Dale Perkins, Vernon said, blocking his path. I heard you just spent $75 on that Hollister pile of rust. Yes, sir. Boy, do you know what $75 could have bought you? Vernon gestured toward the parking lot where his dealership truck was parked. That’s a down payment on a real tractor, a John Deere, something that actually runs. I can fix this one. Vernon laughed. A big hearty laugh that carried across the auction yard. Other men turned to watch. Fix it.
Son, that tractor hasn’t run since Truman was president. The engine’s probably seized solid. The transmission’s full of mice. You’d need $1,000 in parts in a year of Sundays just to get it to cough. I can fix it, Dale repeated. No, you can’t. Vernon stepped closer, lowering his voice to something that was probably meant to be fatherly, but came out patronizing. Listen, son. Your daddy was a good farmer. God rest him. But you’re 22 years old. You’ve got 80 acres of sandy bottom land, and you just spent $75 on a tractor that ain’t worth 15.
That’s not farming. That’s foolishness. Dale looked at Vernon Krebs at his clean shirt, his soft hands, his confident smile. My daddy taught me something, Mr. Krebs. He said, “The worst thing a man can do is let other people tell him what’s possible.” He walked past the dealer toward his rusted purchase, leaving Vernon standing there with his mouth open. Behind him, he could hear the laughter spreading through the crowd. Let me tell you about Dale Perkins. Because to understand what happened next, you need to understand where he came from.
Dale was born in 1947, the only son of Walter and Mary Perkins. Walter had farmed 80 acres of bottom land along the Plat River for 20 years. Not enough to get rich, but enough to get by. He grew corn and soybeans, raised a few hogs, and fixed everything himself because he couldn’t afford to pay someone else. Dale grew up in his father’s workshop, learning to weld before he could drive, learning to rebuild engines before he could vote.
By the time he was 16, there wasn’t a machine on the farm he couldn’t take apart and put back together. Then, in the spring of 1968, Walter Perkins suffered a heart attack while plowing the North Field. He was dead before the ambulance arrived. Dale was 21 years old, suddenly responsible for 80 acres, a grieving mother, and a pile of debts his father had never mentioned. The farm’s only tractor, a 1954 Farmall Super M, had thrown a rod the previous fall, and Walter had been nursing it along, planning to rebuild it over the winter.
He never got the chance. For a year, Dale worked the farm with borrowed equipment and rented machinery, falling further behind with every season. He needed a tractor of his own, but new ones cost thousands of dollars he didn’t have, and the used market in 1969 was picked clean by farmers expanding their operations. Then he heard about the Dawson County auction and the equipment from the Hollister estate. The Hollister name meant something in Dawson County, though not many people remembered why.
