Former Agricultural Representative Mac Bolton and his truck have seen a
lot of history
Mac and Ann Bolton in front of their 1947 Dodge one ton farm truck.
Mac Bolton from Walkerton
is the owner of a 66 year old farm truck, but since his father bought it used when it was only four years old, Mac has only been driving
it for 62 years.
The 1947 one ton Dodge stake truck has been in the Bolton family farm since 1951, and had served
the
family well, hauling
pigs, cattle, logs and grain in the Seaforth area, where Bolton grew up.
Mac and his wife Ann were sitting behind the truck in the shade, on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon during
the Bruce County Heritage
Farm Show
last
week-end.. A fun filled event full
of memories
and a great experience for those who just want to see firsthand
how farming was carried out 50 to 100 years ago.
Mac took four years to bring it up to original shape, beginning in 2000. It still has the wooden sides that came with the truck as an option.
“You bought a bare truck and chassis and put on whatever you needed,” said Bolton. The first owner in 1947 had a ditching machine business, which was loaded onto a trailer and pulled by the Dodge. But it wasn’t
quite powerful enough to do that job and was then sold to the Seaforth Co-op, who picked up eggs with it for two years. It was then purchased by Mac’s father, who wrote on the side of the truck
the farm name, “R.T. Bolton & Sons.” Mac was the
second son.
Even though it’s just a single axle in the back, Mac explained that a double
axle truck gets stuck in snow more easily. “This
one was good in the snow,” he recounted. The floor of the bed of the truck was originally wood and by 2000 when Mac reconditioned it, he replaced
the original worn wooden floor
with new spruce.
Ann pointed
out that when it’s raining, it’s not that great for the passenger, “There’s only one
windshield wiper and
guess whose side it’s
on,” she laughed.
During our talk Mac pointed
towards a Massey pull type combine across the grassy divide, a “60” that was a big part of the truck’s life and owned
at one time by the Bolton farm. As the
grain was harvested
the truck was along side receiving
the golden crop, filling
up the box to the maximum. At some time Mac’s father built his own invention, a tapered
box with an auger at the bottom that was installed
in the truck. This way the grain could be augured
out, without having to shovel
it, into the granary
or sold and delivered to a local
feed mill.
Mac knows well the different weights
of grains—34 pounds
per bushel for oats,
48 pounds per bushel for barley 60 for wheat—as he was also the agricultural representative for the Ministry of Agriculture in
Walkerton between 1970 to 1992. His beat was both Bruce and Grey counties. “We were an extension
branch (of the M of A) and as such we not only gave advice to farmers but
we were
teachers,” he
explained.
Even though he retired in 1992 he lamented the demise of the agricultural service which
was cut in 2000 by the Mike Harris
Conservative Party. “Now if you want anything you pay for it,” Mac said.
The worse time of Mac’s agricultural career was during the end of the 1970’s and early ‘80’s when interest rates rose to over 20 percent and farmers by the score lost their farms to banks
and mortgage holders. “Everyone was in trouble,” said
Mac
shaking his head.
The biggest changes he has witnessed during his time as an agricultural representative and since; were crop
types. “There were no soya crops or cash crop corn, just some silage corn then,” he says. As well livestock was still mixed but over time beef became the predominant choice.
Labels: Bolton, Pictures, Updates
