Nebraska farmer Shelley Bruha discovered his family's 1946 John Deere GM tractor rusting under a tree on another farm decades after it was sold. The tractor, modified by his father due to a childhood accident involving its hand clutch, featured an extended rod for better leverage, which identified it as the family heirloom. Introduced during World War II with electric starting and lights, only about 13,000 of these tractors were produced compared to over 64,000 Model G units.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-02,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
Some family heirlooms sit in attics or pass quietly from one generation to the next.
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heirlooms → sit → next
For Nebraska farmer Shelley Bruha, his was a 1946 John Deere GM tractor, an old machine that disappeared from the family decades ago and was eventually found rusting beneath a tree on another Nebraska farm.
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that → disappear → farm
What gave it away was not a serial number or a familiar paint job.
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gave → give → it
It was a small modification made by his father many years earlier, after a childhood accident involving the tractor’s hand clutch, states an online report by Farm Progress.
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report → make → Progress
According to the online report, when Bruha was young, he climbed onto his father’s open-station John Deere GM.
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he → accord → GM
The tractor’s hand clutch had recently been tightened, leaving the young driver without enough leverage to operate it properly.
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clutch → tighten → it
The result was a frightening ride through a fencerow when Bruha reached the end of a field and could not slow the tractor as intended.
uncertain
Bruha → reach → tractor
His father responded by taking the unusual modification to a local welder.
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father → respond → welder
The clutch rod was extended, giving his son enough leverage to operate the mechanism from the driver’s seat.
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rod → extend → seat
That improvised repair became more than a practical fix.
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repair → become → fix
Decades later, it would become the clue that led Bruha back to his family’s lost tractor.
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that → become → tractor
A wartime John Deere
The John Deere GM had its own place in American agricultural history.
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GM → have → history
As per the report, introduced in 1942, during the final years of World War II, the 34-horsepower tractor was a wartime version of John Deere’s Model G.
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tractor → introduce → G.
It featured electric starting and lights, a 412-cubic-inch engine and a six-speed transmission, giving it improvements over the more basic Model G.
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It → feature → G.
Its price was also shaped by wartime controls.
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price → shape → controls
The Office of Price Administration regulated the cost of tractors under the Emergency Price Control Act, limiting price increases on models that had not undergone substantial changes during the war.
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that → regulate → war
Production of the GM ran from 1942 through 1947, with approximately 13,000 units built.
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Production → run → units
That made it considerably less common than the Model G, which saw production of roughly 64,000 units between 1937 and 1953.
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which → make → 1937
Rubber shortages during the war also meant some GM tractors left factories equipped with steel wheels.
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tractors → mean → wheels
Later examples were fitted with rubber tires, and today the model has become a sought-after machine among vintage tractor enthusiasts.
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model → fit → enthusiasts
As per the online report, the Bruha family eventually sold its GM, and the tractor spent years working on another farm.
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tractor → sell → farm
Then, decades later, Bruha came across an old John Deere sitting beneath a shade tree on another Nebraska property.
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Bruha → come → property
The tractor was weathered and rusting, and there was no serial number available to immediately confirm its identity.
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tractor → be → identity
The extended rod was a detail Bruha remembered from childhood—the modification his father had commissioned after the fencerow incident.
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father → remember → incident
It was distinctive enough to connect the neglected tractor with the machine that had once belonged to his family.
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that → connect → family
Back where it belongs
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it → belong → ?
Bruha eventually brought the tractor back into the family and restored it.
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Bruha → bring → it
The machine now has a life far removed from the working fields where it once earned its keep.
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it → have → keep
Rather than being left beneath a tree to deteriorate, it appears at parades and plow days, where its restored form offers a glimpse into an earlier era of American farming, adds the online report.
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report → leave → farming
What began as a simple modification to help a child control a tractor ultimately became the identifying mark that helped reunite an aging machine with the family that first owned it.
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that → begin → it
The Aporia
