Then sat inside his Chevrolet for twenty minutes with a notepad.
Howard waited outside the machine shed.
Eldon finally approached.
“Forty-four thousand.”
Howard stared.
“For all three?”
“Yes.”
“My banker said thirty-five.”
“Then your banker’s wrong.”
Howard swallowed.
“You have forty-four?”
“Not today.”
That was the problem.
Eldon had ten thousand liquid.
“I can put ten down.”
“Balance in sixty days.”
Howard looked toward the farm.
“Bank wants payment sooner.”
“I can put terms in writing.”
“You miss sixty days?”
“You keep the ten and machines come back.”
Howard studied him.
“You already got a buyer?”
Eldon did not lie.
“For the 4840, probably.”
“How much?”
Eldon smiled.
“Enough.”
Howard laughed.
“Fair.”
They shook hands.
Eldon already knew Dennis Rutherford in Gage County wanted a 4840.
Dennis had offered $58,000 for a working one.
Eldon rebuilt the turbo for nine hundred dollars through an Omaha machine shop.
Roy Diedrich helped him install it for cash.
The tractor sold.
Then the combine.
Then the planter.
Total profit:
Just over $19,000.
But profit was not the important part.
Howard Greer was.
Howard lost the farm that November.
There was nothing Eldon could do about that.
But Howard walked away with more equity than his bank had expected.
He moved into town.
He told everyone the same story.
“At the worst point in my life, Carver could’ve offered me thirty and I’d have taken it.”
“He didn’t.”
“That tells you what kind of man he is.”
Farmers remembered.
By 1983, people began calling Eldon before calling auctioneers.
By 1984, buyers called too.
“I need a 4440 before spring.”
“Find me a 6620 combine.”
“I’ve got seventy thousand total and need tractor, planter, and disk.”
Eldon became something different from a machinery jockey.
He listened.
Matched equipment to farms.
He understood that a farmer with six hundred acres did not need the same machine as one with eighteen hundred.
He told people not to buy things.
That built trust faster than selling.
A young farmer named Tommy Voss once asked about a 4840.
Eldon said:
“You don’t need it.”
Tommy laughed.
“I want it.”
“I know.”
“It’s a good tractor.”
“Yes.”
“Then sell it to me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You farm four hundred acres.”
“Buy the 4430.”
“It’s cheaper.”
“And better for you.”
Tommy bought the 4430.
Ten years later, he still told that story.
In 1984, Phil Sutter hired Eldon to assemble an entire equipment line.
Phil farmed twelve hundred acres.
He wanted late-1970s Deere iron.
Reliable.
Repairable.
Used.
Eldon spent months finding machines.
Kansas.
Iowa.
South Dakota.
He slept in cheap motels.
Ate diner food.
Carried cashiers’ checks inside a metal box beneath his truck seat.
He inspected machines in snow.
Rain.
Mud.
One tractor in Kansas had been represented as “excellent.”
Eldon drove four hours.
Started it.
Listened for thirty seconds.
Turned it off.
Seller asked:
“What?”
Eldon replied:
“Main bearing.”
Seller laughed.
“You can hear that?”
“Yes.”
They pulled the pan.