Rocky Comfort, MO 64861
Russell outfit about 1917. Tandem compound engine, in Anderson
County, Kansas. My brother George on engine, and Orville Seeber on
separator.
20 HP Advance engine, Illinois separator at Kingfisher, Oklahoma
in 1919. The outfit belonged to Legrand Still. I helped move this
rig overland from Boise City, Oklahoma to Perryton, Texas in
1920.
I wanted to start the New Year right by turning my thoughts to
the past.
While I am not able to own any of the old engines and threshers,
you cannot take the memories from me.
I often wonder why this old thresher mania has such a grip on
those of us who lived through it.
I was on an engine almost all of my younger years, from 1908 to
1926.
When I consider all of those long hours, the sweat, digging an
engine out of the mud at midnight, trying to keep up steam with wet
straw, rolling tubes at night so as to be ready for another day,
washing a boiler late Saturday night, going to the cook shack only
to find that the cook had burned the biscuits, then looking for a
favorable spot on the prairie soil to throw down a blanket, hoping
to get a few hours rest, having to arise early to walk maybe a mile
(if lucky) to clean the flues, and start a fire, and be ready for
the crew when they arrived, then eat a fast breakfast that the cook
had sent with the crew, and thus begins a new and another day.
Again I ask why we are not willing to forget this past of our
life. I know why, when I view the world as it is today, with all
it’s grief, hustle and bustle. I am convinced that life was
much better, and if I were not almost 88 years old, I would like to
live it all over again.
I am sending along some pictures if you care to use them they
just might put a little spark in some old timer’s eye when he
remembers a similar machine in his younger life.
May the New Year be good to all of you at the magazine, as well
as all of those that work so hard to make life more pleasant for
all old codgers like me.
