215 Oaklawn Avenue Fremont, Ohio 93420
It was somewhat foggy on Friday morning, August 19, when we left
for the Dover show. I drove with John Dawley of Fremont, a man I
went to school with in Clyde, and Charles Young an ace tractor
mechanic retired from Clyde. Charles worked for the IHC dealer for
many years.
We ran into our first detour through a small city of Norwalk.
After, we drove into Ashland County and we began seeing a lot of
trees with clusters of cobwebbs on them. The farther we went, the
worse they got. I think they are called ‘web worm’.
We were driving with the lights on as it was quite bad and foggy
in places. At Ashland we left US 250 and took Route 60 to
Loudonville and picked up Route 39, a scenic route through Amish
country. We were warned by signs to be alert for horse and buggies
but we only saw a few. We got to the Dover Fairgrounds about 10:30.
Steam was already up on most of the rigs there and other outfits
were coming in right along. John wanted a cup of coffee so Charlie
and I started a tour of the many engines and tractors. About noon I
had John paged to meet us at the car for dinner. We sat in our lawn
chairs in the shade an date our lunch we had brought from home.
Nearby sat another couple and after eating I decided to speak to
them.
My opening remark was ‘Sure is hot today…Where are you
folks from?’ We met Earl Hamilton and his wife from Lisbon,
Ohio. He is a retired stationary engineer. In his long span of
working years, he worked as an operator of a steam shovel – one he
worked on used a ton of coal an hour.
The boiler was about seven feet tall inside and a man could
stand up inside when they worked on it repairing flues, crown sheet
and whatever. He was a very interesting man to talk with and we
hope to meet up with him again!
An afternoon tour of arts and crafts, gas engines, flea markets,
exhibitors, etc. proved interesting and helped us meet up with a
few familiar faces. However, about three we decided to start for
home. We had about 120 miles to cover and it would make it too late
to stay and watch the parade of engines, tractors and machinery
which I’m sure proved to be excellent.
Sight-seeing on the way home included an Amish man with his team
and wagon in a pasture field taking down a wire fence in
preparation to clean up a load of four-inch clay field tile that
had upset into the ditch – I presume from a truck.
