At the International Harvester show, devotees know tractors should only be one color - and it better not be green.
By AMY WIMMER SCHWARB
Published March 7, 2004
[Times photos: Lara Cerri]
Shiny red paint gleams on this International 600 as Joe Steinman of Naples waits for his division of the tractor pull to begin. Steinman used to farm in Iowa.
Farm equipment fans watch an International tractor lead at the tractor parade the Florida Flywheelers Antique Tractor and Engine Club show.
The tractor parade eases toward Jim and Marge Voyles of Ava, Mo. Marge wanted to take images of the parade back home to Branch 16 of the Early Day Gas Engine and Tractor Association. “They’ll get to see what they missed,” she says.
Sam Miller of Sarasota admires the green John Deere tractors at the Florida Flywheelers Antique Engine Club show near Fort Meade on Feb. 28. The show featured International Harvester equipment, but Miller, who was raised on a farm in Virginia, is partial to Deere. “I like the way they sound,” Miller said. “If you’ve had a bad day, go out and crank one up and listen to it.”
Kedrick Ebersole, 70, of Wells County, Ind., grew up on International Harvester farm equipment. At the tractor show, he sported an IH logo on his faded blue shirt and a John Deere cap on his head. “I changed my mind,” he explains.
FORT MEADE - Using what he has left of his thumb ("I've cut it off three times"), David Garber flipped through the brag book he keeps in his pocket for occasions like this.
The 64-year-old from Goshen, Ind., farms 1,200 acres and has 11 grandchildren. But when it's time to show off at the International Harvester National Winter Convention, he pulls out his photos of tractors and farm implements.
"I've got about 40 or 50 of them," Garber said. "Some of them are restored. Some of them are just iron, with hopes."
Last weekend, hopeful pieces of iron lined the dirt paths of Flywheeler Park, 240 acres of tractor oasis between the east Polk County hamlets of Fort Meade and Frostproof. Many of the 17,000 attendees were snowbirds or full-time farmers who came to the International Harvester show because, what the heck, the ground is frozen back home anyway.
They exchanged scratchy handshakes with calloused hands, their trophies from hard work. They sized each other up with a "where you from?" dance, then traced each other's lineage through Midwestern counties and townships until they discovered a common acquaintance.
They swapped tractor parts and tractor stories, speaking a verbal shorthand of model numbers and engine jargon. The language needs no explanation to those who understand it, but would make a born-and-bred city kid feel rightfully out of place.
"I've got a front-wheel assist with an Elwood on a '39 M," Garber told Herm Zobel, 77, a retired New York farmer he had just met.
"Is it hydraulic?" Zobel asked.
"No," Garber replied. "It's run off a roller chain and a gear setup."
They arrived at the park driving RVs and hauling tractors - red tractors - from all corners of Florida and the Midwest. These red iron horses, the biggest sellers in farm machinery for the first half of the 20th century, were part of the backdrop of the Greatest Generation.
International Harvester collectors hoard these tractors, even pieces of them, afraid to lose one more to rust and time. "I've got 20-some tractors," said Martin Thieme, a Noblesville, Ind., farmer and school bus mechanic. "We're into preservation. Now we've got to quit buying and start fixing."
Today John Deere is the most recognizable name in the field, its green body and yellow wheels an idyllic image of farming America. But two generations ago, when Deere wasn't yet king, the Deere-vs.-International debate was as heated as Cardinals vs. Cubs. Men judged other farmers by the tractors they drove; children teased each other on the school bus.
"Your dad drives Interjunkinals," was one popular taunt.
"John Deere runs like a deer - and smells like a john," was another.
Granddaddies handed down their tractors like they handed down their names, and switching teams was akin to suggesting Grandpa had it all wrong. "My dad used International, and I grew up on them," said Larry Davis, a Reynolds, Ind., farmer, "and I stayed with them."
In hundreds of barns across the country, families that get out of farming and sell off their machinery often keep one old Internationl Farmall. Sometimes it's the one the family patriarch used to convert from horses to machine.
So every once in a while, folks get together at a place like Flywheeler Park to pay homage to days when tractors were red.
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Why are John Deeres green? So they can hide in the weeds when the red ones go by.
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The glory days of International Harvester - known more simply as International, IH or "red" - faded with the urbanization of the United States, though Americans' migration to cities and suburbs had little to do with the company's downfall. By most accounts, International cannibalized itself by diversifying too much and spreading too thin.
In its 82-year history of making farm equipment, IH dabbled in refrigerators, coal-mining and steel plants, to name a few industries. To quote Elaine Dougherty of Akron, Ohio, whose husband brought her to the tractor show last weekend under duress: "They got too big for their britches."
In the 19 years since International sold off its farm equipment operations, the American landscape has lost 71-million acres of farmland. The farming side of International landed in the hands of Case, a farm manufacturer owned by Tenneco.
Many of the old International loyalists who are still farming today now have some John Deeres lurking in the barn. In tractor circles, they call it "going green."
Think of it as a Montague marrying a Capulet.
"I'm an IH man," said Bob Zarse of Reynolds. "I wasn't a Case man when they painted them orange, and I wasn't going to be a Case man when they started painting them red. So, did I want something that said Case-IH, or did I want to go green?
"I went green."
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Don't worry about those green John Deeres. Eventually, they'll get ripe.
* * *
International Harvester traces its lineage to Cyrus McCormick, who, as any fifth-grade social studies student knows, invented the reaper. Before McCormick's invention came along in 1831, a farmer could harvest a half-acre of wheat a day using a scythe; with a reaper, he could harvest an acre each hour.
That drive for more product in less time came to define farming. Tractors replaced horses. Twelve-row corn planters replaced the eight-row variety. Today, farmers beam signals to satellites to predict crop yields.
When the reaper arrived, 90 percent of the U.S. population farmed. Today, fewer than 2 percent of people in the United States are directly involved in farming.
The mechanization increased efficiency but marginalized the farmers with the fewest rows to hoe.
Zobel, a retired farmer from Farmington, N.Y., who wore an International Farmall hat to last weekend's show, said he supported his family on 80 acres until he retired in 1982.
"Used to be 80 acres was enough," interjected Garber, the Goshen farmer. "Now several hundred acres is hardly enough to make a living."
International Harvester was formed at the turn of the 20th century, as McCormick's heirs jumped onto the merger bandwagon prevalent at the time and assembled five tractor companies into one. Its future-shaping breakthrough came in 1924, when International Harvester sold its first Farmall, promoted as the all-purpose tractor.
Like a kitchen appliance that minces, dices and slices, the Farmall could do it all: push a cultivator, pull a plow and perform light farm work. Essentially, the Farmall was the workhorse of the American farm, making a horseless farm possible and allowing a farmer to get multiple machines out of one piece of equipment.
In 1936, International declared that all of its farm machinery would be red. The paint was a safety feature for farmers who drove their equipment on rural roads, but it also bred more brand loyalty than the older International models, painted gray.
In her 1985 book A Corporate Tragedy: The Agony of International Harvester Company, Barbara Marsh details how Farmall helped International Harvester dominate the market, selling 24,000 Farmalls a year. In 1929, International Harvester clobbered its nearest competitor, earning three times as much in farm equipment sales as John Deere. Other manufacturers, like Allis-Chalmers and Ford, also took shares of the market.
"John Deere is the principle tractor for now," said Howard Lord of Burnettsville, Ind., who was an International Harvester mechanic for 35 years. "Back then, John Deere guys don't like to hear it, but we were the only tractor."
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"Trucks are red; tractors are green. Everything else is in between."
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While Cyrus McCormick was selling his reapers, a Vermont-born blacksmith named John Deere was in Grand Detour, Ill., perfecting a self-scouring moldboard plow designed to cut through rich but sticky Midwestern soil.
According to Marsh, it was Deere's son Charles who envisioned a full line of farm equipment, from corn planters to cultivators. By the 1930s, John Deere was creeping into International Harvester's market, allowing its dealers to focus on what they knew - farm equipment - while Harvester dealers also had to sell the refrigerators and trucks International manufactured.
"If the International guy was a good guy and a good salesman and everybody liked him, that's what people bought," said Ron Gause, whose father ran an International dealership in Columbia County, Ohio. "If the John Deere dealer was a good guy, then they bought John Deere. You could have one county that was all John Deere and then the next county was all International."
In 1958, Deere & Co. passed International Harvester in farm equipment sales for the first time.
Then came more bad strikes for Harvester: In 1958, it released a Farmall model that wasn't ready to come off the drawing board. The tractors failed in the fields, and Harvester had to recall it. At the same time, John Deere was engineering its biggest threat yet: four models billed as "The New Generation of Power," designed after surveying farmers on what they wanted in a tractor.
International Harvester never got back on top. In 1984, the year the company's advertising featured a truck and a tractor with the slogan, "The Commitment is Forever," International announced plans to sell its farm equipment operation to a company called Tenneco, which placed the holdings in its Case division and began manufacturing machinery under the name Case-IH.
At the tractor show last weekend, Kedrick Ebersole sat outside a mock International Harvester dealership.
"I grew up on those Internationals, yes, I did," said Ebersole, his arms crossed against his belly, nearly obscuring the International Harvester logo embroidered on his shirt breast.
More clearly visible was the green pin-striped cap on top of his head, which read, in capital letters: "JOHN DEERE."
"So why you got the green hat on?" asked his friend, Gause, wearing a red shirt with an interlocking IH.
"Well," said Ebersole, 70, of Wells County, Ind., "I changed my mind."
* * *
If your blood is red, then your tractor ought to be red.
* * *
Nineteen years have passed since International Harvester produced its last tractor.
"It's a shame a company of that size had to go out," said Lord, the former International mechanic. "I think it'll be back. Somebody will do it."
At Flywheeler Park, amid the orange groves and turf farms of east Polk County, the air turned hazy with sand kicked up by tractors on parade. The operable tractors took a whirl around the park grounds. When the collectors started their antique engines, the raucous sound of chugging tractors filled the park.
"These people are the real gearheads," said Darren Ellis of Daytona Beach, who is more into motorcycles than tractors but decided to give the show a try. "This is the roots of engines, where it all started."
Larry Davis, who farms 420 acres in Reynolds, has seen his neighbors go green. But he still farms exclusively with old International tractors and a newer Case-IH combine.
"Why change?" Davis asked. "We had good service, good parts, good mechanics and so on and so forth, so I just stayed with them. I've got no interest in buying a John Deere."
The Florida Flywheelers Antique Engine Club highlights a different tractor brand each year at its February show. This year was International's turn. Next year, organizers will welcome the John Deere contingent.
Thousands of people filed through the gates for International, the biggest show ever. For John Deere, organizers expect a crowd that's even bigger, not to mention younger.
Enthusiasm for the old International Farmalls is dying out with the people who remember their dominance on the American farm.
Ralph W. Sanders, a retired agriculture writer and photographer who has written books on International Harvester and John Deere, publishes a new John Deere calendar each year. He said he wished the market was there for a similar calendar devoted to Internationals.
"The publisher asked me if I wanted to do a Farmall calendar, and I was interested in it until I checked the sales possibilities. They weren't there," said Sanders, 70. "The John Deere thing is so much more popular. It's just a "what's in' sort of thing."
As the sun sank on Flywheeler Park on Sunday afternoon, International collectors shuffled their tractors into park buildings for safekeeping. One by one, they chained the old Internationals to a new orange Kubota tractor and hauled them inside.
- Times researchers Cathy Wos and Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Amy Wimmer Schwarb can be reached at wimmer@sptimes.com or 352 860-7305.
