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I'm glad the big Case had a motor of its own. To this day, I'm still uncomfortable with PTO-driven machinery. I'm uneasy keeping a tractor rpm at high speed to meet the power requirements of the machine it powers. . don't feel in control of the tractor under those conditions. No matter which of our four tractors we hooked to the Case combine, I was able to gear it so that it quietly pulled the combine at the right speed. Keeping the tractor's noise down also let me hear any problems that occurred in the combine. A squeaky belt or an overloaded combine motor were always easy to detect.
In the low, marshy areas of our wheat fields, the wheat grew so tall and the heads so heavy before harvest, that a strong gust of wind could permanently lay them on the ground. Luckily our land had few rocks, which allowed us to lower the combine head to within an inch of the ground and scoop up most of the downed wheat.
Oats were a different story. They competed with the ragweed every year and since they ripened a few weeks later than the wheat, the ragweed often grew within a few inches of the heads - especially in a wet year.
Years later, Dad finally hired a man with a huge self-propelled combine to harvest our wheat. Our prized Holstein herd was growing so large that the majority of our time was dedicated to baling extra hay. We also needed more acres of corn, and what's more, the live-stock show circuit started in July with the state show, and we had a reputation for having show winners, which also took an increasing amount of time. In the end, it was good we could hire someone else to harvest the wheat, because we had more time to dedicate to other farm chores.
One of my many responsibilities was to take our Dodge 1 1/2-ton truck to the field and drive up beside the self-propelled combine so Dad could unload it. Sometimes, I'd see Dad study the ground behind the big combine. He was looking for wheat kernels that missed the hopper and ended up on the ground. He'd shake his head in disgust, but Dad never said much about it to the combine operator. That was the price he paid for not doing it himself with our old 6-foot Case.
Dad finally traded the Case combine in for credit on a new D-l 7 Allis-Chalmers tractor. The D-l 7 did a fair job, but it was no Case. It may be been big and cumbersome, but that old Case did the best combining job I've ever seen. FC
Each summer, chaff that built up caught fire on the combine's hot engine and occasionally burned some farmers' combines as well as part of their wheat fields, but Dad was definitely a preventive-maintenance person and taught us how to avoid such danger.
- Harry Macomber lived on a Michigan farm until he was 24. He now resides in Watertown, Tenn., and works in the printing and publishing industry.