Chloe Cox

COX, FOWLER, CAMPBELL, ALDRICH, ARNOLD

Posted By: LuRee (Carlson) Runnells (email)
Date: 3/11/2005 at 19:42:50

YESTERDAY REMEMBERED......

By Ralph Arnold
Van Buren County Register - July 1, 1993

Lewis Fowler said the man was a wizard. Hollis Campbell called him a genius. George Aldrich said, "we can't get along without him". They were all speaking of Chloe Cox, Cantril, foreman of the Van Buren County Shops. The year was 1940, and Cox had just resigned his position with the county, to accept a job with a heavy equipment manufacturer in Cedar Rapids.

The year before Cox had invented a machine, a toy really, that intrigued mechanically-minded men. It seems one day the county employees were discussing the marvelous advancements made in tractors and other machinery used in farming and road building in recent years. Chloe Cox made the statement there would come a time when farmers would sit in their living rooms, and by remote control, direct their tractors working in the field. This brought a great deal of heehawing from Cox's buddies.

The skepticism of the county employees served only as a stimulus for Chloe's vivid imagination, and he set about building his dream machine in his spare time. Working on Saturdays and Sundays he put together a miniature tractor resembling the famous Caterpillar bulldozer, complete in intricate detail. Even the hinged tracks had tiny cleats on them.

The finished machine was 14 inches wide, 10 inches high, 21 inches long and weighed about 65 pounds. It was powered with two quarter horse electric motors, and was operated by a remote control devise.

On a chilly January morning, Cox demonstrated his brain child on the courthouse lawn. George Aldrich, County Engineer, ran a thirty foot extension cord out of his office window to power the gadget. Then, with the control switch in hand, put the machine through all the maneuvers a big Cat can do.

To demonstrate the sturdiness of the tiny tractor, Cox weighing 195 pounds stood on the hood, while Aldrich continued to operate it. Then a rope was tied to the little drawbar and the other end to a ton and a half pickup and the truck was towed as far as the extension cord would reach. A husky man with his feet firmly planted in the sod of the courthouse lawn, and grasping the radiator of the little Cat tried to stop it. He couldn't.

Sometime later, Hollis Campbell, a salesman of the Caterpillar Company, took the Cox toy to Peoria to demonstrate it to the company officials. There Campbell put the machine through its paces to the amazement of a yard full of engineers. The Caterpillar lawnskeeper was thoroughly disgusted with the little monster, it tore up his manicured grass.

Lewis Fowler said he had known Chloe Cox and his family all of their lives. As boys, he said the Coxes didn't own conventional childhood toys, they had wheels, gears, pulleys and screws. Anything mechanical was their god. They knew how to take anything apart and put it back together again.

Chloe Cox had been employed by the Van Buren County Road Division for about fifteen years, four years of that time as foreman of the Maintenance Shops. He resigned his position in January, 1940 to take a job with the LaPlant Choate Manufacturing Co. of Cedar Rapids. He was to work in the company experimental department improving heavy machinery. While working for Van Buren County he had developed and made many of the snowplows, graders and other machinery used by the road building and maintenance crews.

Submitted by LuRee Runnells; Chloe Cox was my great uncle, his parents were Alonzo and Mary E. Hales Cox, being their eleventh child. This newspaper article was in a collection of old obituaries & photos that is now in my possession; and I also submitted it in memory of all the men who worked and maintained the Van Buren County roads that all of our ancestors drove on many years ago.