Oskaloosa, Iowa
Thank you for calling my attention to the expiration of my
subscription to THE IRON-MEN ALBUM magazine. I do not want to be
without this Magazine no, not for one issue. I look forward to its
coming with a great deal of anticipation and joy.
I have been interested in steam engines since my early boyhood.
& Shepard engine and a 32 inch hand-fed, web stacker, hand
measure separator. Yes, he had the oscillating stacker, too. I
fired this engine for some time. It was a left hand guide and
without a clutch. Later he traded this one for an old time 12 hp.
Rumley. The kind with the belt wheel between the right drive wheel
and the boiler. I have no idea as to how old it was, but it was a
good little engine. We had to have the cylinder rebored and then it
had a lot of power. We owned two other engines of the same type and
make. They were 15 hp. With these last two engines we had Case
steel separators of the first ones to come out. The last Rumley
didn’t have the power that it ought to have had, but we got
along very nicely. We junked the last one back in about 1939 or
’40. I now wish I had it back. The first 15 hp. engine had a
lot of power, but it was so very rough on gravel roads, that we had
to cut every other cleat off the drivers and put two in the place
of one, spacing them equally which made it a much easier engine
over the gravel roads but not so good in mud. With the 12 hp.
engine we had a 33 inch Russell separator with a Great Western
feeder, a blower big enough for two separators. It was so big that
it was with difficulty that we could top out a straw rack without
blowing the top all off. One wing finally broke off and my father
took the chisel and cut the opposite one off and then we had just
about the correct amount of wind for what ever we were
threshing.
I still am glad to drive 100 miles to the Mt. Pleasant Old
Thresher’s Reunion and display. I would just love to once more
get into a pair of overalls and run one of those steam engines. I
understand the language a steam, engine uses. Keep the IRON-MEN
ALBUM coming. Also keep up the reunions of old threshers.
I am a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and served in the
Friends Church as pastor for 31 years and am now and have been
since 1951, General Superintendent of our Iowa Yearly Meeting of
Friends Church, (Conference, if you are Methodist).
Yours for the good old days.
