SOOT IN THE FLUES

It’s hard to believe this is the first issue of another year
1971! Of course, when you receive this we are all in the hurrying,
scurrying of another Holiday Season so if there is cookie
decorations or tinsel found in among your pages we know you 11
understand.

A letter from E. J. MATHEWS, 1609 Lenox Rd., N.E., Atlanta,
Georgia 30306, and he writes: ‘That picture of George
Hedtke’s 44 x 66 Case separator on page 10 of the Sept.-October
Iron Men Album sure brought back memories of the Good Old
Days to me.

‘In the summer of 1925, we finished our run in Oklahoma in
the early part of August. We used a 22 hp. simple Advance engine
with a 36’ Case separator which made a real nice threshing.

‘After a few days of loafing around, I was ready for more of
the same, so I got in my Model T Ford and drove up to Carrington,
North Dakota, in search of an engine to run. Someone directed me to
Mr. J. J. Lee at Bar-dulac, North Dakota, 15 or 20 minutes east of
Carrington. Sure enough, he was looking . for an engine man and
offered me the job.

‘He had a 35 hp. tandem compound side-mounted Advance engine
and a 44 x 66 Case separator exactly like the one shown in your
magazine. The engine was a straw burner and I had never handled a
straw burner before. Happily for me however, Mr. Lee had a fireman
that had fired for him several seasons and really knew how to fire
with straw. He always kept the steam gauge between 160 and 175 lbs.
and didn’t appear to work very hard at it either. It was a good
thing he did because Mr. Lee was a man who liked to see plenty of
wheat going into his separator. We used 12 wagons with spike
pitchers and you could very seldom see the bottom of that long
feeder.

‘To make a long story short, we averaged something over
2,000 bushels a day that fall and Mr. Lee must have made a pretty
penny. There were several incidents that happened that fall, but
I’ll save them for a later day.