By PAUL WALLEM

LUGS - If you were born after 1960 and don’t spend time around old tractors you’ve probably never driven a tractor on lugs. And you haven’t missed much.

Before there were rubber tires for tractors, lug wheel tractors didn’t get stuck much. The engine would die before the wheels stopped turning. There was more traction than horsepower.

While in fifth grade I plowed with our neighbor’s 10-20 on lugs. I wasn’t big enough to crank so he cranked it and I drove to the field pulling the two-bottom plow. When the lane to the field was hard packed from the milk cows, the ride would almost shake my teeth out. But I never got stuck. By then rubber tires were replacing lugs rapidly.

SEATS - Most early tractors up into the 1930s had miserable steel pan seats with no shock absorber or springs. It was similar to sitting on a rock.

Some people have purchased them mounted on bar stools. If you have any of these old tin seats at your bar, you can tell your guests they are sitting on the uncomfortable part of tractor history. These old seats were standard equipment in many old tractors for a lot of years. I still have one to show my grandchildren how hard we had it in the “old days.”

A great amount of history surrounds these old seats. Tractors and farm equipment manufacturers throughout the world used a similar design, and some embossed their company name into the seat itself.

Paulson’s Ag Museum of Argyle (PAMA) is located in Northern Illinois, and very likely has the largest collection of steel pan tractor/implement seats in the world. The attached photo shows a small part of their display of more than 600 seats. Many of these show the embossed name of the manufacturer. Their website is Paulson’sAg MuseumofArgyle.com.

Tractor owners that didn’t want to ruin their back could buy a Monroe E-Z Ride will-fit seat. Made for most tractors, it was spring-loaded with a hydraulic cylinder and was far more comfortable. Another option was a seat made by Knoedler Mfg. in Streator, Ill. These seats and others around the country were popular and can still be seen on a lot of restored older tractors.

CRANKS - If your dad taught you to crank, he warned you (many times) to wrap your thumb alongside your fingers - NOT on the other side of the crank. There was a good reason for this.

A backfire that threw the crank in the reverse direction could break a wrapped-around thumb. A lot of thumbs did get broken.

FLYWHEEL STARTER - I watched a YouTube video as the operator pulled a John Deere B flywheel through several cycles. Then he rested awhile, began again, and got it started. Many models of Deere tractors were flywheel started. We had a Deere G for a short time, and I was 12 before I could start it. We also had an Allis WC that I had been able to crank start for at least a year before that.

Lug wheels, pan seats and manual starters are now part of the past. Yet I and friends my age that grew up on the farm still talk about the frustration of starting these old tractors before we were strong enough. Our fathers (or older brothers) would constantly say, “You’re not big enough” and we got tired of hearing that. It was like a “Rite of Passage” when we could finally do it. Also, most of us agreed that the crank was easier than the flywheel starters.

Then, electric starters arrived. What a great invention. There’s a downside to everything, however. Tractors with electric starters soon were equipped with lights. That meant that when spring planting was late because of weather, we worked at night to catch up. Yet milking still began at 5 a.m.

Yet here I am, talking with pride about how we survived the “good old days”

Almost 100 year later, if you are a tractor owner you’ve owned different tractor models, and each probably had new, better features. However, even bigger changes are coming.

Great progress has been made in electric tractor development. One company, Monarch Tractor, claims to be the world’s first fully electric, driver-optional smart tractor. They’ve been operating over two years in large vineyards and have a major tractor manufacturer as investor. The last paragraph in some of my future columns will discuss progress by others in this new industry.

It’s changing by the day.

Paul Wallem was raised on a dairy farm. He spent 13 years with corporate IH on domestic and foreign assignments. He resigned to own and operate two IH dealerships. He is the author of THE BREAKUP of IH and SUCCESSES AND INDUSTRY FIRSTS of IH. See all his books on PaulWallem.com.