Artist Lavern Kelley (1928 - 1998)

Linn Tractor

Date1990

DimensionsOverall: 6 1/2 × 12 × 20 1/2 in. (16.5 × 30.5 × 52.1 cm)

Object numberF0164.1991

Credit LineCollection of Fenimore Farm. Museum Purchase

Photograph by Richard Walker

Label TextThese tractors were made in Morris, N.Y. from the late teens, to about 1947. In the 1930s and 40s, when I was growing up, nearly every town highway department in the area had from one to four of them. We lived… at the junction of the town lines of Oneonta and Laurens. Both of these towns had them, so I saw quite a bit of them. Both of these towns had them, so I saw quite a bit of them. The one room school where I started my formal education was located just over the town line in the Town of Oneonta, so it was not at all uncommon to encounter one of the way to and from school when there was road work to be done, or snow to plow. Since most of the highway employees were friends of my family, a ride in the bellowing monster was not unheard of nor taken lightly. What more could first or second grader want than to take a ride in this big, green, roaring clanking contraption which had the power and ability to do most anything. [Their plows were as wide as both lanes of the road.] They doubled as a truck for hauling stone and dirt short distances, then they were hitched to a grader and leveled and smoothed the road, and in wintertime, they were virtually unstoppable in any amount of snow. The plow controls were in a small shack, which was placed in from of the dump box in the fall before the first snow fell, and the plow operator rode in that, not in the cab with the driver. Since there was no heat in the little shack, a small coal stove was often set up to keep the plow operator from getting frost bit. What a ball the insurance companies would have now, with that! Of course they were speedy, too, with a top speed of five miles per hour!

Lavern Kelley

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