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Power Days features lots of unusual lawn tractors
 
Wrenching Tales by Cindy Ladage  
 
The Vintage Garden Tractor Club of America (VGTCA) hosted its Fall Expo at the 25th annual Antique Power Days Show in Salem, Ill., the first weekend in September. The  VGTCA is a 20-year-old club founded as a way for collectors to gather information on garden tractors.
With a membership of more than 800 and with representatives in 46 states, three Canadian provinces and three foreign countries, it is little wonder the Salem show brought out a variety of tractors not often seen at local shows. Garden tractor history spans the last 80 years and includes the early steel-wheeled tractors, up to the lawn and garden tractors of today.
One of the cool tractors from the 1960s on display was a Pennsylvania Panzer colored with the unlikely name of Tantalizing Turquoise, explained owner Linda Lenzini: “The Panzer was bought from my brother and was built in Maryland, although it has a German name.”
The Panzer name was the winning selection in the name-this-project employee contest when the Ahrendt Instrument Co. in College Park, Md., first started building lawn and garden riding tractors under the Copar division. The company changed hands  in January 1960 when Copar was sold to Virginia Metalcrafters of  Waynesboro, Va.
The Metalcrafters then purchased Pennsylvania Lawn Mower Co. and under the combined division of  Pennsylvania Lawn Products, the little garden tractors got an upgrade from the red Copar colors to the Pennsylvania turquoise blue with white wheels.
Anne and Daryel Shaffer of Webb City, Ind., run the website Rare Garden Tractors – and to the show they brought just that. One Mayrath tractor was an attention-grabber. According to Tractor Data.com Mayrath Machinery of Dodge City, Kan., built a line of garden tractors from about 1949-52. Founded by Martin Mayrath, the company was a pioneer in the development of portable grain augers.
The Mayrath tractors were advertised as multi-purpose machines, boasting their 30 mph speed and 60-mile range on a gallon of gasoline. Mayrath continues to manufacture grain-handling equipment today as a division of Global Industries.
There was also the Mayrath Deluxe, which according to the Shaffers was only one of 50 built with the original body. They also had a little lawn tractor called an Eclipse Ranger.
Part of the enjoyment of some of the rare lawn and garden tractors are the names and imagining just how people came up with them, such as the totally un-German Panzer. The Ottawa Mule Team Tractor, one would think, would have something to do with mules – but information on its website said nothing about mules at all!
The company was known under the names Union Foundries, Warner Manufacturing and Warner Fence and began around July 1904 in Ottawa, Kan. The company started out producing hit-and-miss flywheel engines, log saws, windmills, fencing, gas station pumps and lifts, refrigeration units, brake shoes, tree and brush saws, tractor-mounted PTO-driven saw rigs and more.
It manufactured 8- to 16-hp tractors and a line of implements. The company was in business until 1951, when it was destroyed when the Marais des Cygnes River flooded. The factory was never rebuilt and the Ottawa Manufacturing Co. ceased to exist that year.
The Shaffers had little tractors named Atomic Babe, Shaker Mule and a Strunk Chipmunk. There was also the Tiger Tractor. The manufacturers of lawn and garden equipment had big imaginations when it came to naming their products.
There was one complete display of REO mowers. REO stands for Ransom Eli Olds, who had his finger in many pies around the Lansing, Mich., area. Olds was the founder of Olds Motor Works and REO Motors. The lawn and garden division came out of the REO Motors Co.
While before World War II REO Motors was famous for its trucks, when truck sales slumped after the war the new lawn and garden division started in 1947 – and took off. In 1949, it developed its own engine and around 1950 it was the largest producer of power motors.
Lawn & Garden Tractor magazine was at the show, along with the Vintage Garden Tractor Club of America, which also offers a newsletter. Lawn and garden mowers were not the only tractors at this event, but for the first weekend in September, they were king of the Salem show.

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.
11/13/2014