Karen Wils photo The faithful old Farmall with my Dad and brother Mark 1987.

ESCANABA — The horse that never dies is alive and well in many barns and sheds throughout the U.P.

Tough, never tired, and always ready to go, many mechanical work horses have endured the sun, the mud and the cold.

Tractors are timeless.

I have read that by the 1940s, tractors replaced just about all of the work horses and mules in rural America. Farmers were now way more productive.

Potato planting, hay baling, stump pulling and snow plowing, Yooper tractors were busy. Steam powered engines were the first to help out in the wilderness. In 1892, an Iowa man named John Froelich invented the first gasoline powered machine that could be driven forward and backwards.

Tractors were a must-have item for those that worked the land. Each family had their favorite brand. Farmall red and John Deere green competed with Massey Ferguson, Allis Chalmers and Case for space in the barn.

Many young Yooper’s learned to drive with the family’s tractor. Some of the men folk (and a few women, too) could take a broken down tractor a part and with greasy hands and a little muscle, get the contraption running as good as new.

Many tractors are heirlooms passed down from generation to generation. Today’s kids with earbuds and cell phones are able to ride out to the deer blinds with great-granddad’s faithful old Farmall.

My Dad bought an old Farmall tractor back in the 1980s. The first thing he did was build a nice “tractor shed” for it near our camp. This big red beauty was a crank-start model from the early 1930s. Its main purpose was to haul out firewood and help to maintain the rut road going into camp.

The tractor was Dad’s pride and joy even though in cold weather it was finicky to start. Big Red had a lot of nicknames — all of them cuss words.

Next, Dad built a trailer for the tractor to pull. Many a Saturday, Dad, the tractor, the trailer and my uncle spent together clearing the road, snagging windfalls off the trails and hauling in loads of maple, elm and birch firewood.

The best thing of all about owning a tractor is on Sunday the kids all got to pile into the trailer and go for a bumpy but beautiful ride.

Years later my dad replaced the old Farmall with a newer one. This one had a starter. This one he purchased from a Mr. Wood. And to this day, that tractor is called “Woody,” as he helps a third generation gather firewood.

It’s amazing how many families across Upper Michigan have similar stories about tractors. So many folks still own their Grandpa’s old iron work horse and they still run! This is the time of year when old tractors are busy out in the corn fields, or hauling up apples, pumpkins or firewood.

Collecting and restoring vintage tractors is a popular past time. The U.P. Steam and Gas Engine Association puts on a great show of working machines.

If your family has an old iron work horse in the shed, take it out for an autumn ride. Reminisce about the old rusty trusty tractor and the people that drove it.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.