Memories of Steam and Sweat

in the world. The third period is that of old age when one’s
thoughts turn back in review, to the times and events of his youth.
Let me share with you the reader, some of my memories of these
long-gone days.

Looming clearly through the mists and shadows of the past is the
memory of the huge steam threshing machine of that era, and the
large number of men and horses required for a machine of its size.
They were as much a part of farm life then as the combine is
today.

The crew was fed in a cook car a building built upon a steel
running gear without springs or roller bearings. It was large
enough to seat 15 or 20 men and was hauled from farm to farm by two
frightened horses. In the cook car there were generally two cooks
and two million flies. That, I have always considered, was an
unfair ration and for a good reason. Actually, how could a mere two
million flies be expected to consume all of the food prepared by
two able-bodied women beginning at 5 o’clock in the morning and
ending at 9 o’clock at night!

However, the flies did not work at their task unaided. Three
times daily they were ably assisted by the crew whose appetites
could, perhaps, be best compared to that of a herd of elephants.
The etiquette and table manners were not, as I recall, precisely
what Emily Post or Amie Vanderbilt would have approved of, had they
been present. The paramount objective appeared to be to get the
food from the plate to the mouth by whatever means. Potatoes, peas,
and pie were eaten with the knife, and why not? After all, why is
silverware placed upon the table if not to eat with? Nor was the
fork placed there for its ornamental value alone. It too, had its
uses. It could be used to spear food that otherwise would have been
out of reach. Or it could be used to point the direction of the
next field to be threshed, and perhaps, to draw a diagram of the
field upon the table.

As might be expected, there was much talk and banter, and many
ideas aired between huge mouthfuls of food. However I fail to
recall any discussion of Science, the Arts, or of Literature,
however brief. I do though, recall many occasions when the subject
of intoxicants was brought up and discussed with considerable depth
and fullness (this was the probition era) and with much speculation
as to where a certain brew could be procured, its cost, and the
chances, both for and against being alive the next morning.

Lest the reader be misled, I wish to state that although the
manners were often bad, the food was good; well cooked, well
served, and in abundance. This was especially noteworthy when one
pauses to consider the heartbreaking disadvantages under which
those heroic women toiled. There were, of course, no modern
conveniences to lighten their work. Water was pumped b y hand and
carried in an open pail generally from a well somewhere in the
barnyard.

Vegetables had first to be dug from the garden before being
prepared and served. The ancient coal-burning stove upon which they
cooked was, more often than not, a discard from someone’s
kitchen, which the former owner’s wife had balked at using any
longer. Yet, in some mysterious way most cooks managed to serve
huge, and very palatable meals each day, together with two lunches
to be taken to the field. However, their efforts and
accomplishments, I regret to say, many times went unnoticed,
unappreciated, and poorly rewarded. Truly, they were the unsung
heroins of their time.

As was the custom in those days, the threshing crews bedded down
in the barn loft for the few hours of rest that they were allowed.
With no thought of a bath. They simply spread their blankets upon
the hay, and still in their work clothing that showed the sweat and
dust of the day, they laid themselves down and were soon
asleep.

Because of the many horses needed for threshing in those days,
it was necessary that they be crowded rather closely together in
the barn at night. This brought together horses that were strangers
to each other and had not been formally introduced. Why they
remained friendly enough during the fore part of the night, and why
they waited until the wee small hours to begin their horsing
around, I do not know. Without fail, sometime after the stroke of
twelve, and after the crew bedded down in the loft above, were
nestled all snug in their beds, the quaking world begin. Perhaps
someone of the men, awakened from a sound sleep, might (for a
fleeting moment) have thought that the prophets of old might have
been right after all, and that the world was indeed coming to an
end. And sometimes a spike pitcher, or some other uncouth person,
would lift his voice and commence chiding those below, casting
rather pointed insinuations upon all members of the equine family,
their ancesters, and expressing a wish that all members of the
breed be lowered to a region noted for its extreme heat. It is
doubtful, however, if those below heard or heeded the voice from on
high, as they settled old feuds and started new ones.

Although there were some twenty men to a crew, it was easy to
tell who made up the machine crew. For example, it was not
difficult to distinguish the separator man from the others. He
swore more calmly than an ordinary spike pitcher. He talked around
his cud of Climax, taking his time and placing his oaths where they
would do the most good, and using them to further enhance and
amplify to greater heights, the thought he was attempting to
express. Although he and the engineer were the most knowledgeable,
and therefore were the elite of the crew, they were not always
friends. They often disliked each other heartily.

Of course, all steam threshers had its fireman. He was as
necessary and indispensable as the engine itself, or the separator
that it powered. His was a rather lonely existence because he was
the only one of his kind. He seldom spoke and even more seldom
washed. He, it was, who arose from his bed like a sleepwalker at
the unearthly hour of three-thirty or four o’clock in the
night, and groping his way in the darkness, left the barn loft and
went forth to the field where the machine had been left the night
before. There he would begin stoking the engine’s boiler with
straw. All this was necessary that he might have a supply of steam
when the bundle crew arrived for the day’s threshing. His day
would end some sixteen hours later with the coming of darkness a
day’s work for which he would receive four dollars or less.

As a part of every steam threshing crew there were always two
spike pitchers, and sometimes a couple of field pitchers. Their
work was distinctly different, as were the men themselves. Spike
pitching, or spiking as it was called, was a form of slavery which
had not been abolished by the Civil War. A spike pitcher was
generally an ambitious young man in the prime of life, and above
average in strength and stamina. He stood at the machine from early
morning until late at night and helped the bundle haulers unload
their loads into the separator. Although the bundle men generally
had a few minutes rest while waiting their turn to unload, there
was no rest for the spike pitchers. Even when a field was finished
the spike pitchers were to assume the role of flunkies and hurry
about preparing for the move to another field. With some twenty men
and horses waiting, every minute counted. Only when the move was
actually under way, could they snatch a few minutes rest. For this
extra work they would receive 25c, and later, 50c a day more than
‘an ordinary bundle pitcher a well earned bonus indeed.

On the other hand, the field pitcher was an entirely different
caliber of person. He was often a sly fellow who believed that the
world owed him a living. His job was to help the bundle haulers
load their loads in the field. His work often took him to the
furthest end of the field, far from the watchful eye of the boss,
where he could loaf and still draw pay. His policy was to talk much
and accomplish little, and I have always suspected that the field
pitcher of yesteryear was in some way, the forerunner of our
present-day men in Congress.

They are all gone that large concentration of men and horses, as
is the machine itself, with its smell of smoke and dust. In late
years a few dedicated men have attempted to bring back in a small
way, the sights, the sound, the smells, and the ways of yesteryear,
so that the youth of today might have a glimpse of that by-gone
era. However, these events, generally advertised as threshing bees
or threshing shows, are at best a poor imitation of the real thing.
Where are the sweating, swearing bundle haulers men who considered
it a disgrace to be late to the machine! Where is the tired greasy
fireman whose efforts with straw and water furnished the steam that
made it all possible? And where is the ‘straw monkey’ who
brought the straw from the separator blower to the engine who was
neither monkey nor man, but was instead, a boy who should have been
in school. And let us not forget the grain haulers, that small
group of willing men who bent their backs to the shovel, regardless
of the heat of the day, long before the portable grain elevator
came into our lives.

Missing too, are the many horses, including the huge ‘tank
team’, giants of their kind, generally of Percheron or Belgian
breeding, who could (when the big fellows lunged in their harness)
gives a thrilling demonstration of horse power long before
horsepower went under the hood. They were the elite of the equine
family, and could, when called upon, bring a fourteen barrel tank
of water across a soft field, mounted upon a wagon gear innocent of
roller bearings. Gone too, is the cook car, that portable
commissary on wheels with its faithful cooks, where three times
daily, hungry men came to replenish the vast store of energy
required for a day’s work in that forgotten era. A few of the
wooden hulks, blackened by age and the elements, can still be
found, half hidden in a jungle of weeds in some out-of-the-way
fence corner, a sad reminder of that long-ago age of steam.

The spacious barns, once the pride of their owners, and the
scene of bustling activity, where once the horse herd fed and
fought, stand empty now, and silent, save for the feeble chirping
of the sparrows in the loft above. These buildings, desolate
reminders of a once glorious past, stand now deserted and forgotten
and in advanced stages of disrepair.

In a progressive nation such as ours, time brings progress and
progress brings change. And nowhere has progress brought more
change than in the field of agriculture. The modern farmer, as he
guides his combine (many times equipped with cab and air
conditioned) over fields where once men toiled in the boiling sun,
may finger his hydralic controls completely unmindful of the past,
as he does the work of an entire threshing crew. And perhaps his
daughter, hauling grain, home from school between semesters,
watches the portable elevator as it does the work of many men,
while she reads the gossip column or studies for her College
Degree.

Where, where indeed, are the men (and women) who went to make up
a threshing unit in those days of aching muscles and calloused
hands? To the young it is as though they never were. Their memory
lives only in the hearts and minds of the aged and perhaps a few of
the middle aged. Many have gone to another, and perhaps a better
world. The rest, one by one, will soon follow.

May they find the rest they so richly earned. I would wish it no
other way.