You won’t find Dicky Siding on a map. Don’t bother to check, I’ve tried.
For several years my father and I collected the McCormick-Deering service manuals, and overhaul manuals for the Farmall Regular, 10-20 McCormick-Deering and 10-20 Titan.
We found one book, “Servicing McCormick-Deering Tractors and Trucks”, that showed the exteriors and interiors of International Harvester dealerships in the late 1920s. One of these dealerships was called Dicky Siding, Illinois. At the time we didn’t think anything of it.
We became friends with Harold Tobenski who was a mechanic and block man for an International Harvester dealership in Illinois.
He was an interesting fellow who ate fish most days from his pond next to his house. A pond he built with a 10-20 McCormick-Deering tractor and scraper. He still had the tractor, but it had been through a fire and wasn’t much left to restore.
Harold started working at the Sidentop International Harvester dealership in the early 1940s.
He told us one of his first jobs was scraping grease on an old 10-20 McCormick-Deering Tractor. When the United States entered World War 2 in 1941, Harold enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served until the end of the war.
After the war he returned to the Sidentop dealership. The dealership was later purchased and became Siedentop-Hendricks where Harold continued to work until the 1980s.
Not sure how the conversation came up, but one day we were talking with Harold and we asked him about the dealership where he worked. He told us about the current Hendricks dealership, but then said the original dealership was at Dicky Siding.
Dad knew he heard that name before, so that evening he looked in the Service book and found the picture below with the text,
“Some dealerships have no space in their present quarters which is suitable for service work. This should not prevent the giving of service-space can be obtained in some manner. A. L. Siedentop, of Dickey’s Siding, Illinois, was in this fix, but he solved the problem by erecting the building shown above, part of which is used for storage and part converted into a real service station.”
Next time we saw Harold we took the book with us and showed him the picture. He confirmed it was the dealership where he worked. It was called Dickey Siding because the dealership was closer to the railroad siding then the town. The siding was just a junction off the main railroad line with a dock where the dealership could send or receive shipments.
Harold then told us the building still stood and where it was located. So, one weekend we figured out where it was and sought to ask permission to look inside. The series of shots below I took after we received permission to looks inside.
The A. L. Siedentop Dealership was founded in 1923. It’s unknown when the building was built, but it was sometime in the 1930s.
The interior still has gray paint on the walls and on the ceiling you can see where chain hoists once hung.
Dad found another copy of the Deering Service manual and gave it to Harold, so he could have his own copy. Later on, Dad and Harold rebuilt a Farmall Regular cylinder head together. I’ve been sharing some footage from that project. I’ll be sharing more.
Sadly Harold passed away at the age of 93 on April 12, 2019. He was born on September 23, 1925 in Irwin, Illinois.
-Dan Boomgarden July, 2023
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