1950 Ferguson TO-20

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This story starts in about 1994; we (my wife Gini and me, Ted Neis) bought a cabin near Bailey, Colorado, about 1 hour west of Denver. This was a new cabin and had fresh grade all around it. The driveway kept washing out from the frequent summer storms at that altitude (9,200�). So I bought a �1950� Ferguson TO-20 tractor with a grader blade on the back, so I could keep ahead of the washouts before we had no driveway. The tractor had been repainted but that was about it, I did some work on the electrical system etc. but it did the job and ran fine. About two years latter my Grandson Timmy was old enough to go the cabin with �Beebo and Pee-Pa� these were the names he always called us. Later on his younger brother Todd would come up for weekends etc. too. They loved to ride on my tractor and they both called it and every other tractor they saw a Pee-Pa tractor. I have photos of Timmy �Driving �the Pee-Pa Tractor. Later on the tractor was not being used much because the driveway was stabilizing and not washing out anymore. So I sold the tractor to a friend of mine to use to mow his back lot. (My Grandsons were none to pleased that I sold the Pee-Pa tractor). After that he traded it in on a tractor with a front-end loader, after that we lost track of the little Ferguson. It never was much of a thought to us, other than the boys were disappointed when I sold it. On November 3, 2003 our only child �our daughter� Sharon, her husband Stewart Racey, and both boys Timmy and Todd were killed instantly in a head-on crash in Virginia, where they had moved about four years previously. We returned to Virginia about two months nafter the funeral and had to finish sorting and donating their things that belonged to the kids. We started the drive back to Denver with what we wanted to keep to remember them by. While we were driving I remembered the Pee-Pa Tractor, Gini and I talked about it and I wondered if it was available as a die-cast model, I thought when we got home I would look on the internet and see if I could find one. We were in the Hayes, Kansas on I-70. We stopped at a McDonalds for some lunch, Gini unfortunately got the salad and 15 minutes later had food poisoning. She was sick as dog, so we pulled into a Motel in Hayes, I went to the Walmart and got her some medicines etc. She was laying in bed sick and I was sitting there watching her be sick. I got out my laptop computer and hooked up to the motel high-speed connection, I went to E-Bay to search for a die-cast Ferguson TO-20 like we had discussed. Only one Ferguson TO-20 came up on the E-Bay search and it was full sized one, not a model. Well to my surprise it was not only the same model and year as the old Pee-Pa tractor, it was the same tractor, I had sold so many years before, I could recognize it easily. I showed it to Gini and she could not believe it either. I e-mailed the seller with my cell phone number and he called me back immediately, he had only listed it one hour before we found it. I asked him to with-draw it from the auction and I would buy it cash the next day, he agreed. I bought the tractor the next day and we have now completely restored it. I don�t know what you think of this story, but I know what happened and no one can convince me, that my boys did not have a hand in this, in some way. I have decided to give it a try at restoring old tractors for a while. I think Timmy and Todd would like that!!! By the way the man who sold me back the tractor had purchased it from (in his words) from some guy over near Todd Creek, Colorado. Ted A. Neis Submitted by Ted A. Neis, from CO