Goshen, Indiana
Some of you fellows will want to shoot this man but just wait he
is a good man if he does have a bad heart. Ed.
This summer (1954) I attended the Threshers Home Coming near Ft.
Wayne, Ind., and subscribed to the IRON-MEN ALBUM which I enjoy
very much.
I have wrecked 55 traction steam engines of probably a dozen
different types and makes. Also probably 200 tons of gas engines
from 11/2 to 75 hp. I know today I wrecked
quite a few that were in good condition. How I wish I would have
known then what I know now. I would like to have one all painted up
nice and sitting in my back yard.
I have a 7hp. Waterloo Boy gas engine mounted on a cement
abutment I built especially for the engine. It is at least 45 years
old. Whenever we get company we start the engine just to hear it
run. Of course we have many other old things around including an
80-year-old Dog Power machine that was built in the state of
Vermont. It is brand new. I found it in Cheif, Michigan, in the
warehouse of an old hardware store.
After wrecking the steam and gas engines, about 20 years ago, I
also took out about 60 or 70 boilers from mint distills and factory
buildings and sold the castings to the foundries at Elkhart, Ind.,
and the flues to a firm that cleaned them and made them into sign
posts. The boiler shells I sold to farmers for dredge ditch
culverts and bridges. A few for water supply tanks.
Then I kind of let up on that job through an operation and went
buggy hunting for the Amish people. In the last 17 years I traveled
better than 400,000 miles and bought around 700 buggies and many
antiques.
About 12 years ago I bought 14 tons of harness hardware and
equipment machinery and all that was ever in a harness shop, in
Grand Rapids, Mich., and run for about 6 years one of the most
modern harness shops around. My oldest son was just as handy making
a new single buggy harness as he was to eat a good meal at the
Schrock table. When he got married seemingly the sport craze was
over, so I sold the entire shop, or what was in the shop. Now I
have 3 harness stickers again and probably a ton of new harness
equipment and hardware. We have many buggie springs, wagons,
surries, carts, too. We just live on one and one-tenth acres.
I came from the farm as my father, always a farmer. We lived in
Oklahoma, 80 miles west of Oklahoma City, in Custer County, close
by Thomas, from 1905 to 1914. So we lived in Oklahoma two years
before it became a state. We had a steam threshing rig about four
years.
Well, now I’m 51 years old and Saturday morning I had a
light heart attack. So the Doctor says stay in bed or on a chair.
One neighbor, Mr. Simon Bontregery R. D. 4, Goshen, Ind., was in to
see me, and he sees the IRON-MEN ALBUM and he wants it too, so I am
sending in for him.
Thank you for the IRON-MEN ALBUM.
