535 S. E. L4, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
First off I want to tell you how much I appreciate your
magazine. When I got my ALBUM from the mail box, my dinner got cold
on the table while I read it. I like it very much, but when I read
the letter of Mr. S. H. Herum of Dodge Center, Minnesota, referring
to the old engines as freaks and to us old timers as Old Fogies, I
stuff you print does not mean a damn to him,’ but I just want
to tell you it means two or three damns to us old timers and I hope
you go right ahead printing it just like you have always done and
we will lap it up and blow the whistle for more.
I have never been a thresherman, but I grew up with machinery
and I got most of my experience in the wintertime. I grew up in
central Iowa, near Des Moines, and we had some real winters there
fifty or sixty years ago. My father owned a Birdsell clover huller
and an Ottoway corn sheller and an Ann Arbor baler which we pulled
with a 12hp. Case engine. This was an old model center crank and we
also had a shredder built by Maytag Company of Newton, Iowa. This
is the same company that now makes the washing machines. Our
busiest season was the fall and winter and it is one thing to
handle an engine in summer when the ground is dry, but in the
winter when the ground is covered with snow and ice, it is a horse
of a different color. Talk about Rough & Tumble Engineering, I
have had my share of it. There were times when we had to wrap log
chains around the drivers to get enough traction to get up a hill
with a load. There were times when going down a hill that we would
slide all the way with the drivers turning backwards. My father
would never use horses to pull a machine. When moving he said,
‘if the engine would not pull it, we wouldn’t go,’ so
we made the engine pull it. We used the old Case about 8 years then
traded and got a 12hp. Frick which I liked very well.
I agree with the editor of the ALBUM that the Frick was a very
good engine and so was the old Geiser and old center crank Case. I
have also run some of the newer ones like the Advance, Minneapolis,
Case, Peerless and I found them all good. Any of them would do the
work if properly taken care of. I am now 74 years old and have not
handled an engine for about 30 years, but I still have the feel of
the throttle and reverse lever in my hands. When it’s in your
bones you never outlive it and I still think I could take an engine
through anywhere it could go.
Well I will close my damper and bank my fire and close down
hoping to meet you at Wichita next fall.
