When Melinda Huisinga attended the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion for the first time, she was not yet a year old. But something clearly clicked, because with the exception of the year when she was just days away from giving birth to her daughter, she hasn’t missed a reunion since.
For more than seven decades, Melinda has been both a tireless volunteer and an unofficial ambassador for the reunion. Working with family members, she fires up her 65hp Case steam engine every day during the annual event, starting early, ending late. She helps out at the show’s steam-powered carousel and answers visitors’ questions. She pitches in at her church’s food stand; sometimes she’s involved in the steam engine spark show. “I sleep well at night,” she admits.
She doesn’t limit her volunteer involvement to the week of the show. Melinda is a member of the Midwest Old Threshers board of directors and is executive director of the Old Threshers Foundation. She is committed to ensuring the reunion’s future success, and a big part of that hinges on getting another generation on board. “If you want this hobby to continue, you have to get young people involved,” she says, “because it runs on volunteers.”
Growing up at the show
On a late summer day in 1950, Melinda’s folks loaded up their infant daughter and went to something new in Mount Pleasant. A group of men had organized something they were calling an old threshers reunion. Melinda’s dad was instantly hooked. Eventually, Melinda says, his whole life revolved around the reunion.
Like father, like daughter. At age 2, Melinda was on a steam engine in the Old Thresher’s daily Cavalcade of Power. As a child, she remembers running home from grade school, doing her homework and tearing out of the house to get to the showgrounds. “I grew up at Old Threshers,” she says.
Melinda and a girlfriend, Vicki Mathews, were regulars at the show. “Her dad, Stan Mathews, was president of the Midwest Central Railroad there,” she recalls. “He had a Case steam engine and I liked riding on it.” But in all those rides, all those years, she never got a turn at the wheel. A few women were trained as operators in those days, but all were the daughters of engine owners. “I can see why he wouldn’t let me drive,” she says of her friend’s dad. “It was an older generation, and there was no steam school back then.”
Learning to get involved
From the outside looking in, it’s as if the Old Threshers Reunion is automatically issued a new crop of volunteers each year. In reality, they are drawn by a multitude of unique activities at the showgrounds. The Ladies of Steam is effective in introducing women to steam engines. School tours bring kids who ride the steam-powered carousel and learn how it works (they’re sent home with a goodie bag containing a free ticket to ride the carousel during the reunion, bringing them and their families back). Boy Scout Jamborees bring in more young people.
And then there’s the Old Threshers steam school, which was launched in the 1980s. It’s educational, it promotes safety … and it’s a highly effective volunteer recruiting tool, especially for those who are hooked on steam but don’t have an engine of their own. “People come to steam school, they get hands-on experience, and they get involved,” Melinda says. “Then they come back and volunteer at events held through the year, including the reunion.”
Increasingly, families attend steam school together. “There might be a boy or a girl who wants to go to steam school, and next thing you know, their parents and siblings come along,” Melinda says. “It becomes a family event. It gets women and the younger generation involved, ages 14 to 75. My grandsons are 9 and 10, and they want to go right now. They have operated both of our engines and are waiting for the day when they are old enough to take steam school, but I doubt if they can wait until age 14.”
Stretching young minds
There’s one simple way to get kids involved with steam engines. “The younger generation loves a hands-on experience,” Melinda says. “You just have to be careful because of the inherent danger that comes with a steam engine. That’s one of the things steam school does: It teaches safety.”
In fact, steam school and steam engines teach all kinds of lessons. “Kids working with steam engines definitely learn responsibility,” Melinda says. “They understand that steam engines are not toys and they have to be very careful.” In the process, she says, they also learn to respect adults and listen to them when they’re trying to teach them something. The payoff comes at the reunion, when they get a chance to help operate engines and compete in steam engine games.
Kids also learn lessons in science and history that they might snooze through in a traditional classroom. “We show them how iron doesn’t rust when it’s under water because there’s no oxidation,” Melinda says. “We show them the jobs that steam engines do. We talk to them about how agriculture has evolved from farming with horses, to steam engines, to tractors. We tell them about an era when there was no Nintendo, when there were water boys and engine crews.”
Jumping in with both feet
For decades, Melinda’s involvement with steam engines was largely limited to the sidelines. She enjoyed watching her son, Chad, completely embrace the hobby. After Chad’s untimely death from natural causes in 1995, Melinda had an epiphany. “The only way to really learn about a steam engine and operate one,” she says, “is to buy your own engine and then go to steam school.”
Partnering with Chad’s best friend, Ryan Lumsden, Melinda bought a 65hp Case steam engine dating to about 1915 (the engine’s serial number tag was stolen, so the date of manufacture remains unknown). “That’s the most common size of Case engines,” Melinda says.
Melinda bought the engine out of Wisconsin, where it was long used on a sawmill, she says, leaving the gears in great shape. The versatile engine could be used to provide power for a sawmill or pull an eight-bottom plow. That versatility prompted Ertl Toys to use her engine as a model for their 1/16-scale Millennium Toy in 2000.
She also puts a 1/2-scale replica of a 65hp Case steam engine through its paces at the reunion. “You can really teach younger people about steam with that engine,” she says. “Bigger engines are way too intimidating for some people, but that little engine is like a magnet.”
“The rent you pay”
Melinda’s involvement with the steam hobby, starting at that inaugural Old Threshers reunion, has not so much changed her life as enhanced it. “This hobby and this show, they’re definitely family activities,” she says. “We’ve developed so many friendships with people who come back year after year.”
Then there were the unique opportunities. For three years, she operated her engine at the Iowa State Fair, giving kids free rides and promoting the Old Threshers Reunion, the City of Mount Pleasant, Iowa Wesleyan University and the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce at a tourism booth. She and her engine were part of Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack’s inauguration in 1999. Twenty years ago, when the national governors’ convention was held in Iowa, Melinda was there with her steam engine, which she used to steam sweet corn for attendees. “We traveled all over the state with that engine,” she says.
Today, Melinda and her engine stick close to home in Mount Pleasant. Since the 2022 death of her husband, Alan, she’s taken over his role as executive director of the Old Threshers Foundation. She’s also part of a small army of dedicated volunteers who believe strongly in the value of service, and who do their best to share that value with a new generation. “My husband always said ‘Volunteering is the rent you pay for the space you occupy,'” she says. FC
For more information: Melinda Huisinga, (515) 490-9338; email: cmhstudio@aol.com.
Midwest Old Threshers Reunion will be held Aug. 31-Sept. 4, 2023 at 405 East Threshers Rd., Mt. Pleasant, IA 52641; (319) 385-8937. Contact the Old Threshers Foundation at otfoundation@oldthreshers.org.
Leslie C. McManus is senior editor of Farm Collector. Email her at LMcManus@ogdenpubs.com.
Originally published as “Recruiting for the Future” in the August 2023 issue of Farm Collector magazine.
