Jason Poeling of Fosterburg, Ill., is following in his father’s footsteps. “My dad, Bill Poeling, got me into this hobby in the early 1990s,” this 26-year-old collector shared.
Bill passed away in February 2006, but the memories and the basis for the antique tractor hobby that he instilled in his son remain strong.

“I remember coming to shows and seeing items I hadn’t seen before,” Jason added. “My dad started restoring hit-and-miss engines and garden tractors.”

He recalled the first tractor he ever assisted in restoring: “The first thing I ever restored was a 1966 Wheel Horse. I was probably about 10.”

Besides tractors, Jason has also learned to restore toys. Jane Elliott of Godfrey, Ill., said, “Jason restored my UDLX toy. He made it into a UOPN.” This creative endeavor took him about four hours.
The lessons he learned at his father’s side have served him well. He had a few restored tractors at this year’s Victorian Days Festival, held over the Labor Day weekend in Jerseyville, Ill. The event is every year on the lawn of the home of Brenda and Fred Nolan.

The Nolans’ homestead boasts a Victorian mansion built by CSA Colonel William H. Fulkerson, a Confederate general who married a Northerner and settled down in Jerseyville, in 1866. The mansion serves as a wonderful backdrop for the festival, which boasts antique tractors, gas engines, Civil War reenactments and a variety of crafts and vendors.

At this year’s show, Jason had one truly unusual tractor, a Lennox. “Lennox Heating and Air Conditioning made these for two years, 1964 and 1965,” he said. “This one is a crawler and they made attachments such as a mower deck and snow blowers.”

Jason had seen a Lennox before because his friend Mike Timmons had one. He found his Lennox on eBay.

“This one came from New York. They were made for two years and supposedly made in Iowa out of leftover parts from air conditioning parts. I had it shipped here.”

The crawler was in pretty good shape. It took Jason about three months to fix up the body work and paint the little tractor that he thinks was built at the Lennox Furnace plant near Marshalltown, Iowa.

Along with the Lennox crawler, he also had a 1952 Meade Mighty Mouse crawler. “It is a high lift crawler with a bucket on it,” he shared.

According to online tractor enthusiasts, this little crawler was built by Meade Manufacturing and is powered by an 8 hp Wisconsin engine and a 2-speed/1-reverse transmission. The small hydraulic pump lifts the front bucket. Besides the one he had at the show, Jason also had one at home, torn apart.

In addition to these tractors, he has a 1972 Allis Chalmers 616 with a 24 hp Honda engine. “The exhaust stack has been modified by Jim Wieman,” he shared. “There was custom metal work also, done by Kyle Mueller.”

At this year’s show, Jason had the little AC hooked up to an Associated engine. “It was my dad’s engine and he restored it in the 1990s.”

He was traveling around the show in style, in a 2006 Yamaha Rhino. “I bought the Yamaha and changed the plastic out. I installed a stereo system and added new rims and tires; that was 2006. I’m always tinkering with it,” he said.

Jason is a carpenter, by trade. He works with another tractor collector, Rick Mueller.

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.