Allis Chalmers

Urban farming has always been a conundrum to me. You need space and land to have a farm, right? You need acres and barns and orchards and tractors and animals, correct? That is just not possible on a city lot, I can tell you. Well, we had a sort-of, wanna-be farm in Davis, in 1987-1989, on a very small city lot. We had a tractor…a big orange one.

Steve Barnett, husband of Joanne Wildenrott, a family friend was an inveterate tinkerer. He loved working with machinery and was a mechanic on trucks in his own right. They lived in Davis and one day, when I met him for the first time, I noticed that he had two (TWO) orange Allis Chalmers tractors in his side driveway. Discussion led to these as I have always loved machinery, a hold over from the days when I went with my Dad to work at Kelly brothers Cranes and Rigging in San Jose. Steve had restored these two tractors, a Model C (big) and Model B (smaller) after finding them abandoned in an old quarry in Rocklin, near Sacramento. He complained that they were taking up so much space in his driveway that he could hardly park his truck and car. It did not take long before the idea of the bigger Model C coming to live at our house was finalized. I was ecstatic! A mechanical toy! Having just sold the “Project of the Hour” a 1953 GMC pickup (having bought a new house, we were not in need of cluttery projects streetside on a small lot on a busy street intersection) I was at loose ends for a tinkering project.

One of our new house remodel projects had been building a fence around the south side of the property facing the busy Eighth Street traffic. Privacy and noise barrier were the hoped for results. It took but an hour or two to build a gate into the eastern end of this fence, one large enough for the Allis to get through. The Model C was a big “tricycle type” tractor with large rear wheels and the front supported on two smaller wheels centrally located under the radiator. This was considered a “row crop” set-up.

The day I drove the Allis home was amazing. Driving through most of Davis, west to east, on the main drag, Eighth Street was fun. The stares I got! In an ag community too! Of course hand signals for turning were the norm…no turn signals on a farm tractor. Once home and in the driveway nothing would do but that rides were given to Daniel and Rebecca. I think that Cece was too status-conscious a teenager to want to be seen with her father on that monstrosity but the only picture I have of the tractor has it resting in our backyard (safely behind the fence and scrutiny by friends) with her sitting defiantly on it.

Starting the beast was old-timey simple. Opening the throttle, one inserted the hand crank into the hole in the front of the radiator, engaging the drive pulley. Giving it a whirl or two, careful to keep one’s wrist out of the way in case of a kick back in the opposite direction (and a possible broken wrist), the tractor would turn over with a cough, and then a roar and a belch of blue smoke from the chrome exhaust stack. How many times I would open the gate and back the tractor out, cautiously entering Eighth Street traffic and then turning north on “L” Street to roar down to Alice Street, waving to friends, the Lewises, the Curleys, the McLellans, and often stopping to pick up a kid or two who held on for dear life to me and the left fender, standing on the seat deck. The back and forth up and down Alice Street, turning around at the Roundhouse Park, was always fun. Then I would roar back to our “farm” and slowly drive through the gate, shutting the throttle and stifling the roar of the engine. This was also the drill accomplished on two yearly “Alice Street Picnics” celebrated by those homeowners on the Fourth of July.

Daniel bears a scar to this day on the palm of his hand incurred from falling from the tractor when I allowed it to lurch forward once. Grabbing the left fender (torn, rusty and the only not restored part) to break his fall he cut himself. It was our only mishap during the two years I had possession of the Allis. In 1990, when Carl Larsen GAVE me the 1930 Chevrolet truck back and “Nellie” came to “L” Street, Allis had to go. It went back to Steve who eventually donated it to the UC Davis Antique Mechanics group. Some day I would love to go to their shops and see Allis again, hopefully still as pristine as it was when it gave us so much joy.
JP 12-2011