With the Holiday season in the past-tense and another year in
the pre-tense, one ponders what to do in sixty-two that wasn’t
done in sixty-one. Certainly, we are thankful for the many
blessings bestowed on us the past year.
Last fall, we made a trip to the Gordon, Wisconsin area –
visited OLIVIA LOCKMAN who has a 60 Case for sale, then drove out
4790, located deep in the woods and undergoing restoration at their
resort. He would consider trading it on some engine more ready to
go.
If you’ll pardon my boldness, and that without protest to
the average nimrod -the past deer hunting season set me to some
loose thinking. Years ago, I was considered odd in that I catered
to steam engines, now I am almost conspicuous ’cause I
don’t hunt deer. Having observed time and time again a group of
hunters stalking some legal harmless deer – in this semi-open
country – a deer’s days are practically numbered – the further
it gets from one high powered rifle, the closer to another. Deer
have crossed my fields at high noon apparently fagged out from a
non-stop flight since break of dawn. I fail to see any
sportsmanship involved with these odds . Now, you take hunting with
a bow and arrow, that’s the real test of a sportsman – where
skill and patience tries out a man’s ingenuity; kinda like
fishing.
With so many hunters combing the woods, added precautions should
be taken . A friend of mine operates a sawmill on his ‘back
80’ takes the power unit home lest some hunter or stray bullets
‘elaborate on the cooling system’. At the close of the
season, this ad appeared in a local newspaper, ‘Reward – 50
dollars for information as to person who fired 3 shots into the
power shovel in my gravel pit and doing, considerable damage, any
information kept strictly confidential’ signed by IVOR
JORGENSON.
Records show hunters caused 179 forest fires in Wisconsin during
1960. That same year some negligent hunters shot a farmer’s
span of mules near Menomonie, Wisconsin. I know hunters that almost
despise venison, but hunt they must, barring any cost. Having
tagged their game, they display the carcass suspended from a tree
prior to taking any steps in caring for the meat. In Minnesota, 8
hunters were accidentally shot to death during the ’61 season
and 8 others succumbed to heart attacks. Apparently wild life is
suffering some revenge.
A couple were taking a trip and somehow got to arguing and it
got to a point whence neither one said a word. After miles of
driving, he noticed a donkey grazing by the roadside, he broke the
silence with – ‘Relations of yours?’-‘Yes’, she
replied, ‘on my husband’s side’.
Mr. and Mrs. ALF ELDEN and sons OLE and CARL paid us a visit
from Oslo and showed us some very interesting slides they had taken
in Norway and Sweden – sorta compensates for the year of ‘The
Old Country’. Well, we’ve been to Norway and we’ve seen
Oslo, but not Oslow, Norway. You see, ELDENS reside in Oslo, Minn.,
and stage an old time thresh-bee annually and also operate a public
Museum during the summer months. Included in their slides were
scenes of the Midnight Sun and a picture of an old barn from whence
came a groundhog Thresher, one of his rare items. (By the way,
Alice and I stayed one night in Norway, Michigan last spring
enroute to the copper country.
The Spouse celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary last
November. It turned out to be quite a round-up of friends,
including several steam fans,-outside of that it wasn’t any
different than the twenty-fourth or twenty-third – kinda put me in
mind when ELWOOD OLSONS were going to have ‘Open-House’ on
their same goal – he came into the barber-shop to get a clip and
said he had told his wife maybe to check on it, sorta seemed like
the 50th to him. Then too, I recall working with the JOE KASSEL
thresh rig west of North Branch, Minnesota back in ’33. It so
happened we threshed on the HAMMARGREN farm on their 50th wedding
anniversary. Joe says to Mrs. Hammargren, ‘Ya, married 50 years
is quite a long time’ – ‘Yes’, she says, ‘It is, to
the same man.’