ANTIQUE TRACTORS DRIVE POCAHONTAS MAN

When it comes to collecting antique tractors, Nollie Moore goes full throttle.

The Pocahontas man, who currently has about 18 antique tractors, brought four of his vintage vehicles to the SEMO District Fair for the antique tractor pull Saturday.

"I had over 30 tractors at one time," said Moore, who collects and sells them.

Moore said he sold 18 of his tractors to a buyer in England. "I had just about two of everything," he said, explaining why he was willing to sell some of his collection.

"I got just about every one that was ever made" in the 1920s and '30s," he observed.

Moore's oldest is a 1919 McCormick Deering tractor.

One of the tractors he brought to the fair was a 1921 Fordson, manufactured in England and fueled by gasoline and kerosene.

It was ordered in late 1920 and delivered in February 1921 to the Little River Drainage District, which used it to drive pilings in construction of the Diversion Channel, Moore said.

"It spent all of its life on the Diversion Channel between here and Arkansas," he said.

"That (tractor) was the main dog back in the '20s," he pointed out.

It had been stored in an Oran area farm shed for 33 years when Moore acquired it in 1990.

"When I got it, it was sunk down in the dirt up to its belly pan," he recalled. "It was in terrible shape."

Moore said he convinced the drainage district to part with the tractor. "They wanted somebody to take the tractor and do something with it."

It took Moore a little over a year to restore the steel-wheeled tractor.

A former auto body repairman, Moore's interest in antique tractors developed after he underwent open heart surgery in 1985.

Following the surgery, he had difficulty finding employment. So Moore set up shop at his residence, and soon found himself in the antique tractor business, both as a collector and a dealer.

He said for a while he was regularly coming home with trailer loads of old tractors.

"It's like drinking, but it's a little more expensive," said Moore. "You don't know when to quit."

Many of the tractors displayed Saturday are owned by members of the Egypt Mills Antique Tractor Club. The area club, founded in 1980, has about 80 members.

Larry Romack of Cape Girardeau has been a member for 11 years. He owns three John Deere tractors, dating from 1939, 1940 and 1941.

"I don't farm. It's a hobby for me," said Romack, who works in the maintenance department at Southeast Missouri Hospital.

He said he enjoys competing against club members at tractor pulls and in preserving "a piece of history."

"We not only pull them, we show them," said Romack after driving his 1939 John Deere down the dirt track, pulling an approximately 2,700-pound load.

For Romack, Moore and others, the old tractors are mechanical works of art. On Saturday, many of the old tractors chugged by the grandstand pulling the weighted sled a part of the fair's tapestry of sights and sounds.