MEMORIES

going to fire the Case to steam tobacco beds. They started me on
the first job then left me for a while. Things went along fine and
I was feeling pretty good. I was soon done. The farmer helped me
load the pan on the cart. I took the pipes apart and tied them into
a bundle, coiled up the water hose and put it on top of the pan. I
hooked the cart to the engine and they still had not come back. So
perhaps a little nervously I started for the next place. I went in
the lane on the other side of the road. The lane was only one wagon
track wide, down hill and with a short curve, about half-way down.
I was driving too fast on a strange road. The next thing I knew the
left front wheel was in the ditch. I yanked the reverse lever over
the center notch, but I was fast for sure. I got down off the
platform and looked at the fix I was in. I turned on the injector
and covered the fire with coal. I was going to go for help when the
truck came. I don’t remember what was said but they took the
coal shovel and shoveled ground away from in front and back of the
wheel. Then with the poker poked the ground away from under the ash
pan. Then they got on the engine and backward and forward turned
the wheels hard and got up on the road again. They drove the rest
of the way down the hill and set the engine, and started me
steaming again. Amos told someone later, ‘I was just hoping
that boy wouldn’t try to drive down that hill.’

Things went quite well for a few more jobs. Then I learned
another lesson! This lane was also narrow and cut out of the side
of a steep hill. I was scared of the engine rolling down into the
Chickes Creek. The boss set the engine on a terrace as the whole
homestead was terraced on the side of the hill. I was steaming for
maybe two hours when I began having trouble keeping up steam. Lucky
for me the boss came along. He looked in the fire door, ‘Why
you have no draft,’ he said. I had the blower half open but he
opened it wide. Then he checked the ash pit. I had the ashes
scraped out pretty clean but he called ‘Come here and look at
the bottom of those grates.’ Hanging down from the grates were
firey icicles or stalagmites or whatever. He took the poker and
knocked off all he could. The dirty coal had melted and ran down
through the grates like molasses. Then he went to work cleaning the
fire. This Case had no rocker grates and all the clinkers had to be
taken out the fire door. He had quite a little pile of clinkers
smouldering on the ground before he shoveled in coal. That and the
full blower soon got the steam gauge rising again.

I heard later that there had been a wreck on the railroad and
two cars of coal had spilled. The farmer had gotten a wagonload of
free coal for hauling it away. That’s why it was so dirty. A
few days later we came to a place where he set the engine alongside
of the house and beside the tobacco bed. The cistern was maybe 25
feet back of the engine. I took the water hose and threw the
strainer into the cistern. I might have noticed a light foam on the
surface, but I didn’t think anything of it. In about an hour
the water in the glass seemed to be swinging up and down pretty
far. I was using the injector and while I was looking at the gauge
the water went down to the bottom of the glass. What was going on
now? Then while I watched in wonder the water came back up in the
glass until it was full to the top. I think I changed a pan while
this was going on. I fired harder because running cold water in
pulled the steam back. My main attention was watching the water as
it fell and rose the full length of the glass. I had no idea of
what was going on in the boiler. Then about sunset the whole engine
quivered and trembled like a horse shaking himself. In about twenty
minutes the engine shivered and shook worse than before. That
really put the fear of God into me. I had heard about engines
blowing up, and I was a little like the old darky ‘wait a
little Lord I’m not quite ready yet.’ But I kept on
steaming and kept the injector on all I could and the fire as hot
as I could. Then the night man came.

Sam Kinsey was a little younger than I, but he had more nerve
and less fear of the engine than I had. I told him about how
strange the water glass was acting. We turned the water glass off
and blew it out, but the swinging up and down motion continued. He
decided that he could handle it and kept on steaming. In our late
teens, neither one of us realized the terrible danger we were in
and it was later that I learned that the quivering of the engine
was called the water hammer. The water hammer is what bursts the
foaming boiler. Sam was quite willing to take over the problem and
I was selfishly glad to get away from there and go home.

I knew that he would move to the next place during the night. So
I followed the wheel tracks to the next job. I saw a wisp of smoke
as I got near the place, then I saw the engine. My Lord, what had
Sam done? The whole front of the engine was white; smoke stack
done, smoke box and front part of the roof all were covered with
what looked like lime dust. The first thing I did when I approached
the engine was look at the water glass. I asked Sam how he made
out? ‘Oh, I got along all right. I just fired harder and kept
running water in. When the water came up in the dome it blew some
of the froth out in the tobacco bed; when the safety valve blew
off, it blew some out there. Then when I moved and ran the engine,
that pumped some out the smoke stack; and when I blew the whistle
that left some our there.’ He was using fresh water out of the
well at this place and that helped, too. I tried brushing some off
with a broom but the stuff seemed to be baked on. I think we had
rain in a day or two, and it was too wet to steam anyway. Then when
the engine had cooled off, we went to fire up again and we took
coal oil and rags and cleaned off the white stuff. When the engine
had warmed we took steam cylinder oil and gave it a black
shampoo.

The steaming run was about over and I was steaming at a nice
well-kept place. The engine was sitting between the house and barn
on the paved lane. I had a long hose line for my feed water in
front of the barn on the concrete fore bay. The sun was warm on the
concrete. In about an hour the injector wouldn’t catch. I went
in the house and phoned for help. Soon the truck was there. He felt
the tank and stuck his hand in the water; ‘Why your water’s
hot, an injector won’t handle hot water.’ He kicked off the
hose between the tanks under the platform. Somebody sometime had
rebuilt the platform and put Peerless tanks on it. Well, all the
water in the tanks ran away. Then he turned on the lifter and got
the warm water out of the hose. After putting the hose on between
the tanks he got a bucket of cold water and poured it over the
injector, then the injector started right away.

That’s about all the interesting memories I have of my first
season’s steaming run; so I’ll cut my yarn off here.