CLIPPING FROM THE PRESS

Evansville, Indiana

Brother Elmer, I am sending a clipping from the press of an
Evansville paper so you can see how things are coming along. Dan
Zehr, Jim Roberts and another fellow were here April 21, to see our
Huber Roller No. 11805. I had it good and hot and they seemed to
have a good time. I guess you will be getting some pictures of it
soon. Larrimore was not able to come.

I was just thinking about an old fellow who lived around here
when I was a kid. He took on a job of running a tandem roller for a
fellow who built some rock roads about here. This man looked the
wreck over and patched it up. The piston valves were off and the
way he set them was to take a sliver of steel between his front
teeth and stick his fingers in his ears, that way he could tell
when they opened and closed. He got along all-right for a time on
level road until he had to cross a small arch bridge and that it
would not do. He said, ‘ It was time to plant corn’ and
away he went and never came back. Another fellow came along to run
it. He cleaned the exhaust nozzles and got over the bridge. I was
just a kid then but I never forgot to look at the nozzles of an
engine first thing and have found some that you could hardly stick
your finger in. Most people have them cramped too much anyhow.
During the last years that I run an engine for threshing and
saw-milling, I bored them out, of course I wanted the valves set
right with plenty of lead.

I also knew another fellow who died 20 years ago in his 80th
year, so you can see when this took place. His folks came back here
when I was 9 years old and his dad worked in a machine shop in
Sacramento, California, building traction engines for hauling ore
out of the mountains. He was running one up and down the street,
which was dirt at the time, in front of our shop, and after a few
trips he had worn a track so he did not have to steer it. He slowed
it down, got off and walked around to the steps under the crank
which had a hand rail in front of it. He had just stepped up and
was watching something when someone did something, what happened no
one seemed to know, but he made a grab and his hand went in between
the connecting rod and the disc, or maybe it was a crank, but as it
came over she shoved everything up to his shoulder. There he was
holding on with the good hand just in front of the drive wheel. He
was about to faint and knew if he turned loose he would fall under
the drive wheel. No one knew how to shut the thing off so one
fellow threw a crowbar through between the spokes on the flywheel
and that stopped everything. The doctor wanted to take the arm off
but the women folks would not allow it. They got a lot of hot bread
and milk and worked the muscles back in place as best they could
and it got good enough for him to hold a pair of calipers. The
person who told me this tale was one that I would take his word
just as soon as his bond so that engine must have had a long
pin.

A friend of mine said, ‘He thought he heard something in the
news on the radio about the Rev. Ritzman, but he wasn’t sure as
his sister (the one with the big mouth), opened it right then and
he couldn’t hear what was said.’ I hope nothing has
happened to him. What would all of us cousins do without him and
the IRON MEN? Well, make the smoke stacks ring like a bell.

Cousin with wheels in his head,