One chill October day when I was headed home at a brisk walk
past Mel Hanson’s foundry and machine shop, I almost became the
focal point of a collision between friend Mel, who was standing in
his front doorway wiping his hands with a big snarl of waste, and
Ray Hawkins who had just alighted from his buggy behind a fine span
of little bays who were glad to get this opportunity to catch their
just seeing its third season with a forty-inch separator in the
nearby harvest fields.
‘By Gravy’ Ray exasperatingly exclaimed, ‘I’ll
be switched if I can keep that new kettle hot that you just checked
out for Harold a couple of weeks ago. And you know we’ve got
good water all around this country. She’s alright wheeling from
job to to job but she lays right down under the belt and one
pitcher can keep her floundered.’ Mel laid down his handful of
waste and replied, ‘Well, if you were burning straw I would
know you couldn’t warm her up, after that siege you had last
year with the old return flue job. But if this will wait ten
minutes for lunch, let’s go out and see what’s the
matter.’ Of course I could not pass up this good opportunity,
so I promptly forgot that I was hungry, and as soon as Mel finished
his lunch, he climbed in the buggy with Ray and I sat in the rear
with my feet hanging down in the dust being kicked up by the bays
and the steel tires of the little Rausch end-springer. After some
forty minutes we arrived on the scene of a slow threshing
operation, and heard the labored chuffing of the engine which was
belching forth quite a plume of grey smoke. It appeared that the
engineer and water monkeys were taking turns with the fireman’s
scoop. So often it seemed that the engineer was not required to
come up the hard way by a long apprenticeship as fireman. Most
engine owners simply bought their first engines and hired out and
trusted the ability of their fireman. Sometimes this condition had
its drawbacks, and this appeared to be one of them.
Harold was the first to speak, and he was pretty well het-up.
‘If I had that old sweep here I would put that team to work and
get some threshing done, ‘he called to Mel. ‘Yes’, was
the reply, ‘But you would have to feed them something better
than this oil-shale you seem to be using for fuel. What happened to
all the run-of-the-mine coal you left town with the other day?’
Harold stuttered, ‘Well, with bituminous coal at nine dollars a
ton shipped in, I don’t see why we can’t take advantage of
this locality and help ourselves to those lignite outcroppings
along the road. All the farmers use it in their stoves and none of
them has froze up yet.’
‘Well, danged if you ain’t a fair-weather engineer if
there ever was one,’ declared Mel, ‘But if you’re going
to burn this oil shale in this high-performance type of firebox,
you are going to have to change your tactics. Let me have your pipe
wrench.’ With the engine shut down temporarily Mel opened the
front end and removed the exhaust bushing. Then he went around to
the stoking end and proceeded to take a 10-pound hammer and start
pulverizing the large flat chunks of lignite instead of tossing
them into the firebox which was piled half full of partly-burned
fuel.
‘Now see here ‘, Mel continued, addressing Ray,
‘This sort of stuff is about 60% ash, and since you have no
rocking grates that means you are going to use the slice bar about
every fifth firing. Keep a fairly thin bed of coals, and keep the
sheets and corners banked just a little bit so that a lot of cold
air won’t come in contact with the metal. Keep the ash pan
clean and no more damper than necessary, and while you are at it
leave the stack cinder vent open and put a bucket of water under
the smoke box to drown out the red hot ones. Fire thin and spread
about half a shovel of that shale at a time. Now Harold, start up
your rig lightly and lets see how soon we can work that 80 pounds
up to 150.’
I was standing around out of the way absorbing all this
instruction with much gusto, and was greater thrilled when Harold
gave a couple of short toots on the sweetly-toned chime whistle and
the wheels began turning again. Ray adjusted the Marsh pump and it
began to appear that this fine kettle was going to hold its own
while burning a grade of fuel so low that the town power plant had
given it up even with a chain-grate stoker. About ten minutes
later, while Harold, Mel and I were back conversing with the
separator super and watching bundles come in from only one side of
the feeder, everyone around the rig excepting Mel was elatedly
shocked to hear the pop valve let go at 155 pounds. Whereupon old
‘Grandpa’ Hastings beckoned unloaders to work both sides of
the feeder, and soon all the color was in the blower chute instead
of the stack on the engine. Ray was busy like a trooper and while
he may have wished that he was again struggling with that old
straw-burner of last year, he seemed to be getting the upper hand
of things now.
One of the cleanup men was allowed to drive Mel and me back to
town, and as the wheels of the little buggy ground their path into
the good earthen road, I was prompted to ask Mel, ‘Say, I
didn’t know you had served your term as fireman on one of these
jobs!’ ‘Well, no one else does either,’ replied Mel,
‘But it doesn’t hurt them to let it be thought so. You know
my brother Ed who fires that little eight-wheeler into town on the
passenger every other day tells me of all the fireman on the
railroad who have trouble with that cheap fuel the company insists
upon using. With those narrow fireboxes slung in between the rear
drivers he un-vexed himself long ago after much study and argument
with several of the road engineers. Now he wouldn’t know what
to do if someone loaded his tender with good bituminous coal.’
‘This about beats all,’ I exclaimed. ‘Say, how about
dropping me off at the house on the way in, and verifying my story
so that the Mrs. will excuse my absence from the dinner table?
Coming from you, she might let me off with a light
sentence.’
