Who Would Believe It Back on the Farm?

OK, so a John Deere tractor in the driveway of a Torrance tract home may seem a little out of place, but J.J. Stanley can explain. Mention the word “tractor” to Stanley, and you won’t have to struggle for conversation for at least 45 minutes. “I’m just crazy about them,” says the 64-year-old electronics engineer, who fittingly had a farm-themed party with the tractor and all the trappings July 25 to celebrate his retirement after 31 years at Hughes Aircraft.

“He always said he wanted a tractor,” says his wife of 41 years, Lydia. “You know how you say things. I never imagined he would do it.”

Perhaps the more than 100 John Deere tractor models and memorabilia Stanley keeps in the couple’s covered patio should have been a warning. He was building up to the real McCoy, which he purchased a little over a year ago when he came across the same make and model (a 1951 Model G) that he had driven as a boy on his family’s farm in southern Illinois.

Now, Lydia, a city girl from outside Chicago, admits the tractor in the driveway is rather novel.

And once the initial shock wore off, the tractor turned into a neighborhood attraction. Neighbors and even the mailman have come by to pose with it for pictures. Kids come over for rides around the block, and Stanley is only too happy to comply.

So appropriately, when it came time for his retirement party, Lydia and the couple’s three daughters planned a hoedown at one daughter’s home. Stanley drove the John Deere there. The trip was only three miles, but since he had to take Pacific Coast Highway and since the two-cylinder vehicle doesn’t have a muffler and tops out at 18 mph, he made the trip at 6 a.m., when only the roosters and dedicated surfers were up.

Outside daughter Jacqueline Thompson’s Torrance home, a sign read, “The Stanley Farm.” Out back that afternoon, 70 or so guests, most wearing farm attire, enjoyed country and western music, chuck wagon fare and lots of sody-pop. For ambience, Stanley’s daughters hung long johns on a clothesline, set hay bales on the lawn, and rang a big triangle when the vittles were ready.

All this took Stanley back to the days when he and his seven brothers and sisters lived on the farm. Stanley started farming on horseback and on a tractor when he was 5, and quickly learned to prefer vehicles with cylinders to ones with saddles. “Farming with horses was tough; they were contentious and ornery. But tractors did just what I wanted. I loved the power of the engine, the way the tractor could turn the soil. In Illinois, the soil is so black and rich. I liked every part of it: preparing the soil by harrowing, planting with the different drills and planters, cultivating, harvesting.”

“He wasn’t always like this,” his wife says. “He went to college to get away from the farm, but as you get older, you go back to your roots.”

Now Stanley sows his wild oats at the Two-Cylinder Club, for John Deere collectors, and the Ignitors Club, for those who collect all types of old-time farm equipment. He also likes to attend tractor-pull competitions.

At the party, Hughes colleagues, relatives and fellow church members testified to his work ethic as well as to Stanley’s many contributions. Now that he’s retired, is he headed for the fields? Don’t bet the farm. “I’d have to leave my grandkids,” he explains. But as for his John Deere collection, “This is just the beginning.”

For a retirement gift, his family gave him a 1957 John Deere tricycle tractor his three grandchildren can ride. Next he wants a grain wagon that will attach to the tractor so he can haul the kids around. “It could be worse,” daughter Thompson says. “When he first met Mom, he drove a sporty ’55 T-Bird and got a lot of tickets. Then he got a motorcycle and got a lot of broken bones. At least with a tractor, we figure, he can’t do too much harm.”

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