Antique tractor owner is world record setter

[/media-credit] LINDA MOODY/Advocate photo
This 1977 John Deere 400 is the small­est of Bob Finkbine’s three antique trac­tors. He took it to the Guin­ness World Record For a Parade of Clas­sic Trac­tors in Nebraska.

By Linda Moody
lmoody@dailyadvocate.com

WEST MANCHESTER — Bob Finkbine, an antique trac­tor owner, took part in a world record-setting event, and had to miss part of the Great Darke County Fair week.
After weigh­ing his options, he chose to attend the Guin­ness World Record For a Parade of Clas­sic Trac­tors at the Nebraska State Fair in Grand Island, Nev., on Aug. 25. So, he and wife Sandy headed West in their pick-up truck, tak­ing along his 1977 John Deere 400.
“It’s only a once-in-a-lifetime thing to be part of the Guin­ness Book of World Records,” he said. “A trac­tor had to be a 1982 or older to be con­sid­ered an antique trac­tor. Ours qual­i­fied.”
Finkbine has three trac­tors he could have selected to be in the parade, but chose the 1977 model. His oth­ers are a 1949 John Deere M and a 1972 John Deere 4020.

“We started with the small­est so we wouldn’t have to take a trailer,” he said. “We could put it in the back of the truck.”
The Finkbines arrived on a Thurs­day, had to pre-register the trac­tor on Fri­day, and the parade was Sat­ur­day. They and other trac­tor own­ers from all around the coun­try (37 states rep­re­sented) drove thou­sands of miles to attend the event.
They were chal­lenged by a Sat­ur­day morn­ing storm.
“It was so dry out there and had no rain in two months and Sat­ur­day morn­ing in it was pour­ing
rain straight down,” Bob said.
Con­test offi­cials asked the farm­ers if they wanted to delay the parade a day,and it was agreed the parade would go on as planned.
“What’s a lit­tle rain? It was muddy mess but it quit rain­ing for the parade,” he said. “Weather is not an issue for farm­ers.”
Finkbine went on, “It was an awe­some under­tak­ing to put every­thing together. There was a 36o-acre field set aside to park trucks and trac­tors when we reg­is­tered. One man said there were so many trac­tors, we couldn’t fit on the track and had to go at least 2 1/2 hours to be con­sid­ered a parade. They had a pat­tern fig­ured out where we would run six-wide across for three laps, then some­one else could come on the track.”
There were actu­ally a total of 1,140 but some had to be towed off the track because they were no longer dri­ve­able and unable to make the 2 1/2-mile trip, while some didn’t show up.
Finkbine, who indi­cated most of the dri­vers were men, wore his patri­otic shirt and dec­o­rated his trac­tor with Amer­i­can flags.

“I’m very blessed to live in this coun­try,” he said.
Yes, those par­tic­i­pants that day set a new Guin­ness record, which is now 964 tractors/drivers. The pre­vi­ous record was set by Ger­many two years ago with 745 trac­tors, accord­ing to Finkbine.
Finkbine learned about the con­test by read­ing an announce­ment in the bi-monthly RFD-TV mag­a­zine.
“Sandy con­tacted them by email in June,” he recalled. “We had to send the ser­ial num­ber to ver­ify our trac­tor was 30 years or older, and then they had sent us back a con­fir­ma­tion. The dead­line was July 1.”
Finkbine and other dri­vers received this mes­sage in the mail: “I can share with you how moved I was at the dri­ver meet­ing that morn­ing,” said Patrick Gottsch, founder and pres­i­dent of RFD-TV, which spon­sored the event. “Look­ing out and see­ing all the smil­ing faces under those RURAL TV caps was a sight that I will never for­get. When you raised your hands with the num­ber #1 sign said, ‘on with the parade,’ it was a visual that will be etched in my mind for­ever. I have never felt such pride in all my days at RFD-TV. That was very spe­cial.”
The Finkbines are high school sweet­hearts, hav­ing grad­u­ated from Tallawanda High School in Oxford; he in 1959 and she in 1960.
“We got mar­ried in 1960 and moved to Day­ton where I ended up with a job at NCR,” Bob said. “We had decided on a farm in the Wilm­ing­ton area, but Wil­son Bunger, north of But­ler Town­ship said, ‘You got to come to God’s coun­try, and we moved here in 1965. All of our kids grad­u­ated from Arcanum, and Sandy taught read­ing to first-graders at Arcanum Ele­men­tary.”
They are the par­ents of Teresa Woodin, ele­men­tary prin­ci­pal at Tallawanda Ele­men­tary, mar­ried to Michael and the mother of two sons; Rob, who works on the pipeline but lives in the New Madi­son area with wife, for­mer Amy Sum­mers, and the father of two chil­dren; and Joe, mar­ried to the for­mer April Fair­clough, is a father to six chil­dren and is prin­ci­pal at Tri-County North.
The whole fam­ily farmed 1,200 acres at one time. Bob and Sandy, who have 50 acres now and raise Black Angus cat­tle, used to raise pigs and have a cow/calf herd.
Bob was a Darke County Beef Club adviser for 27 years and stopped doing that in 1991. He is a mem­ber of the Darke County Power of the Past, shows his trac­tors at the Arcanum Old Fash­ion Days and par­tic­i­pates in the Chris Haas Memo­r­ial Trac­tor Drive and Show in Bath, Ind.
Sandy enjoyed her time in Nebraska.
“It was some­thing,” she said. “Farm­ers have such a broth­er­hood any­way. They never meet a stranger. And, to see that many men talk and talk.”
Because the Finkbines got there early enough, she got to sit on the front row.
“I couldn’t leave the grand­stand. It was packed,” she said. “I was there from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You never knew when they were com­ing back around again.”
Finkbine doesn’t know exactly how he got into antique trac­tors but knows he just likes redo­ing them.

“I enjoy put­ter­ing around with them,” said Finkbine, who has had more than 30 trac­tors in the past 50 years. “It’s a chal­lenge tak­ing some­thing apart and mak­ing some­thing out of it.”
He goes to the trac­tor pulls at the Great Darke County Fair, the nation­als at Lon­don and goes to Pre­ble County.
“I love to watch them,” he said. “And I watch them every Tues­day night on RFD-TV.”
He worked for NCR for 12 years, was laid off in 1973 and farmed full-time until 1985, when he went to work part-time for Emery Air Freight out of Day­ton Air­port, retir­ing in 2002.
The Finkbines drove 860 miles to Nebraska in two days. On their way back, they went to the new John Deere Pavil­ion in Moline, Ill., and even stopped by the Finkbine Golf Course at the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa, which a rel­a­tive back three or four gen­er­a­tions back estab­lished.
“I love geneal­ogy and had read about the golf course,” said Sandy.
“It was a unique thing to visit,” Bob added.
On a sad note, the Finkbines learned after they returned home that the hus­band of a lady who sat beside Sandy all day in the Grand­stand, died the next morn­ing when one of the trac­tors he brought upset and killed him while load­ing it.
“Charley [Deweese] brought five trac­tors, did not have enough dri­vers but got peo­ple to drive them,” Bob said.
“His wife told me that they were over-the-road truck dri­vers and that would prob­a­bly quit doing that in two years,” Sandy recalled her say. “He also told her that this would prob­a­bly be his last parade.”

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Oct 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.