The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

In 1965, I used my two-year Electronics degree to get a job with the Oliver Tractor Company in Charles City, Iowa, a short distance from the farm I grew up on. I was assigned to work with an engineer, whose name’s initials spelled “IOWA.” Ivan O. W. Anderson.

Our focus was mainly on stress-testing various castings, which were made right there in the Oliver foundry. We did so by epoxying strain gauges to the metal. A strain gauge changes resistance if the metal moves, even a little bit. We hooked those gauges to various engine, frame, and hydraulic castings, which we then put under stress, either mechanically or hydraulically. The outputs of those strain gauges were electronically (which is why they needed me) sent to a 16-pen paper reader, the pens of which as they wriggled back and forth resembled lie detectors you see on tv.

I had been there a couple of weeks. I came to work on a Monday to be told that all last week’s new tractors were sitting ass-down on the dirt. Various wheel bolts failed, bolts made at the foundry. We strain gauge tested bolts until it was found that the metal mixture on some bolts had been changed. It was repetitive and boring work.

Ivan said to me one day that this was the day we would take one of the new 1650 tractors, attach 16 strain gauges to various parts of the tractor, and wreck it.

“What do you mean,” I asked him? You’ll see, he replied.

In the back yard of the factory, there was a large buried concrete post, and attached to the top of it was a huge iron ring. We spent several days attaching strain gauges to any parts on the tractor that were new with this series, and were concerned with.

Then, one sunny day, we hooked the tractor by the drawbar to that ring, with about, as I remember it, 8 feet of very very heavy log chain. Being as I was the younger of us, Ivan instructed me to get up on that tractor, fire it up, put it in second gear at full throttle, let the clutch out, and jump off.

The tractor came to the end of its chain ether, the rear wheels began to dig deep down at a radius, at which point they began to climb up out of the hole, the front end would leap up in the air, and then when the chain was straight, slam down.

The 16 ink pens went crazy, jumping around with the crash. The dig down, leap up, crash down was repeated. About four leaps in, things began to break and fall off. After about 12 leaps, as I remember, something fuel related failed, and we were done.

But no castings–not front or rear wheels, nor the hydraulic casting upon which the seat was positioned in that new model, nor various bolted-together engine/transmission/differential castings failed

I was pretty astounded. When I went home that evening to the farm and told dad that we had wrecked a brand new tractor–one which he could have barely afforded–he was disgusted. “Why those silly so-and-so’s,” he said, only not those exact words.

Oliver Tractor was in its heyday at that point in time. I went back to college to work on my engineering degree. After all, I figured, how smart do you have to be to wreck tractors.