Any time I go to Cumming for the Cumming Steam, Antique Tractor and Gas Exposition or the Georgia Mountain Tractor and Engine Club show I look over all the Farmall Super Cs on display. I’m hoping to see something that would identify one of them as the first tractor I ever owned.
It was one of the few tractors I’ve ever sold, and I’ve regretted that ever since. All I can remember about the folks that bought it was they were from Cumming.
I bought that tractor when I was 14 years old with $500 I made cutting yards in Fayetteville for between $3 and $5 apiece.
My cousin Johnny Harp found it in the Market Bulletin, which often arrived at Harp Transmission in Atlanta on Tuesday evenings while the rest of us got ours in Wednesday’s mail.
It belonged to a man named M.L. Hartley in Reynolds. (His son Harold Hartley is a strong supporter of Inman Farm Heritage Days.)
Johnny took me to pick up the tractor in an early 60s Ford F600 truck. We picked the truck up from the Ford dealer in Fayetteville, where Johnny had dropped it off for a tune up and oil change. When we got down Highway 92 almost to Harp’s Crossing, the hood flew up. (That was exciting as it blocked off any view looking out the windshield.)
Once we got the hood re-latched the rest of the trip was uneventful.
Johnny talked Mr. Hartley down to $475, but I didn’t save anything. One of the cultivator feet fell off on the way home, and a new one cost $25. I always think about that when I’m deciding how hard I want to dicker on the price of something.
Once we got it home I drove it everywhere. My brother and I raised several vegetable crops with it, and I mowed fields all over Inman.
After I was in college, and the engine in the Super C was getting pretty tired, I decided to sell it. (I didn’t realize at the time how easy and relatively inexpensive it was to rebuild a Super C engine.) I got $900 for it, but I’d give anything if I hadn’t sold it.
Not long afterwards, we got another Super C, and it too had a tired engine.
I consulted with Bub Carden, who ran a garage in Woolsey and always gave me good advice about engines, farming and life in general.
I started the process by tearing down the engine and taking the cylinder head to Mr. Harold Fields at the NAPA store in Griffin. I got a rebuild kit from Sam Mayfield, and started trying to build it myself.
Bub offered to help, and I accepted. He came over a little after lunch one day and before he left we had put the engine back together and had it back on the tractor, with only a few minor pieces left to reinstall.
Pictured: Joanne and Rick at the Red Power Roundup in Lebanon, Tenn., with the Super C that Bub Carden built the engine in.
He wouldn’t take any money, and I’ve thought lots of times over the years that I should have tried harder to get him to take something. Bub was a very generous man with me and a lot of others. No more than he charged for mechanic work, it must have been a major challenge to support his family.
The Super C he built the engine for will never leave here, and I don’t ever plan to sell any of the other Cs and Super Cs I’ve accumulated in the years since. (I’ve also added some 200s and 230s, which replaced the Super C in the mid-1950s).
But none of them hold as big a place in my heart as the one that got away.