When I was in fifth grade we were living in Los Alamos New Mexico. Access to the town was restricted to people who lived there or had a need to go into the city, and everyone who did had a badge, including kids that had to be shown at the
gate guarding entrance to the town. This was controlled by the US Government in that Los Alamos was a secret place with the laboratory where the atomic bomb had been developed and produced, and this work was, and still is, ongoing. However, access
to the Lab was further restricted to security cleared employees of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, and all of the lab sites were securely fenced and guarded. All housing where the residents lived, including my parents, my two sisters and I were
owned by the US government, and we rented from the government. My parents wanted to own their house, and at that time the only way to do that was to buy a place in the valley. There were quite a few of the top engineers and scientists that
did that, including my father. So we moved to the valley into a house which needed a lot of work on about five acres of land along the Rio Grande seven miles from Espanola and about fifteen miles and 2500 feet in elevation below the town of Los Alamos,
where my father worked and we kids continued to go to school. Along with the house came a tractor.
At the time, it didn’t seem to be very remarkable, although I could hardly wait until I was allowed to drive it. As I got older and
learned more about cars, I began to appreciate how remarkable the tractor was. It was a John Deere, pre WW II, maybe mid 1930’s, two cylinder regular tractor, not a lawn tractor or really big tractor, but it was a serious tractor. Here is
what seems to be amazing about it: It did not have a generator, or a water pump, or a fuel pump, or a distributor, or a starter motor or even a battery. Admittedly, in its long past it did have a generator and a battery and a starter motor, but
they had been removed years before we came to own it. So how did it run?
A hand crank started it. It had a magneto that provided the voltage and timing for the spark plugs. The gas tank was in the frame above the motor, so gravity
supplied the gas to the carburetor. The radiator water was circulated by convection. The hot water from the motor rose and flowed to the top of the radiator, where it flowed down through the radiator and back into the bottom of the engine
cooling jacket. I suspect that the vibration from the rather rough running engine also helped this water circulation. It was very simple and very effective. It wasn’t the most powerful tractor, but with first gear engaged it would certainly
pull or push a significant load.
We primarily used it to move dirt to level portions of our land and then to plow the land to plant a garden. Note that most people talk about having a garden that is small and cute. My father talked
about having acre sized gardens that we irrigate with well water delivered by a fire hose. As the years went on I was sorry that I ever wished to drive the tractor as I ended spending many more hours doing it than I ever wanted to. I am not a farmer.
One other interesting (to me) thing about the tractor – I think I was in college when my father decided that it needed new rear tires. These were regular tractor tires, probably four feet in diameter and the tread was the raised chevron pattern
tread we see on most farm tractors. Anyway, the tire place my dad took the wheels to for them to mount the new tires, made a mistake and mounted one of the tires backwards, such that the directional tread was going the wrong direction. I guess
my dad did not notice this until he had remounted the assembled wheels and tires and the heavy weight that went in the center of the wheel back onto the tractor. On a tractor the tread direction really does matter. Under any load at all, the backwards
wheel just spun. The tractor was worthless until the mistake was corrected.