Iron Men Of The Month

Yes, it’s mighty lucky for the rest of the human race that
the Seman twins, Dennis and Dwight, have so far courted no other
love than a trim little 12-horse Case. Lucky, we say, because of
the frustrations that might otherwise develop should they ever go
a-court in’ gals that aren’t made of mere iron and steel.
Such as for instance the mix-ups that might ensue should they ever
double-date and finally wind up with problems of ‘Who was
loving whom?’ Or, with neither gal knowing exactly who was who
may be Dennis’s gal falling in love with Dwight and
Dwight’s gal wind up kissing Dennis. The ramifications being so
frightful to foretell, there is even the distinct possibility that
both gals could wind up loving the same fellow without knowing
whether ’twas Dennis or Dwight. And that wouldn’t be
right.

Iron-Men Seman twins and their 12-horse Case at Darke County
Threshers, Greenville, Ohio. After snapping this picture back in
1969, it took me three years to find out which was which. Dennis to
the left, Dwight to the right, with the Case in the middle (which
leaves me in a muddle). And I still wouldn’t know the
difference if they switched places. Courtesy of Joe Fahnestock,
Union City, Indiana 47390.

So now you can see the dilemma I was in, when three summers ago
I took a picture of a 12-Horse Case, out at the Darke County
Threshers, with Dennis and Dwight lolling on the deck, not knowing
the left one from the right. And, for three years I’ve pondered
just how to get them straight as to whether in that picture it was
Dwight or Dennis on the left, or Dennis or Dwight on the right.
(And I’m still not sure, after going through all that
again.)

Anyhow, I was out to the Lloyd Seman farm, east of Greenville,
Ohio, taking more pictures of Dennis and Dwight around their
engines. Whenever I’d be asking Dwight a question, and jotting
down his answers, my wife would be conversing with Dennis, and
I’d wind up writing ‘Dennis said this,’ when I
should’ve been scribbling ‘Dwight said that’ and vice
versa. And I still came home as mixed up as ever as to who said
what. But it doesn’t matter, as I think that even Dennis and
Dwight are sometimes confused as to which one is Dennis and which
one is Dwight.

But happily, though, it did happen that my first picture of this
look-alike twain did turn out to be Dennis on the left of the Case
deck, with Dwight on the right. And so, I quickly called into play
a certain psychological quirk a rhyme in time, so to speak, which
saved me from the horns of this dilemma. Namely, that ‘Dwight
rhymes with right’, and thereafter I made ‘dern’ sure
that Dwight was on the right in every picture I took thereafter.
(You can betcha!)

The boys were just fourteen when I took that first snap-shot of
them, all pooped out from a day at the Darke County Threshers Show,
and leaning wearily on the rear deck of their little mighty
12-Horse Case. Now, three years later, they were seventeen, just
returned from a day at the Greenville High School and ready to do
another jag of moonlighting at putting their Case back together
again in the Seman farm shop where it was perched for the
winter.

The canopy had been removed, the better to see the work they
were doing on their engine’s innards. The sheet-metal jacket
had been removed from the cylinder, and new-wood slats installed
for insulation and support when the jacket would be replaced. There
was Dennis on the left, handing over the three-ball, two-inch
Pickering Governor to Dwight on the right (I hope I’ve got this
right), ready to re-mount it atop the Case boiler.

‘We tore the shaft and flywheel off and found the journals
and shaft rough and rusted,’ quota Dennis. ‘Had them turned
down smooth again at Corning Glass Company by a fellow named Hubey
Monnin.’

‘We got all the books we could find on pouring babbitt
bearings and read them, then over Christmas holidays we tried
pouring new bearings for our Case,’ explained Dennis. ‘We
poured halves at a time, four times one for each bottom-half and
one for each top-half. But we wound up pouring nine times because,
after we had packed them with cardboard and putty, we still got
leaks. We wound up with four or five pounds of babbitt between the
wing sheet and the boiler that we can’t get out.’ (But
boys, won’t that help out by giving added weight for
traction?)

It was in a back-issue of IRON MEN ALBUM that the Seman twins
spotted an auction billing, listing two steam engines a 12-Horse
Case and a 19-65 Port Huron which were to be sold in the Muncie,
Indiana area, April 29, 1969. Together, with their father, Lloyd
Seman, they attended said sale and the rest is history. They came
home with the 12-Horse Case the first steam engine in the Seman
family.

‘Neither our Dad or Granddad had a steam engine rig,’
explain the boys, who grew up on a small farm a short distance to
the northwest of where they now live. They were only tots five or
six years of age when their Dad brought them over to the Harve
Estey Woods, where the Darke County Steam Threshers held their
summer reunions for years, located on the very farm where they now
reside.

SEMAN TWINS PUT 12 HORSE CASE BACK TOGETHER AGAIN. Dennis to the
left, Dwight to the right, Case in the middle. When they were
babbitting bearings a leak developed, now they have a five-pound
chunk of babbit between wing sheet and boiler which they can’t
get out. It’s become a part of the engine.

SEMAN TWINS AND THEIR 22 x 36 INCH AVERY SEPARATOR. They belt
this to the Case for threshing a jag o’ wheat, now ‘n then.
Dennis to the left, Dwight to the right, (we hope). Courtesy of Joe
Fahnestock, Union City, Indiana 47390.

‘The first steam engine we ever saw looked to us then as big
as a railroad locomotive,’ says Dwight.

‘It must’ve been a Baker Engine, because it had the
silver front,’ commented Dennis.

From then on the boys’ Dad kept bringing them each summer to
the Darke County Steam Threshers Reunions. Later after the death of
Harve Estey, the Semans moved across the fields and onto the Estey
farmstead. When the Darke County Threshers brought their engines
out to the former Estey Woods, now the Semen Woods, Dennis and
Dwight could keep tab on all the setting-up proceedings right from
their breakfast nook in Mom’s kitchen. Just a short hop down
across the ‘crick’ and over the hill was all it took for
them to ‘sneak’ into the big show by way of a side entrance
each day. It was just like having their own steam engine show,
right out their back door. And, we ask you, what more potent way is
there for two growing, strapping twin boys to get ‘steam in
their blood’ than to have a steam engine show every year right
on their own farm just a hop, skip and a jump away for four lanky
legs and ‘no pay’.

Anyhow, Dad Seman bought the Case Engine. But we leave you to
guess who ‘hogs’ the deck of it, fondles it, runs it, blows
the whistle on it and shows off on it around the Darke County Steam
Threshers’ Reunions and who has to work on it when something
goes ‘bust’ on it and needs fixing. Or who polishes the big
brass eagle on the front of the smoke box, or shakes the grates and
lugs the wood and coal to feed the hungry firebox, fusses and fumes
over the draft when it gets plugged up, and puts the thing to bed
at nights and lays awake till the early morning hours worrying
about it till it’s time to get up and start all over again.
Dennis and Dwight that’s right. For poor old Dad’s fun
ended at the auction, paying the bill. But theirs had just
begun.

Dennis and Dwight always present one of the most reassuring
sights with their Case on the Darke County Reunion grounds. Like
Ike and Mike, these two look-alikes are the most unobtrusive
engineers that ever took an engine to a threshermen’s reunion.
Nobody, but nobody can tell them apart. Most everyone calls Dwight,
Dennis, and Dennis, Dwight. And so resigned to the situation have
the twain become that they no longer try to correct the inquisition
forced upon them by their inquisitors. Dwight just passes himself
off as Dennis, and Dennis as Dwight unless someone makes a point of
it by callipering noses and measuring ears in millimeters. There is
just no other way to tell which from which. And after you’ve
done it, you’ll still wind up calling Dwight, Dennis, and
Dennis Dwight. (Right?)

It was over into another barn that the Seman twins led me to
show me their 22 x 36 inch Avery Separator which, every now and
then they belt to the 12-Horse Case to thresh a jag of wheat
whenever the occasion calls.

‘They surely can use a separator around here,’ quipped
my wife. ‘Just to separate Dennis from Dwight so a person knows
who they’re talking to.’

After all, the boys have no sister to set folks right as to
which is Dennis or which is Dwight.

In yet another barn, Dennis and Dwight showed me their latest
pride a big 25-50 Avery Gas Tractor of 1921 vintage which was
purchased in the Fall of 1970 over by Versailles Village, Ohio. And
back in the corners of the barns, too dark to snap a picture, lurk
two ancient gas engines which the boys someday hope to restore and
paint. (But as yet ‘aint’).

The butt of many a joke amongst the older, more experienced
engine men around the Darke County Threshers’ Reunions, Dennis
and Dwight like to tell about the time their Case just wouldn’t
draw fire out the stack.

‘Two years ago, during the 1970 Darke County Reunion,
someone stuffed newspapers down our smoke stack. We kept trying and
trying to make fire,’ said Dennis. ‘But, try as hard as we
did for two hours we couldn’t.’

Then it was that Uncle Charlie Ditmer came up, chewing on a
fresh cigar, and, sizing up the situation, suggested, ‘Did you
ever think of looking down the smoke stack?’ (They did. And it
was. Plugged, that is.)

Though both Dennis and Dwight fire and run the Case, according
to Dennis they never argue, except for when it comes to
technicalities such as turning off the cocks.

‘And when it comes to crawling into the firebox, well I have
to do that,’ says Dennis. ‘One time I had just crawled out
of the firebox, all sooty and grimy, and just then some fellow came
to look after a horse he boarded here. When he saw me, he asked,
‘Where’s Aunt Jemima?’ ‘

‘I just don’t like getting all that soot down my
back,’ says Dwight who helps out with all other jobs but
that.

It’s a fright this business of separating Dennis and
Dwight.

‘Mom still gets us mixed up now and then, but not so much as
she used to,’ says Dennis.

‘Most of our classes in Greenville Senior High School are
attended separately to help out,’ says Dwight. ‘But our
English teacher can’t tell us apart when we attend that class
together.’ (Pity the poor school ma’rm’s plight which
one’s Dennis and which one’s Dwight?)

SEMAN TWINS SPENT WINTER BABBITTING BEARINGS AND GETTING 12
HORSE CASE READY FOR THE SUMMER SHOWS-Dennis on the left, Dwight on
the right, seen placing three-ball, two-inch Pickering Governor
atop the boiler. Courtesy of Joe Fahnestock, Union City, Indiana
47390.

Both Dennis and Dwight expect to enroll at Ohio State this
summer, hoping of course to ‘play hookey’ when Darke County
Reunion time rolls around so they can run their newly-babbitted and
refurbished Case Engine once again for the duration.

‘We’re both going to study to become veterinarians,’
they say. But nobody will ever know who’s doctoring the cow and
who’s doctoring the horse unless it comes straight from the
horse’s mouth.

For their youthful zest in falling in love with a steam engine
when most other boys their age go golliwog over girls for nagging
Dad to buy them a Case instead of a hot-rod to race for that
old-time Yankee ‘Do-it-yourself’ Spirit of working on it
themselves to keep her running for the downright fun everyone has
trying to figure which one is which Dennis and Dwight Seman have
earned their seat in our vaunted Hall of Iron Man Fame. Though
they’re skinny enough to sit side-by-side on it, they might
have to wind up sitting in each other’s laps, which is their
problem to figure. Though we would like to know which one sits in
which one’s lap. (We sure would!)

We doff our stiff-katy to these ever-together, look-alike steam
engine lads for reverting back to steam in the third generation of
a family that never had it. And thus perpetuating, as they do, that
grand and glorious American heritage down on the farm.

Now let’s see it’s Dennis on the left, and Dwight on the
right, with the Case in the middle and me in a muddle. And I’ve
gone nuts see in’ double!