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When I was a kid there was an old Allis Chalmers farm tractor that had sunk in the mud near the creek decades before. It wasn't completely buried and was surrounded by brush and blackberry bushes People had vandalized what was visible. My brother asked the neighbor if we could have it. We were in our teens and the neighbor didn't think there was any chance that we could get it out, so he agreed.

It was summer so the mud had mostly dried up. We started by clearing a path through the brush to it. Then we started digging. After a day of dedicated effort we had most of the peaty dirt and mud cleared away from it. We had a surplus WWII hand winch that weighed about a 100 pounds that we were able to cart down the scene of the crime. It was basically a boat winch on steroids that had 1/2” steel cable instead of rope. We strapped the winch to a tree nearby and started cranking on it. We were able to pull the old Allis Chalmers out of the hole we had made using that winch.

The tires had all rotted off years before, but surprisingly the wheels were not in that bad of condition and we were able to joggle the gear box into a neutral position that let it roll. Once we got it to solid ground we were able to pull it back to our house using a jumbo sized garden tractor that we had. It was quite a sight.

My brother spent the next few months, all his money and some of my dad's rebuilding it. The first thing he did was start soaking everything with diesel and penetrating oil. He made a crank and we were eventually able to get the engine unseized. He had to replace all of the ignition parts. We didn't have a muffler when we first got it started so it made a terrible racket.

After he got new tires and he had it going again we had a lot of fun with that tractor. It went fast when it was in high gear. That first winter we pulled people around on inner-tubes and sleds behind it when it was snowed. There were not too many serious injuries. The most dangerous hazard was the homemade crank which went through several revisions before it would release reliably when you got the engine started.