2127 Winters Drive, Loves Park, Illinois 61111
Among the ‘Old Thresher’ award recipients of the 1980
Mt. Pleasant Old Threshers and Settlers show was my father, L.W.
Huff of New Sharon, Iowa.
Dad had always been interested in mechanical things ‘since I
was five years old’ as he comments. He was especially crazy
about steam railroad locomotives and traction engines. His initial
threshing experiences began on his father’s farm near
Grandview, Iowa in Northern Louisa County when he was 10 or 12
years old. He cut bands on an Ault-man ‘American’ hand-fed
separator. When he was 15 years old, his father put him on the
binder at harvest timea Champion six-foot which was used for many
years. A used Deering six-foot eventually replaced it.
Dad also recalled stacking grain a season or two when my
grandfather decided to thresh from the stack instead of the shock.
This may have been when they hired the hand-fed separator.
Sometime after this, my grandfather became a shareholder in a
company rig owned by a company of 12 or 14 neighborsi.e. 1/12 or
1/14 interest. At first they owned a 12 horse Frick engine and
Nichols and Shepard 28′ separator. This engine was shortly
replaced by a new Nichols and Shepard 15 horse single engine and a
little later the separator was replaced with a new Nichols and
Shepard Red River Special 32′ separatoraround 1910 or
later.
Dad was the water monkey for many seasons using a team of his
father’s and the water wagon the ring owned. He also operated
the 16 horse engine a number of seasons, pulling an Appleton silage
cutter filling silos.
One recollection of Dad’s is of one fellow on the rig who
always wanted pie first at dinnertime. He was afraid he
wouldn’t have room for it later, he claimed. (Those ample
threshing day meals!)
Dad recalls a year when the rig pulled 10 miles west or so to
thresh a run near Fredionia where no other rig was available. He
was the water monkey on this run. At one farm he slept in an attic
on a feather bed. It was a hot night, too, he remembers! Pulling
home after completing the run, he and the engineer and separator
man slept in the railroad yard at Columbus Junction as dusk
overtook them (as they knew it would).
This custom outfit was a complete McCormick Deering rig22′
steel separator pulled with a 10-20 tractor. It was owned by two
neighbors. For years they did a lot of custom work until displaced
by the small combines. Dad recalled that they fed this separator
from both sideskept the bundles in linedidn’t crowd itthe
feeder governor and the steady power of the renowned 10-20 took
care of all in good shape.
My grandfather lost the farm in the Depression and after his
death we lived near Burlington for three years where Dad rented a
farm just west of town and a little east of Highway 34 not far from
the Fairgrounds. In this neighborhood Dad hired a McCormick Deering
threshing rig similar to the aforementioned except that this 10-20
was on rubber (factory spoke wheelsnot cutdowns).
With the exception of two years, Dad’s gas threshing was
with McCormick Deering separators. In 1942, we moved to the Newport
community close to the Louisa-Des Moines County Line. That year Dad
threshed with a ring of neighbors who hired a Case 28′
separator pulled with a John Deere D on steel. In 1948 we moved to
Jefferson County, northeast of Fairfield. Dad decided to thresh
again after combining since ’43. He threshed with a neighbor
who owned a 28′ McCormick Deering separator pulled with a
streamlined John Deere A. They threshed with this one three
seasons: ’48, ’49 and ’52. At the time we moved there
were six custom rigs pulling in this neighborhood. Among these was
Pete Bucher’s rig33′ Port Huron Thresher (now owned by Mt.
Pleasant Association) and Hart Parr tractor. Dad’s last
threshing was in ’53.
We traded work that summer baling hay and threshing with another
neighbor who owned a 20′ Belle City separator (wood frame)
pulled with an AC DC. It was a fitting way to climax Dad’s
threshing experiences.
In 1960 Dad sold his farm to a neighbor and we moved to New
Sharon where I rented a farm for three years before selling out and
moving to Rockford, Illinois. I worked a couple of falls at the
Maasdam Sorghum Mill near Lynnville as general laborer. In 1962,
Dad began working there and did so through 1974 as fireman. He
fixed a boiler furnishing steam to run an Atlas 10 x 13 stationary
engine that powered the machinery in the mill and used steam heat
for evaporating the juice. This engine came from the Pella Stacker
Company which made the famous Garden City feeders and weighers for
threshing machines.
Dad began operating gas tractors in 1916. His tractor
experiences were recalled in the March-April 1964 IRON MEN ALBUM
article ‘Tractor Veteran of 46 Years Experience.’
In 1914, he began with motor cars. The first car Dad drove was a
1914 Overland right-hand drive owned by his father. Then he got a
used Ford T of his own and worked on up from that.
He gave up driving and sold his last cara 1962 Chevroletseveral
years ago, because of age.
In addition to the Mt. Pleasant show, Dad has attended other
shows in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. He enjoys all of them.
