Parts were getting hard to find. Dale had to fabricate more and more components himself, machining replacements in his workshop, adapting pieces from other equipment, but he made it work. Every season he planted and harvested and turned a small profit. Every year he put money aside instead of spending it on new equipment. While his neighbors were buying bigger tractors and taking on bigger debts, Dale was living small and saving what he could. By 1985, he had nearly $40,000 in the bank.
He also had something else, a growing reputation as the best mechanic in Dawson County. Farmers who’d laughed at his $75 purchase in 1969 were now bringing their equipment to him for repairs. He could fix things that the dealership said were beyond saving. He could rebuild engines that other mechanics had written off. The farm all had taught him well. But the farm crisis was teaching everyone else different lessons. Let me tell you about 1985 because that’s when the wheel began to turn.
You probably know about the farm crisis of the 1980s. Interest rates spiked. Commodity prices crashed. Land values plummeted. Farmers who had borrowed money to expand found themselves owing more than their farms were worth. Dawson County was hit hard. By the spring of 1985, foreclosure notices were appearing on mailboxes all over the county. Equipment auctions, the kind where Dale had bought his farm, all were happening every week, but now they were selling off the machinery of broken dreams.
Vernon Krebs was hurting too. His dealership had sold a lot of tractors on credit during the boom years, and now those loans were going bad. Farmers who couldn’t pay the bank certainly couldn’t pay the dealer. Vernon was hemorrhaging money, trying to repossess equipment that was worth half what was owed on it. One evening in May, Vernon drove out to the Perkins farm. Dale was in his workshop replacing a hydraulic seal on a neighbor’s bor. Dale Vernon stood in the doorway, hat in hand.
He looked smaller than Dale remembered, older, tired. Mr. Krebs, I I need to ask you something. Vernon swallowed hard. I’ve got three tractors sitting on my lot that need engine work. The mechanics at the dealership can’t figure out what’s wrong with them. The factory guys want to charge me more than the tractors are worth. Dale set down his wrench and and everyone says you’re the best engine man in the county. Vernon couldn’t quite meet his eyes. They say you can fix things nobody else can fix.
