Saving the Past

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Leonard Davis stands in front of a wagon

Stepping onto the farm of Leonard Davis in South Central Kansas can be compared to a walk through the last eleven decades of the previous millennium. Leonard's farm is located in an area of our county in which few roads exist, and if you weren't familiar with the territory, you would swear it is totally devoid of population. His homestead is completely surrounded by trees, and if you aren't provided directions which are very precise, you likely won't find it without sitting in the road and honking your horn for attention (folks have become lost in that area in the past). But Leonard is not a recluse. In fact, he is one of the most outgoing people you'll ever be privileged to meet, always willing to help someone or to provide information -especially information concerning horses and antique, horse-drawn farm equipment.

My acquaintance with Leonard goes back about thirty years or so, and he and I have visited about antique farm equipment a number of times. So, on a recent Sunday afternoon, Leonard took time off from his schedule (cows calving out in the pasture, haying equipment to prepare for the first cutting) and took me on a three hour tour. He showed me more antique implements than I was able to count correctly, losing track at 105 complete implements, when I disturbed a wild turkey hen nesting a clutch of a dozen eggs. The machinery that needed it has been restored, but, Leonard says, 'Paint and fancy decoration require too much time.' There are horse-drawn sickles, plows, planters, disc harrows, orchard discs, stalk choppers, cultivators, and a few items whose function it would be a challenge to determine without explanation. In this assortment are items built by the more well known manufacturers -John Deere, Oliver, International, Allis Chalmers, etc. Manufacturers such as Sandwich Mfg. Co., Dain Mfg Co. and P&O Canton are represented, as well as smaller Kansas companies from Great Bend, Stafford, Kingman, Pratt, and others. These small firms were in business in the late 19th century through the first part of the 20th century, and the equipment manufactured by them is fairly rare, since it was only sold in a localized area.

Leonard inherited some of this equipment, and quite a bit of it was purchased at auctions in order to 'keep the junkmen from turning it into scrap iron.' He says that he can't remember which was left to him and which he purchased. He uses this equipment to 'keep interesting old ways alive,' and enjoys every minute of working with it, tinkering with it, and visiting about it. In his opinion, older machinery was built with quality and utility in mind, and companies and people took great pride in their finished products. If you look closely, you can see variations in bends in axles and variations in other components, personal stamps of the people who made them. On some equipment built by smaller firms, where you can see imperfections in cast iron parts showing, it's likely that someone hastily constructed a mold in order to provide a single component, using sand which was of a fairly coarse grain. This doesn't mean that the castings are poor, it just shows that those operations were dynamic in their outlook, weren't afraid of trying something new, and were willing to create a tool that was needed. It's even possible that a company may have built only a single implement of that type at a customer's request and this implement would probably have been a close copy of another manufacturer's product, the mold made from a component 'borrowed' off that implement. Nowadays, few firms would consider accepting the challenge of attempting to create a mold in-house in order to provide a cast component for a single implement, or even for a small production run.