I just wanted to share, Earl Kelly came out with his mom as she has a soft spot for Maisey. I hope you enjoy! Thank you Earl for sharing!! Story behind the land plane and mom , Rosella Johnson , born 1927 in Holtville Calif. Mom’s family moved from Stillwater Oklahoma to Holtville Calif. in 1925. Holtville is located in the Imperial Valley next to the Mexican border. To say it gets warm there is an understatement. El Centro, the nearest “big City” at 30’ below sea level. Holtville was a melting pot of all nationalities , Swiss, German, Oriental, Hispanic etc. At that time the “border” did not really exist. Most of the area was made up of 40 acre homesteads. Her father had acquired a team of black draft horses to farm with. Mom loved to ride them as a little girl. Maci dearly brought back those memories, big gentle giants. During the depression there was no work, no water , living was really hard. Her father found work in the WPA using his team of draft horses to help dig the All American Canal. This brought water to the valley and beyond and changed the landscape. Now most of those small farms are completely gone, now mega farms of 1000’s of acres in size. Grand dad Boxley was able to get a job on one of those growing farms driving an experimental tractor. A combination of Holt and Best called a “Catapiller” one of the jobs he did was pulling a land plane just like the one in your front yard. If you look closely at the hitch you will see it was modified from being pulled by a team of horses like Maci to be pulled by a tractor. In the 20’s and early 30’s there was quite a disagreement amongst the farmers as to what was better, steel wheeled tractors, rubber tired tractors or crawler tractors. Tractors were not suppose to go faster than a man could walk behind a team of horses, ie 2-3 miles an hour. In my collection of early pictures is one of Grand dad Boxley driving a Holt crawler with a single steel wheel in the front. I know of one to still exist over at the McCloud brothers ranch in Tracy. Holt was based in Stockton and Best in Oakland if I remember correctly. In the tractor/truck museum in Woodland is a small “Best” crawler that is covered in steel plates, with bullet holes in it, that had been used in Europe during WW I to pull the artillery pieces.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 00:36:14 +0000
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