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All this changed when Dale North had a heart attack. Before he died, he told Warren: "Get an education. Don't be a farmer. I wish I hadn't been." The death left Warren North alone at 17 with an $8,500 mortgage on the 180 acres, $1,500 in funeral and other personal debts. He could go away, let the farm go in a forced sale to satisfy the debt. Or he could stay and try to salvage something. He decided to stay: "I was young and strong," he says now with a slow smile. "And I already had done the spring plowing."
Ten-Cent Dates. Of the next four years, Warren North remembers little except being bone-weary at all times. His father had got up at 3:30. He got up at 1:30 to milk and set the cans out on the road for the creamery that paid him 2$¢ a quart. He had to cut his luxuries t010¢ a week for old Buffalo roll-your-own tobacco. On his rare dates, he limited the evening to a dime—"for two Cokes." Such ruthless self-denial paid off financially. Warren not only kept Wanda in school but paid off the $1,500 of his father's personal debts to close the estate so he and Wanda could legally inherit the 180 acres.
The years left scars. Withdrawn to begin with, Warren became more so. He married three times. He and his third wife separated six years ago. He found consolation in music, the farm and religion; a Baptist, he has long been organist for the Federated Church. The more unlucky he was in love the more his daring touch with farming coined gold. He was one of the first in Indiana to use fertilizer on wheat, pioneered with hybrid corn in 1937. His yield rose from 50 bu. to 65 bu. and ultimately 100 bu. per acre. He made up his own mind. When the experts said Russian hard wheat would not grow in his area, he planted Russian hard wheat. His yield went from 30 bu. to 42 bu. per acre.
Bigger & Bigger. He developed a passion for the latest in machinery. He bought his first tractor in 1933 for $550. Gradually he went in for bigger and more expensive models. By 1950 he was paying $3,000 for a tractor. Later he paid $4,800 apiece for three more. In 1952 he bought a $5,500 combine, decided he had made a good deal when the price rose to $8,000. He early realized that to make costly equipment pay he had to have more land to operate it more of the time. He bought Wanda's 90 acres, partly to save the land from going to another buyer, inherited 25 acres from his grandmother. The rest he picked up at steadily rising market prices from other farmers. Year by year he mortgaged and paid off, mortgaged and paid off. Gradually his property line stretched out to enclose 300 acres, then 500, then two years ago 41 ,000 acres of the finest land in northern Indiana—worth $500 an acre. When his land got ahead of his equipment, he switched from four-blade to six-blade plows to cut plowing time by one third.