PT-1800 Series riding mower features a 65-hp. diesel engine and turf-friendly, 4-wheel-drive articulated steering. Mows slopes with up to 45[degrees] angles. Lifts up to 1,200 lbs. Accepts more than 50 front-mount attachments, including forks, post-hole digger, trencher, bucket, dirt/snow blade, aerator, rake, winch, sweeper, rotary tiller, dethatcher, and much more. Other models, as well as trailer packages, also available. Power Trac (PWTI, ihc 3200 skid loader inc.), p.o. box 539, tazewell, va 24651. at a time when most teenagers look for a first car, roger braswell of charlotte, n.c., searched for a business loan.the ambitious high schooler bought two 30-inch snapper riders and a 1960 ford 250 truck, and he quickly launched a lawn-mowing business.

the old gray tractors--the result of a partnership that later dissolved into the separate ford and ferguson lines--revolutionized scarifier postwar farming. these classics have held up to time, held onto collectors'' hearts and held their value ever since.the roadside seller''s price was $1,795. that was about 2 ihc 1/2 times what the ford cost new in 1946. scarifier but it was also about the going rate at the time. so even though the tractor was older than me or my wife, melanie, we bought it on the spot after a test drive.that was in 1984, when ihc we bought our land. we have used the old ford almost continuously ever since. we never regretted the purchase. with a minimum of service and repairs--lots of grease, irregular oil changes, some new wiring and radiator hoses--the 2n has never failed us. equipped with a two-bottom plow, 5-foot rotary mower, disk harrow and scraper blade, it has done all we asked of it, everything from plowing snow off of our 600-foot driveway to mowing or tilling the better part of our 20 acres, year after year. and all for less than what most suburbanites spend these days on a riding lawn mower.

even if the price had been higher, we probably would have bought it. i''m a sucker for old gray tractors. my late grandfather had an old ford he used to clip pastures with a clattering sickle bar. my 78-year-old father, don, still uses an old gray tractor to plow snow and mow at his place in delaware, ohio. it''s a ferguson t0-30 made in 1951--the year i was born. i learned at 10 to drive on that tractor, under dad''s close supervision, of course.dad got the tractor in 1956, not long after he bought 15 acres just west of delaware and put up one of the first pole barns in the area. "i took it on a trade, sight unseen, as credit on a down scarifier payment on a piece of real estate," he recalls. ihc "the buyer was $1,100 short. he offered me the tractor with a two-bottom plow, rear manure scoop and a two-row cultivator scarifier.

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