Farm boy a long time ago....

I was born on a farm south of Murray and close to a very small town called Hopeville. My dad was just out of the service and rented a small amount of acres from a man name Ray Woods. My dad had sheep and cattle and I think that is how he kept us fed. He raised corn on shares and that was picked by hand so he couldn't have had a lot of corn. In 1953 my folks got an FHA loan and bought a farm of 240 acres near our rented farm. I believe only 180 of the acres were farmable and the rest was timber. I remember the day we moved and I couldn't have been three and a half, as I was told that I had the measles and that my Aunt Mary took the day to take care of me. She kept me wrapped in a large quilt and I couldn't see out most of the time. We had to ride in a wagon to get to the farm house as it was on a dirt road and it was slick.
Life on the farm will always be a strong memory of mine. The working with livestock, making hay, farm pets, and the solitude of living on a farm. It was good times and bad. We were just as poor as anyone else, and dad had to go borrow money many times to get through the lean times to feed the family. His tractor was always a Farmall, a red tractor. He had worked as a mechanic for awhile for his brother in Murray, helping repair tractors and that was an International Harvester dealership. It was eventually moved to Osceola, Iowa. The type of tractor that you had seemed to be important to some people as there still today the argument of which is better Farmall or John Deere. John Deere seems to have reign supreme now as Farmall was sold to the Case company.
The tractors you see above are from a tractor ride that took place a few years ago near here. I took my father-in-law to see hundreds of tractors driving down highways on a seven day journey through Iowa. The red tractor is the Farmall. My dad had an F and and A and later bought a used one that I never knew it's number. He had it for only a few years and sold the farm in 1973. I was on the farm through my senior year in high school then returned one summer in 69. After that I went to summer school and worked in Ames year round.
Now today, there are so few farmers that it is hard for kids to know that anyone alive could be related to a farmer or have their roots on the farm. There are probably a couple students per grade that do have dads that are farming but that is all. So when I mention to the students at school that I have farm roots, they think it funny that an old man, an art teacher, had every come from a southern Iowan farm. Thanks for reading.....