Since 2002, Evan and I have shared this site for our own pleasure
and hope that others enjoy it too. A series of events has caused me to
take a different direction from all play and no work. I have become more
concerned with preserving the Farm Jeep history. And a recently published
article has me asking another question - who should tell these stories?
The December 2018 issue of Farm
Collector magazine contains an article titled “The Farm Jeep-- Low-cost
alternative to the tractor couldn’t cut it on the farm” by Darrel Wrider. Even before reading the article, I was offended
by the title. How could anyone say such negative things about our beloved Farm
Jeep? How could the author have made so
many mistakes? How could the editor
allow this to happen? I lost sleep
trying to figure out how to correct this injustice.
I contacted the author at the provided email address, trying my
best to appear to be a calm rational being.
I asked him for his Jeep story, the one that had led him to write the
article. He replied that he didn’t
really have a Jeep story and in fact had never seen a Farm Jeep. He just thought it would be a fun article to
write and gathered his information from the Web. He hadn’t found farmjeep.com in his searches.
How could this happen? Don’t
we of the Willys community have exclusive rights to these stories? After more fuming, a letter to the editor and
more lost sleep, it finally occurred to me that the answer is simple. In this day and age there are no such niceties
as staying in your own lane. Mr. Wrider
has every right to publish what he wishes for fun or profit and is not
beholding to anyone. The Web is where we
get our information, factual or otherwise.
Like it or not, Mr. Wrider beat me to the punch with his
story. I am saddened that the article
readers will have a very incomplete introduction to the Farm Jeep. But the article is also an unbiased assessment
based on the data Mr. Wrider had in front of him.
So. who should tell the Farm Jeep stories? I know for certain that we are blessed with members
of the Jeep community who have worked to preserve history. While researching the four companies that produced
the Farm Jeep lifts, certain names kept appearing. We have authors and publishers. We have a wealth of knowledge that needs to
be preserved and shared.
What is to be done? My wish
for the New Year is that the keepers of the Farm Jeep history will continue to share
the told and untold stories through whatever means they have. In the forums, in articles or on the
Web. We should tell the story and
soon. There is already a segment of the public
whose impression of the Farm Jeep is that it was a short-lived failure. Say it ain’t so….
Barry
