CAMBRIDGE CITY, Ind. — After M. Gault Jones bought his new John Deere 4010 diesel tractor in 1961 neighbor kids flocked to his farm in southwest Wayne County to see it run.

“I’d be plowing a field and after school I’d see bicycles coming up the road,” said Jones.

Now the vintage tractor is again turning heads and remains a source of pride for the Jones family after their sons have restored it to like-new condition.

“Dad tells the story when he first bought the tractor that was the first year he didn’t have to find any help because everybody wanted to run this tractor,” said Scott Jones, 50, the oldest of three sons. “The next year everyone had a 4010,” he added.

Such was the impact the new generation of John Deere tractors had on agriculture.

“It was a revolution. They gave agriculture quite a gift,” said Gault Jones. He described plowing with his father’s 1942 John Deere Model B, which has also been restored.

“You’d start out in a big field and it might be lunchtime by the time you got around the field for the first time. Two 14s is all she would pull,” said the senior Jones.

“This was a revolution right off the bat because it produced 90-some horsepower,” he continued. “Gosh, it was pulling a five-bottom plow.”

Jones recalls paying $5,600 for the new tractor, a five-bottom plow and a four-row cultivator, while trading in an old John Deere Model A, a two-bottom plow and a two-row cultivator.

He made the purchase from a John Deere dealer in Paxton, Ill., who gave him a deal $600 better than local dealers offered.

“Six-hundred dollars was a lot of money then,” he said.

Jones opted for the diesel engine because it was more powerful than the gas-powered versions and diesel fuel was cheaper.

As helpful as the new tractor was in the field, Jones later found it invaluable in his construction business, erecting steel buildings and grain systems.

“Every building here we built,” said Jones.

“It becomes an all-purpose tractor when you put the loader on. With the addition of a boom to extend the length of the fork lift, we set trusses, even steel trusses, for steel buildings,” said son Scott,” who is a master mechanic for Reynolds Farm Equipment Inc., a John Deere dealer in Fishers, Ind.

“He wanted to make it a pulling tractor one time. Remember that, Scott?” said his father. “I thought about it. I said, ‘No you can’t do it to this tractor. It’s been too good to me.’”

After 50 years of continuous use, though, the old tractor was showing its age. The paint was dull, the hood had dings and the clutch needed to be replaced. 

“It’s been running around the farm with no hood on it for the last 10 years. My brothers and I decided we ought to do something. Greg was the one who said we’ve go to do something while Dad’s still around,” said Scott.

Greg, 46, the youngest of the Jones sons, owns Smalltown Inc. in Connersville, Ind., which buys, sells, builds and rents vehicles. Without announcing his full intentions to their father, he hauled the tractor to brother Scott’s home shop at Charlottesville, Ind., in July.

There, Scott split the tractor, installing a new clutch, bearings and a flywheel kit – what he called a routine job.

“It was a fun one to do,” said Scott.

Greg hauled the tractor back to his shop to do the bodywork and paint job. “The tractor was pretty straight. There were some dents in the hood from walking on it, but that wasn’t a big problem,” he said.

Greg was able to make the original sheet metal look like new.

Middle son, Bryan, 48, who works for JR Automation Technologies LLC, a designer and manufacturer of automated assembly systems in Holland, Mich., lent his moral support and admired his brothers’ work on a recent visit home.

He recalled the laborious task of unloading by hand semitrailers of materials for their construction jobs until outfitting the tractor with a front loader.

“The John Deere 146A loader enabled us to do so much and do it more easily,” said Bryan. He recounted the occasion they rigged an 80-foot-long grain auger to the loader and drove the tractor to the other side of the county to a customer without incident.

The senior Jones was not totally aware of what his sons were doing to his tractor. They told him they were trying to do some repairs.

“The day they surprised me with it was pretty overwhelming. Plus that fact it had been 50 years,” said Gault.

“It’s part of us. It’s taken us down snowy roads … rounding up the hogs, whatever,” said Scott, who compared the tractor to his own 1958 Cockshutt 570 diesel, which he restored.

“I was telling Dad, I know why Cockshutt went out of business. You get on those tractors. It’s a night-and-day difference. That (John Deere) tractor is superior.”

Everyone in the family admitted to getting the tractor stuck in mud, even Mom Shirley. “Oh, yeah, I buried it big time,” she said.

Yet everyone speaks fondly of the tractor, like it was one of the family.

“It’s been a sweetheart to us,” said Gault.