I was born Jan. 23, 1930, so I have lived through a bit of history. Here are a few comments on the March 2019 issue of Farm Collector:
Page 2, Memories of a Former Kid: In the 1930s, we got parts from the dime store and built our own radios. It was fun to sit around in the evening after farm chores and munch popcorn and see how many stations we could pick up.
Sam Moore’s column on grain drills: We had a wood box McCormick-Deering grain drill. When putting it away for the winter, we removed the fertilizer spiders and gates, also the seed tubes, and put them in a container of kerosene to keep them from rusting. In the spring, the parts were replaced and one wheel would be jacked up so the drill could be turned to see if everything worked. It was much better than going to the field on planting day and have a part break because it had rusted over the winter. What a joy it was to plant oats with a team of horses. It was very quiet; you could hear birds sing and the ring of the dinner bell when Mother called us to dinner (now known as lunch).
Clell G. Ballard’s article on heating the farm shop: Our local grain elevator had a Warm Morning stove in its office (the only place that had heat). In my spare time, I helped unload coal from the coal cars, involving quite a bit of handwork. They would get boxcars full of bagged fertilizer. The bags weighed 125 pounds each. Our job was to unload the fertilizer and haul it to the warehouse for storage until spring planting time. There were no pallets or forklifts, just plain old manpower. Two of us would usually unload the cars, one guy on each end of the bag. It’s quite a bit different today with bulk shipments; no lifting or grunting.
Young folks today do not know what real work is. When I look back on my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, they worked harder than my generation.
James Smith’s letter to the editor (Death-defying performance at the county fair): When I was a kid, an old wood-stave silo was set up at the county fair one year with an observation platform around the outside so folks could look down into the silo. Daredevils would rev up their motorcycles inside the silo. They would start going around inside at the bottom and as they gained speed, they would start going around faster and faster, finally going around at the top. It provided quite a thrill for the spectators.
John Heath, Sullivan, Ohio
Send letters to: Farm Collector Editorial, 1503 SW 42nd St., Topeka, KS 66609 • fax: (785) 274-4385 • email: editor@farmcollector.com • online at Farm Collector
