This story first appeared in the Oct. 24 edition of the Kansan.
In looking at the John Deere tractors lined up on Clarence Niles’ shelf, the green and yellow replicas are more than a hobby. They are a timeline of Niles’ life.
Niles, 81, retired from farming since 1969 and from teaching high school math and science for 31 years, bought his first replica to begin chronicling the history of John Deere equipment used on their family farm.
His father, the late Walter Niles, began buying this land in the mid-1920s before the Great Depression hit. The farm is between Halstead and Sedgwick on the Little Arkansas River.
It’s the farm where he rode with his dad on a Model D John Deere, symbolized by the replica that begins his tractor timeline on the top shelf of a basement wall. And it’s where he bought the tractors symbolized by the replicas lined up in a tidy row behind his father’s model — including a Model A, and models 720, 730, 3020 and 4020, which was Niles’ last tractor. He and his late brother, Keith, took over the family farm and bought some of these models together to grow wheat, winter barley and alfalfa.
“I guess this is a lot more than just a collection,” said Niles, who lives in Newton with his wife, Gladys, also a retired teacher. “It really has helped me to preserve my history.
“I was pretty small when I first went out with Dad on the tractor — couldn’t have been much older than 10 or so. Dad used to let my brother and I ride on the fenders of that old tractor, which at that time didn’t have a cab.”
The earlier models didn’t have what the contemporary tractors have today. For starters, the last combine Niles bought before he quit farming cost $8,000. Today, a fully-loaded combine sells for upward from about $300,000. Also, the older models didn’t have cabs or today’s luxuries, including CD players, air conditioners and GPS systems. Farmers had only umbrellas to shield them from weather and whistling or battery radios for tunes.
The spotlight of his collection is the historical timeline of tractors. But Niles’ collection also contains a lot of other items. They range from a beer stein to knives to watch fobs to a bank. They include a Christmas stocking holder and a marble set that depict logos used by John Deere since it began in 1847 until today. Also amongst these items is a pocket ledger — used by farmers to jot down farm finances and crop plans — a John Deere Christmas train and the toy model of an old-time John Deere dealership.
