~ Joe Ramsey
"A 1920 something Fordson F is the tractor itself.
The attachment is a Yard Crane. “Warner Lumber Company in Tracy (Tracy City, Tennessee) had that on a Fordson. The Warners in Tracy City, they owned about the whole top of the mountain. In Tracy City, they owned the bank, the water department, the post office, and they had the finest steam sawmill in the state. But they were unusual, let’s say. They didn’t like Roosevelt, and Roosevelt did something that they didn’t like, so they shut their operation down in ’38 or ’39. Just let everything set. It’s not like they needed money. They just stopped and let everything just rot down. Of course, that tractor, that Yard Crane, it had been parked since 1939. Well, all the male members of the Warner clan died so there was one girl left. They turned some of it loose, the estate. That’s been six or seven years ago. I mean it sat outside since ’39.
When I say those Warners were unusual—in World War II, when the United States was doing all these scrap metal drives, you know, they had rail lines laid all over the mountain—little dinky lines to bring (those logs) into their mill. Course they had those dinky wheels. When the government came by hunting scrap, they would hide theirs in the woods. They didn’t want the government getting none of their stuff. And here a few years ago, the last surviving male members—-you’ve probably never heard of it—Savage Gulf State Park. It had virgin timber on it, and they owned it; the state wanted to buy it and make a park out of it. Well they would not sell it till the state figured out some way they would not have to pay any tax. They sold it, I heard, for around a million and a half and they finally after so many years the state finally consummated the deal, but then they liked to run the Warners down to give them their money. Unusual is the term I use.
That Yard Crane is the only one I’ve ever seen.
Any scrap tractor I could get, I would tear down. Any part I thought I could use, I just piled it in my shop. So when I got that attachment there I built me a tractor out of parts. I built the motor in it. I went through a lot of stuff and completely built the motor.
They started making Fordson in 1917 and they quit in 1927. So there’s a little bit of everything on that tractor. "
Joe Ramsey
Monteagle, Tennessee
