Letters

Then I grease the wagon and put on the rack, Throw a jug of
water in an oldgrain sack, Hitch up the horses and hurry down the
lane- Must get the hay in for it looks like rain. Look over yonder,
sure as I’m born, Cattle on the rampage and cattle in the corn,
Start across the medder, run a mile or two, Heaving like I’m
wind broke, get wet all through.

Get back to the horses then for recompence Nancy gets a-straddle
the barbed wire fence; Joints all a-aching and muscles in a jerk
I’m fit as a fiddle for a full days work. Work all summer
’till winter is nigh then figure up the books and heave a big
sigh; Worked all year, didn’t make a cent, got less cash now
that I had last spring.

Now some people tell us there ain’t any hell but they never
farmed and they can’t tell. When spring rolls around I take
another chance while the fringe grows longer on my old gray pants-
give my spenders a hitch, my belt another jerk- and then by heck
I’m ready for another years work.

-Author, HARRY FISCHBACK, Kettlersville, Ohio.

INITIATED IN OIL AT BIRTH-

Can’t tell you how much I enjoy the ALBUM. I grew up with a
little steam engine, an 8 hp. upright engine and boiler with
homemade traction made from bull wheels of a binder for the
drivers. It was surprising what that little thing could pull and my
father was very proud of it.

So you see I was initiated to cylinder oil at birth, one might
say.

Ten years ago I bought a 12 hp. Russell and have lots of fun
with it also using it to sterilize soil for the greenhouse. Many
people stop by to see it and watch it run. We are in the process of
giving it a coat of paint.

Our thanks to you for keeping the steam enthusiasm alive.

ARCHIE HAMILTON, Fresno, Ohio

FROM HARRY W. HINSON-

I am a reader of our wonderful magazine and always try to find
time to look it over as soon as I receive it. Pictures first, then
the correspondence.

The picture on page 15 of the old Hamilton engine attracted my
attention at once, as, when a boy my father, the late Lewis Hinson,
was engineer in 1898 on a 10 hp. This engine came into my
possession in 1914 and I used it for some time filling silo,
drilling wells, and pumping water for a brick yard. You say you
don’t know the make of the separator. Well, Elmer,! You do not
know your separators. Look again and you will see that the
separator is a J. I. Case Agitator of about the time of the photo.
There was one like it here in Jersey County, Illinois, which I have
seen in operation before the turn of the century. Notice the
jumping elevator and the pitman that operates it from the crank on
the agitator pulley?

If you have room for this script and care to print same, very
well, as it may help others who do not know. Will say the engine I
had was a later model-had a fly wheel, a belt pulley on the right
side, no jack shaft, and all iron wheels. This model engine was the
iron horse-a good powerful engine-7’xl2′ cyl., 125 lb.
pressure.

HARRY W. HINSON, Grafton, Illinois, P. S. Separator was made
about 1880.

HELLO! IRON-MEN FAMILY-

Enclosed find my check for one year. To let it expire is like
running out of groceries. You soon get lonesome to read all about
the IRON-MEN. I am 71 years old. Started with a threshing machine
when I was eight years old on a 10 hp. Gaar Scott horse puller.
Used a tub and barrell for a water tank and fired with wood.
That’s when you could set the old Victor clover huller afire
with the old drive belt. We put the huller in the barn at night on
account of getting a rain. We had no canvas and my father and I
slept in the barn in case a fire might start up from the chaff
inside of the huller.

MELVIN GOOD, 127 E. Fremont Street, Fostoria, Ohio

MODEL STEAM BUILDER-

I just finished reading this months issue of IRON-MEN and I do
think it’s about time I started buying my own so here’s a
check for $4.00 for a 2-year subscription.

Frank Lange, one of your subscribers, has been bringing his copy
to the office and I’ve been enjoying them so much I feel I
should have my own copies to keep on file.

I am a model steam engine builder of some sorts myself-have
about 20 odd engines to my credit ranging from ?’ bore ? stroke
to 3′ bore 4?’ stroke-all stationary type engines, some of
which I built and some that I acquired by purchase, trade or
outright gift.

At present Lange and I are building a couple of 1′ scale 65
horse Case tractors and thanks to Chas. Cole and his excellent
castings, we’re coming along very well.

Some day I hope to own a full sized Case or its equivalent
however, at the present time I have no place to keep one.
Couldn’t you just see the look on my wife’s face if I drove
one of those 20-ton monsters into our 50 foot back yard.

Enough of that, you have a magazine to print so I won’t keep
you from it any longer.

Will be anxiously awaiting the next issue of the IRON-MEN.

M. A. HALL, 4541 Saratoga Avenue, Downers Grove, Illinois

FROM OTSEGO, MICHIGAN-

We enjoy your magazine very much, and were very glad to see the
addition of a tractor page, for those of us who like the old
machines.

All the men in our family are members of ‘The Michigan Live
Steam Club,’ which is a group of mighty fine folks dedicated to
keep the fine old traditions, and the grand machines which helped
to advance our Nation to world leadership. At our Steam Rodeo, held
in June each year, are gathered some of the best kept, best looking
steam engines and old time tractors, and models, most anything
that’s old, in the line of machinery used in agriculture of
yesteryears.

In our family we have several of those old time Oil Pull
kerosene burning tractors of various sizes, and models, all in
tip-top shape.

Well, I must shut the throttle for this time and hope to see you
all at our Rodeo in June, when we ‘blow our stack’ for
1956, and the lonesome whistle of the departed but not forgotten
Age of Steam for threshing.

LLOYD BRONSON, Otsego, Michigan father of your subscriber,
George E. Bronson

FROM A 1901 AULTMAN CATALOG-

Am sending a picture with my renewal; a picture of a 25 hp.
Tandem Compound Mogul taken from a 1901 Aultman catalog. B. B.
Brown said in Jan.-Feb. ALBUM, ‘The Mogul had the cylinder on
the front end.’ Some did but here is the picture with cylinder
on the rear end.

This, writing about the Advance 20 and 22 hp. engines-Advance
had an agency in Wichita, Kansas, in the nineties. We lived 25
miles from there and got catalogs of Advance for years. The first
22 hp. Advance side mount was pictured in the 1900 catalog. The
first one I saw was in 1901. The first Advance 20 hp. was built in
1903 and was in the catalog for that year. They had one on the
floor at Wichita, Kansas, in 1904.

My father got into the threshing business in 1891 and I have
been around engines since a small boy. [ can also prove the years
the two engines were first built by Lucis Sweet and Marcus Leonard.
Marcus was selling Advance machinery in Kansas in 1903.

HARRY TREGO, Halstead, Kansas

NOT GOOD STEAM LANGUAGE-

We frequently see in the ALBUM the words, ‘The operator was
at the controls’. But this is modern language applying to gas
tractors, bulldozers, etc., etc. It has no place in a Steam Hobby.
In the sixty-odd years that I have been around steam,
professionally and as a hobby,-traction engines, locomotives, steam
launches and ocean steamships, etc., among steam men it has always
been ‘THE ENGINEER was at the THROTTLE’. Let’s keep it
that way when we are speaking of Steam, and save the other form of
expression for the gas-tractor page.

LAURENCE J. HATHAWAY, ‘Creekside’ Easton,
Maryland