobs. The deep rhythmic “k-dack, k-dack, k-dack” of two big cylinders turning their 22" by 34" Farquhar thresher was sweet music to the Stauffer boys’ ears. The Waterloo Boy, however, wasn’t the first tractor in Dad’s boyhood. First there was the one-cylinder International Mogul 8-16 and then a Titan 10-20, but it was that husky Waterloo Boy that stirred Dad’s interests as a budding mechanic. Growing up on the family farm generated in him an appeal for working with the equipment that topped his interest in farming as a livelihood. Big brother Dan led the way as he gained skills, and then taught his younger brothers the craft of a true mechanic.

Dad with Grandpa’s Waterloo Boy “N” on the Stauffer farm.

GRANDPA’S LEGACY
Honest and hard working, Grandpa was a sharp customer when it came to buying equipment for the farm. He had cultivated a mutual respect with both Ed Getz, the International-Harvester dealer on the Square in Ephrata, and Charlie Groff, the John Deere dealer in nearby New Holland. Both were reputed as astute businessmen, but both also knew their continued success depended on the day-to-day satisfaction of men like Eli Stauffer. Dad relates the story of a neighboring Amish man who challenged Charlie Groff to bring a new John Deere two-horse hay mower out to his hayfield and make one go-round without clogging the sickle bar. He said he’d buy it on the spot if Charlie could prove its qualities. Despite being a tractor man and quite unaccustomed to handling horses, Charlie obliged. It worked faultlessly despite Charlie’s inept horsemanship. More than one John Deere mower was sold that day. Grandpa, who’d been looking on with canny interest, bought one for himself as well.

The ABC Groff Dealership in New Holland in the 1930s.

Dad treasures his memory of frequent trips with his father to the ABC Groff dealership. It was an eight-mile ride on the spring wagon. To his boyhood eyes, those big green “GP” and Model “D” John Deere Tractors in the showroom were grand assemblies of smartly engineered two-cylinder power, ready and quietly waiting to be put to the task!

OUT FOR HIRE

The Stauffer boys threshing wheat on neighbor Milt Stoner’s farm with Grandpa’s Model “N” Waterloo Boy and 22"x34" Farquhar Thresher.

With memories still fresh from the Depression years and living on the family farm with ten siblings, Dad began devising plans for a more secure future. With a team of his dad’s horses, he began serving other farmers in the neighborhood. He’d plow lots or supply an added boost for any who might have fallen behind the season in their fields. As age twenty-one approached, Dad’s ambitions gave birth to an idea. With command of a punchy green and yellow tractor packed with smartly engineered two-cylinder power, he could earn a real living!

Word got around that Eli Stauffer’s young Aaron had “come of age,” and was in the market for a tractor. The local dealers sent their salesmen out of their way to win him over for a sale. The Allis-Chalmers dealer, Reuben Weaver, showed him a WC Model, and Mr. Getz presented the Farmall F-14. Both were touted as being much further advanced than a tractor with just two cylinders. One contended that a running John Deere vibrates through the steering wheel enough to make your teeth chatter. The Allis-Chalmers did sport higher gears for road use, but really, how could a young man who shredded fodder and threshed wheat hour after hour to the two-cylinder rhythm of a Waterloo Boy ever relish the relentless drone of four cylinders? Besides, the Allis had those unforgiving hand brakes, and the Farmall’s steering was brutal, particularly when running at angles across bumpy terrain. Between those boyhood memories and the mechanical know-how to recognize smart, simple, reliable, versatile, and well-balanced engineering, Dad had no doubts in his decision. Soon real tractor power would be available for hire to any farmer near or far who needed it!

THE DEAL

Charlie Groff

It was October of 1937, just one month past Dad’s twenty-first birthday. At the time, the Groffs had been in the farm implement business for forty-seven years. Charlie Groff was also on the executive board of the New Holland Bank. Keenly aware of the years of steady business Grandpa had given, Charlie wanted Dad in that new “B” as much as Dad wanted to have it. He offered him the “B” matched to a sixteen-inch, single-bottom No. 51 Tractor Plow for a grand total of nine hundred and forty dollars. Dad was able to scrape together a hundred dollars. Charlie, in his role as a bank officer, accepted the hundred dollars as a reasonable down payment, and said he’d place the balance on a note. Dad agreed to show up each month to pay whatever he could, even if it was just the two-and-a-half percent interest on the balance. The deal was made, and the rest is history. Dad still keeps the receipt stored in his desk.

	No. 51 Plow
Receipt from ABC Groff.

THE ARRIVAL
With a gleaming new John Deere “B”, serial number 43910, astride its flat bed, the truck showed up at the Stauffer farm on a Friday morning. All four of Dad’s brothers and six sisters remember the day. Younger brother Phares remembered it best. As it was a school day, he hung around waiting for the grand arrival only as long as he dare. With just enough time left to hurry to school before the bell, he headed off lamenting that he’d missed the show. Moments later he heard the truck coming, so he scampered back to witness the glorious scene unfold as the brand new “B” was rolled off. He cut his tardiness to a minimum by sprinting a mile-long shortcut across fields to the little red brick Pleasant Valley schoolhouse. The scolding would last only a few moments, but the sublime memory of that arrival would last a lifetime.

FIRST DAY

The day wasn’t long past before the question arose: It’s early fall. We are on a horse-powered farm with a spankin’ new tractor and a plow as the only matching implement. How can three industrious farm boys put a brand-new green-and-yellow tractor to good use? There was a job at to be done that day. After the younger ones returned from school, Grandpa had given an assignment to his boys. Load the newly husked corn, stacked on piles in the lower field, onto the horse-drawn farm wagon and haul them up to the crib. A bright idea emerged. Hang that wagon with four big wood-spoked wheels onto the new “B”. The long wood tongue, normally flanked by a pair of sturdy Belgians, now ended clumsily at the drawbar of the new tractor. Who needs horses?

Everything was working magnificently, as they filled the wagon high with its first load of rich yellow ears of field corn. The path back led along the creek in the pasture, across the road, and up into the barnyard. Trouble began as the load, with the shiny new “B” way up in front, commenced its return trip back across the meadow. The grand assembly had caught the attention of neighboring farmer Milt Stoner. As he looked on with amusement from his adjacent field, brand new, untried, 7" by 36" Firestone Tires struck Ephrata, Pennsylvania, mud with a load far behind. It might be blamed on that ineffective early tread design, or that there wasn’t enough axle weight to deliver necessary tractive effort, but the boys quickly learned a lesson on friction and resistance dynamics. Smartly engineered two-cylinder power was slithering haplessly in the low ground by the creek. Problem solving farm-boy instincts were jolted into overdrive as they heard, in the distance, old Milt Stoner shouting merrily in their familiar Pennsylvania Dutch, “grikk die gaol!” (English translation: “Get the horses!”). In a few years, those factory installed Firestones wore out totally and were replaced by a pair of much-improved 9" by 36" B.F. Goodrich Tires.

TO THE TASK

Dad’s younger brother Amos.

It took Dad a bit over three years before hard work and sacrifice retired the note held by Mr. Groff. During that time the “B” proved its worth over and over. Often with the help of younger brothers, Amos and Phares, Dad and the “B” served farmers within twenty-five miles with just about anything a fourteen-horsepower tractor could do, and then some. In the winter months, they worked the “B” in the woods for cousin Bill Bauman skidding logs and hauling firewood. The first winter, Dad bolted a homemade saw blade assembly to the front support and belted it to the pulley to cut up the cordwood. They chopped corn fodder with a “Blizzard” shredder, although it really made the “B” work harder than should have been allowed. In order to plow ‘round the clock and drive the roads after dark, a generator, six-volt battery, and headlights salvaged from an old car were added. Dad had to cut a pulley in half and bolt it back together over the fan shaft in order to power the generator. After plowing, the “B” was hitched to a McCormick-Deering six-foot, double-gang disk, with a cultipacker made for horses gawkily trailing way behind. The first summer found him pressing the “B” to its limits, pulling Aaron “Blinky” Martin’s big Case wire-tie pickup baler. A Model A Ford Power Unit ran the baling mechanism. The “B” hauled implements to the work sites on a trailer that Dad built from a salvaged truck axle. Dad and the “B” were a busy pair, adapting to whatever work the times and seasons brought them.

PROGRESS

The “B” harnessed up to Aaron “Blinky” Martin’s Case wire-tie baler in a hayfield near Morgantown, Pennsylvania.

In the spring of 1941, at age twenty-five, Dad graduated from the threshing crew, leaving brothers Amos and Phares to carry on. With the “B” nearly paid off, Dad added a 1934 JD “A” to his assets. He had noticed it piled in pieces in a corner of ABC Groff’s shop. Charlie was reluctant to sell it because it had been seriously abused and wasn’t shifting. He deemed it near impossible to fix up sufficiently to be serviceable to anyone. Dad needed the extra power the “A” could deliver, but lacked funds to buy one that ran. Over time and some dogged persuasion, Charlie gave in and struck a deal that included an as-is, where-is agreement. It wasn’t long before Dad had the “A” all back together, running and shifting right. Now he had something that could run the shredder like it was meant to be run, and pull a two-bottom, sixteen-inch trailer plow. Brother Phares, now out of school, joined Dad’s team and helped with the plowing, disking, and log handling. They worked both tractors, and during busy tilling seasons often kept them running day and night. In 1942, the old “A” was sold and replaced by a much-improved six-speed 1941 “A”.

FULL CIRCLE

Dad with his 1941 six-speed “A” and younger brother Phares by the “B” rigged to saw cord-wood.

In 1943, Dad sold the “B” to Ike High who farmed next door to the old Stauffer farm. Ike never had the flair for using a popping Johnny, and soon replaced it with an Oliver 60. Ike sold the “B” to someone who had a natural partiality toward the green and yellow, someone who knew that tractor from its first day — Dad’s younger brother Phares. For twenty-six more years, the “B” remained in service on Uncle Phares’s farm in Berks County, ending its farming life as a barnyard tractor. It was adorned with a Horn manure loader, sporting two tall cable rams standing straight up on either side of the front support. The hydraulic pump was belt-driven from a pulley added to the flywheel face. By then, the green and yellow had changed to brown, either by rust or caked-on, weather-hardened cow dung.

With a little coaxing from my big brother Johnny and me, Dad bought the “old ‘B’” from Uncle Phares in 1971 and brought it home. It had been rusting away by the barn hill next to the silo for a number of years. The old Horne loader still hung on like poorly fitting iron necktie. After fresh gasoline and a bit of fiddling with the carburetor, some turns on the flywheel got the “B” running — albeit mostly on one cylinder. That didn’t matter to us. From the throat of smartly engineered iron and steel again came the cadenced voice Dad had heard for countless hours as he set out to support a future, a wife, and a family of his own. There couldn’t have been any greater motivation for us to get down to the task of restoration.

THE RESTORATION

Nine years later, the iron necktie was removed. Dad, Johnny, and I disassembled the old “B” down to the transmission case and front-end support. Even after decades of brutal wear, the engine needed only a fresh set of rings, a valve job, and new bearings for the main transmission shafts. Following months of sandblasting, sheet metal repairs, de-rusting, patching, sanding and sanding some more, and then finally applying primer and fresh coats of classic green and yellow — a pristine shining 1937 John Deere “B” emerged. Good authentic decals were not available at the time, so I carefully hand-cut a set of stencils for the gas tank and hood. The bright yellow lettering finished the job. Dad’s 1937 “B”, serial number 43910, looked as magnificent as it did only once before in its lifetime: On that October Friday morning in 1937, on a farm just southeast of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, when Uncle Phares was late for school.

RETIRED LIFE
Today, Dad’s “B” spends most of its time at rest in a mini-barn behind his garage in Groffdale. He keeps it covered in blankets to keep the dust off, and the water stays drained to protect it from freezing over winter. A couple times a year I go around back to the little barn with my son, Aaron. We roll up the door, pull off the old blankets, open up the big cap on top, and pour in the water. I twist the fuel line valve a few turns to the left, flip the choke lever down, and open the throttle half way. I grip the flywheel with both hands, just like Dad showed me, and give it an easy spin backward to compression, then forward until I feel compression, open the choke to half way, then pull the flywheel through. With a bright solid “k-duk, k-duk, k-duk…” it awakens again as ready to be put to the task as it ever was. We get it out each August to show at the Rough and Tumble Threshermen’s Reunion in Kinzers, Pennsylvania. At other times it comes out for the family, all four generations, to just enjoy and connect again with an important part of our innovative and industrious heritage.

THERE IS MORE
Dad’s John Deere “B” is a special one to those few who know its early history. It’s not because of its sixty-eight-plus years of age. By its serial number, it’s definitely not a rare model among John Deere collectors. Even its restoration job is beginning to show age. It is special because of what Dad did to modify it shortly after he bought it in 1937. Here’s the rest of the story…