Donald Dixon

I was raised on the farm, in Muhlenberg County, I still live on. My family did our farm work with the hoe and a pair of mules. This really makes you appreciate a tractor that makes farming so much easier.

There was a neighbor that had a W K 40 tractor he used to pull a wheat thrasher. This tractor was bought in 1940. I was born in 1939, but I remember sitting on this tractor pretending I was driving it when I was very young. That dream became real when I was 8 years old, when with my Dad and I drove it over a country road about 7 miles.

In March of 1947 my Dad got the 1947 H Farmall tractor he had ordered two years before. When it arrived it didn’t have any taillights, temperature gauge, or wheel weights. We finally got the wheel weights, but that was all. The carburetor was cracked, which they replaced. A fog light off a truck is all the lights we ever had and it never had a temperature gauge. The price was $1275. The plow and disk didn’t come in until the middle of the summer. We borrowed and swapped work for the use of tools neighbors had who didn’t have a tractor. We used this tractor until 1959. The last I heard of it was, a farmer in an adjoining county owned it. I would sure like to find it even if it isn’t for sale.

A neighbor placed his order for a tractor the day we got ours. It was about two years before he got it and it cost $1775. My son purchased this tractor from the neighbor’s grandson around 1974. He still uses it in his farming and it has only had one overhaul and still runs as good as when new although it is 52 years old.

My dad traded his H for a1959 240 utility tractor. He gave $1500 between his H and a plow and this tractor and plow. I was married at this time, but both my wife and I drove this tractor quite a bit.

In the winter of 1961 I bought my own H tractor. Next I owned a C, then a 300, a 560 and two more H's. These have all been sold or traded.

At the present I have a 350 Utility and a 350 Farmall, my dad owned at his death; an M my wife’s uncle bought new in 1947; and another M which I have a loader on. I still use all these in my farming.

My International Harvester roots run deep. I really enjoy being a member of The International Harvester Collectors Club.

Donald Dixon

Greenville, Kentucky

June, 2001

Nadine Dixon

Here is a picture of the first International tractor I ever worked with. Donald's Dad traded his H for this the year after we married.