HOMER — Don Lamb was never really bored. It’s not something he understands well. He’s too busy to be bored.

“You have to enjoy what you do.” » said Lamb. “That’s what’s fun for anyone who does anything. Many people have jobs and hate going to work, then complain about it when they get home. I never took this route.

Where Lamb spent most of his life was on a gravel road, operating his own small business in the remains of the pioneer town of Homer. Not much has changed here over the years, and that seems to be one of the main reasons for the attraction of customers coming from all over to have Lamb look at a machine that no one else seems to be able to fix.

“Everyone asks me if I’m bored” » said Lamb. “I don’t know what bored means.”

The rhythm of life is different in Homer. Pull into the driveway of Lamb Tractor and Small Engine Repair on a sunny June afternoon and you’ll see birds singing in the trees as a gentle wind blows through the tall grass around the sprawling property that was once part of ‘a small, thriving community. .

It can take a few minutes to wander through the caverns of Lamb’s Shop, which wraps around what was once Homer’s Grocery Store. A dance hall on the second floor was a popular place for couples to let off steam on Saturday nights.

Every day, we find Lamb under a tractor, behind his welder’s hood, retrieving a part or welcoming members of the tractor club which meets here regularly.

Lamb spent most of his life within a few miles of Homer. He learned at a young age to work on just about anything mechanical, and it is this work that makes life interesting.

“I grew up about a mile and a half away.” » said Lamb. “In 1960, my father bought this place behind us. There was a house and a garage and we built a new store. He worked for the Woodard Brothers, but he left that business and we boys all grew up working in the store.

His father, Eldon Lamb, was a blacksmith who built a diversified business in his new shop in Homer.

“He worked on tractors, he did welding, he was a blacksmith,” » said Lamb. “He repaired a lot of farm machinery for everyone. He sold tires, tractor tires, truck tires, and had quite a business in car tires. »

Back when many Iowans put studded snow tires on their cars in the winter, the Lamb boys were busy swapping tires from time to time for customers who flocked to Homer every spring and fall.

“When we got out of school, we came home and we had to work until 10:30 or 11 p.m. at night because the cars were lining up in the driveway and waiting.” » said Lamb. “There was a certain date in the fall where you could put them on, and then you had to take them off at a certain time in the spring, so there was a flood of people coming out.”

Somehow, all this hard work seemed like normal family life for the Lambs. When there was a project to be done, they worked on it together. When neighbors needed help, everyone pitched in.

“My work ethic, I have to say, comes from my father” » said Lamb. “We have done a lot of work. Back then we baled hay for everyone. We hulled corn. We ran a custom bundling business. We hauled cattle when they built the new stockyards in Webster City.

For Lamb, learning alongside his father seemed like a lot of fun.

“I started working on lawn mowers when I was 8 years old and my dad showed me how to adjust the points. They all had points; it’s not like today where everything is electronic.

Growing up in a time and place like Homer in the 1950s and 1960s gave children their own carefree spirit.

Lamb fondly remembers playing in the dusty streets of Homer as a child during this era. The streets are long gone, but Lamb can look at a fence and tell the visitor exactly where the streets and blocks were laid out. Homer had his own two-story schoolhouse, several houses, an old courthouse, and four churches.

This strong faith in the Homeric community is perhaps one of the reasons why Lamb made it a practice not to work on Sundays. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule and Lamb will never forget one fateful Sunday when he broke his own rule.

“I never do anything on Sunday for anyone” » said Lamb. “We were raised that way, not working on Sundays, and that’s not the case. I told my wife that day I had to go down and plant these 50 acres. She said, “You don’t usually do this.” » But it had rained and the pressure was strong to put the corn in the ground.

That’s when this man, an expert in the art of working on any type of tractor, slid onto the tractor’s running board, grabbed the gear lever, and the rest is history. He tore his back and wrist, but was lucky to be alive when he was run over by his own tractor.

“I get chills down my spine thinking about it.” » said Lamb.

The accident happened in 1999. The following year, Case offered him a job as a mechanic and then shop foreman in Ames. The benefits were tempting.

“When you’re self-employed, you get your own benefits, and they had really good benefits.” » said Lamb.

He took the job and enjoyed it, but each day as he passed his Homer store on his way to Ames, Lamb left behind a piece of his heart.

“Every day I would pass by here and there was a part of me that was just there. » he said. “I was trying to do something on the weekend to help people, so I stopped and came back here. »

When he did, farmers here and abroad breathed a collective sigh of relief that Lamb was back in his shop. He gained a reputation for being able to repair tractors, small engines, chainsaws and a myriad of other farm implements that most people discard.

These days, Lamb still services tractors, welds, sells lawn and garden tires and stays busy repairing lawn mowers and chainsaws. The combination of storms, derechos and the emerald ash borer killing ash trees means that just running chainsaws for people is a full-time job.

In August, it will once again host the annual Homer Threshing Bee, bringing people together to relive the farming methods of the past and simply enjoy an August afternoon in a place where the past seems to come alive in the happiest way .

He likes working with his hands and wants more young people to get into it.

“I think it’s rewarding to work with your hands” » said Lamb. “Helping people is what I love doing. If you have a problem, I like to solve it.

Sometimes, when a particular project presents a challenge, he finds the best thing to do is to step away from it for a day or two, then come back with a fresh mind to tackle it again. Lamb doesn’t know much about abandonment. It’s not part of his DNA.

“You must understand that there is nothing you cannot do” » said Lamb. “There is nothing impossible. You can do it. You just need to study it and understand it. Do it and move forward. You don’t need to forget things from the past, you learn from them.