Scale-Model Farm Tractor Helps Dig Back Into Past

Living on the farm as a teen-ager instilled strong memories in Merton K. Wolfe, 69, of Fullerton.

“I can remember operating those big steam tractors that worked the ground,” said Wolfe, who became a tool-and-die worker after leaving the farm in 1937. “So now that I’m retired I thought it would be fun to build one and remember the way it was.”

A full-size steam tractor would have been too big, so Wolfe built a working quarter-scale model that duplicates the 15-ton Case steam-powered tractor his folks used to work the farm. The model has an operating firebox and boiler.

The original, built in 1916 in Wisconsin, was designed to work with a thrasher to harvest wheat and oats as well as for plowing and harrowing.

His model weighs 500 pounds, is 5 feet long, 2 feet wide and 30 inches high, and took nearly two years to complete. He reckons that he has $3,000 invested in the machine, but figures that if he wanted to sell it, the model would fetch $6,000.

“I told my wife I was going to build a half-scale model and put it in our living room,” joshed Wolfe, who plans on taking the model steam tractor to shows throughout the country where full-size and small-scale versions of farm machinery are exhibited.

He said there are many clubs that meet to show off their models and restored original machines.

“I enjoyed living on the farm and running the machinery,” said Wolfe, who later formed his own successful tool-and-die business, “although they were different from what’s out there today.”

He was referring to diesel-powered machines of today that are more comfortable and easier to operate than the old “iron horse” machines. “It was hard work years ago, but we didn’t know any better, so it didn’t bother us,” he said.

He noted that the old-time steam tractors used steel wheels “and were meant to run on dirt. If they ran on a hard surface, they would shake you right down to your toes.”

He held a family gathering recently to show off and operate the steam-powered machine, which was built in his son’s garage in La Mirada.

“Some of my grandsons wanted to know how the horn worked,” said Wolfe. “I told them that we used whistles in those days.”

So he gave them two toots of the whistle. “That means start it up,” he said.

Deborah Thomas, 30, of Huntington Beach has a different approach to therapy.

For instance, she meets clients on the golf course or at the beach.

“After all,” said the licensed marriage, family and child therapist, “this is California and a lot of us like the outdoors.”

Billing herself as “The Traveling Therapist,” Thomas said she gives the same kind of therapy you would get in a therapist’s office but believes clients like treatment “in their own space.”

Thomas said that when people learn of her practice, “It sounds different and radical, but years ago, doctors would go to people’s homes.”

Her clients come from referrals. “I don’t have a phone number listed,” said Thomas, who is expanding to Beverly Hills and San Diego. “I don’t want client overload.”

What are the chances that two people from the People’s Republic of China would find romance in Huntington Beach?

Talk to Chun-ping Zheng and Haimin Wang.

Zheng, one of 20 nursing students studying under a special program last year at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, met Haimin Wang, a student at the California Institute of Technology, at a party arranged for Chinese students.

As it turned out, Zheng and Wang were both from Beijing but didn’t know one another.

Zheng’s stay ended and she went home, but the two corresponded--often, and obviously with some passion. He proposed marriage by mail; she accepted, and Wang flew to Beijing for a traditional wedding.

They now live in Pasadena where friends and teachers threw the couple a belated bridal shower, which confused them. “They didn’t understand,” said Keitha Anderson of Fountain Valley, Zheng’s housemother while she was a student at Golden West. “They never heard of a bridal shower.”

This story has a happy ending, but can you imagine what kind of people would steal a day-care center’s six-passenger push wagon with wooden seats and safety belts for tykes?

Since the specially ordered $650 cart was stolen a couple of weeks ago, there have been no more morning trips, no noontime visits to McDonald’s for munchies and no more afternoon jaunts aboard the Arboleta Express, as it is called.

“A parent of one of the students saw three teen-agers joy riding in the cart,” said Jan Polmachoff, of the Arboleta Day Care Center in La Habra. “But they ran away when he approached.”

The culprits ripped out the safety belts and the Arboleta Express sign.

“It’s repaired now,” Polmachoff said, “but can you imagine?”