IN TRACTORS HE TRUSTS

WASILLA — Dick Wilson said it was probably his grandkids who got him into collecting miniature pedal-powered tractors.

“I got a couple of my grandsons pedal tractors when they were little and they got to playing demolition derby one day and they disappeared,” Wilson said.

He stole them back from his grandkids. Those two tractors became the seeds that grew into what is now a 50-tractor collection built buying two or three a year for the past 25 years.

Wilson’s collection, which he’s taken to securing to wire metal shelves with bungee cords, contains all the big names you would think. There are Farmalls and John Deeres, New Hollands and Gibsons, and at least one example each of Ford, Kubota, Allis-Chalmers and Case.

He has a long history with farming and farm tools, having grown up on his father’s dairy farm in Michigan until he was 18.

“I joined the Air Force to quit milking cows,” he says of what took him from the farm to Alaska.

Lately, he’s expanded his collection into cars and even a tricycle. Whatever he buys, though, is pedal powered.

“If it’s got pedals, it follows me home,” he said.

Wilson had a few airplanes, but he raffled those off awhile back. That’s the thing about Wilson. He and his collection don’t stay in the garage. He can be found each year at the Alaska State Fair, or at the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry in Wasilla, or in Wasilla’s Fourth of July parade.

“I have too much fun for an old guy in the parade,” he said.

He’s not as willing as he once was to let kids who stop by take them for a whirl. Once, when the Cottonwood Creek Mall was still standing, he went to an event there and the kids were driving up and down the halls on the mini tractors.

“You can’t keep up with them,” he said. “Kids get on them and disappear.”

Nearly all the vehicles in his collection are made from aluminum. A few are steel. One is plastic. And one is made from wood. That one he built himself using tire-shaped dog toys for wheels. He built it to show his friends in the Antique Power Club of Alaska what he was talking about when he mentioned a Friday tractor.

“Nobody up here knows Friday tractors except me,” he said.

He looked for a full-sized one to buy for a while before finally tracking one down, oddly enough, in Eau Claire, Mich., very near where he grew up. It’s one of a half-dozen or so full-sized tractors he has.

He’s also got a pair of Farmalls and a Fordson. He has the Friday at his house in Wasilla and says restoring it will be one of his winter projects.

And Wilson’s not hurting for projects to keep him busy. He spends his share of nights in his shop, churning out wood duck-shaped planters. On a dare he built a couple of model tractors out of empty soda and beer cans. He’s done some mad-scientist-type work on his toys, too.

He’s got a tractor he put a weed-eater motor in. It’s too small for him to sit on, but he can steer it from a wagon hitched to the back and the motor is strong enough to pull him along — so long as the ground is hard and flat.

Then there’s the pedal tractor he refers to as his “Siamese twins.” It’s two John Deeres attached side-by-side. Using parts he picked up at a bike shop, Wilson managed to make it actually work; either driver or passenger can pedal or steer.

He finds most of his acquisitions in magazines, both those for farm toys and those for antique tractor enthusiasts. Next on his list is a purple Oliver pedal tractor.

Each piece costs him something on the order of $165. It costs another $100 to ship to Alaska, he said, unless you go through a company that will let you use parcel post.

Wilson owned Warning Lights of Alaska and lived in Anchorage for 45 years until he sold the business to his daughters and moved with his wife to Wasilla four or five years ago.

Asked what his wife thinks of his tractor hobby, Wilson said he’s not the only collector in the family.

“She doesn’t inventory my tractors and I don’t inventory her teddy bears,” he laughed.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.