STEAM CAN MAKE WARM FRIENDS

service station is in Green Bank some five miles away. So after
much huffing and puffing I managed to get the wheel off and into my
car for the trip to Green Bank. At that point I was expecting the
worst, since the culprit was an arrowhead-like piece of stone
piercing the tread itself.

As I paced up and down the gas station awaiting the verdict as
to whether or not the tire would survive the repair, I chanced to
look down the road a bid and there to my curious surprise was a
sight to make me take a second look and to begin to ask questions.
There nested among some buildings and behind a vegetable garden was
a ‘home built’ steam powered traction engine. Its vertical
boiler topped with a jaunty cap over the smoke stack obviously
served the vertical stationary steam engine and could bring
movement to a collection of gears, chains and jack-shafts. The
grass was beginning to climb up along the rubber tired wheels
suggesting that the vehicle had seen little motion at least this
year.

The more the people in the service station answered my questions
the more I was certain that I would enjoy talking to the owner.
And, a subsequent visit proved this to be correct.

I timidly walked up the driveway to the house wondering if the
owner might call the local police when the door opened and a
smiling woman stepped out. Thus was to begin a series of visits to
the home of Mr. and Mrs. Merritt Gum. This most gracious and
interesting couple turned out to be subscribers to Iron-Men Album
and readers of Gas Engine Magazine.

When one goes to the various historical shows featuring
agricultural machinery and sees all of the painstaking
restorations, we are perhaps inclined to forget or at least
overlook the hours of tender loving care that has to go into making
these machines operational. But in every case it just simply has to
be a labor of love. All of the pictures and stories in IMA and in
Gas Engine telling of the restoration and maintenance of these
engines and machines cannot begin to give more than just a glimpse
of the hours and hard work required and the technical knowledge
needed to keep them operational. Similarly, seeing this old engine
in the Gum’s yard was only the tip of the iceberg.

Merritt Gum and his wife, Sylvia, have lived all of their lives
in the area. They have been a part of the farm scene there doing
custom threshing. Their son, Kerth, helped with the machines in the
field driving tractor or truck as needed. But, the threshing days
are over and now the Gum’s have the time to enjoy working to
restore and operate old farm engines that served another era but
which they now keep in operating condition and thus preserve the
symbols and foundations of the mechanization that came in with this
century.

Perhaps we should begin by stepping back in time to around 1912
and a threshing scene along Knapps Creek in Pocahontas County, West
Virginia. Merritt’s father, James Gum from Little Back Creek in
Highland County, Virginia, owned an A. B. Farquhar Company
threshing machine built in York, Pennsylvania. This was powered by
an Aultman-Taylor engine owned by Merritt’s cousin, Cecil
Sheets.

Mrs. Gum has carefully preserved two photographs taken in the
summer of 1912 around Knapps Creek showing the crew relaxing while
they have their picture taken. Many of the early snapshot
photographs were poorly processed and quickly became yellowed.
Often the grain was such as to lose detail when they were enlarged.
These two are particularly good reproductions of an earlier print
or negative. I was able to re-photograph them by simply placing
them in the sunshine on their porch and with close-up lens copy
them to a new negative. By studying these and comparing them to the
photographs in Jack Norbeck’s ‘Encyclopedia of American
Steam Traction Engines’ (Crestline Publishing Company, Glen
Ellyn, Illinois), I would say that the engine was built around 1905
in Mansfield, Ohio. Probably a ten horsepower. The angle drive
shaft to the sunflower gear, characteristic of this manufacturer,
is easily apparent. Merritt’s father is sitting on the tongue
of the thresher and his brother, Harry, is nearby. Merritt told me
that he was really too young to go threshing that day. However, his
first job was as ‘water boy’ for an engine and a most
fortunate job it was, for the barefoot boy in a little straw hat
attracted the attention of a young girl and a lifetime association
in marriage was the eventual outcome.

As time passed and the responsibility of earning a living was
upon him it was natural that the day came when Merritt’s
threshing was done with a John Deere thresher equipped with blower
and self-feeder. It was powered with a 1939 John Deere model A
tractor. The old tractor that raised and provided for a family is
still in running condition and kept with pride and a bit of
sentiment among his collection of farm machinery. Alas, the
thresher was sold and has fallen on difficult times. Unfortunately
the new owner is not one that can appreciate a fine piece of
machinery and keep it well oiled, wiped clean and protected from
the weather when not in use. Many of todays ‘hands’ have
not had to live through hard times when one simply did not just go
out and buy a new machine simply because they just had to have it.
No, it was ‘make do’ with what you had.

Although necessity changed his direction from steam to internal
combustion powers the chrysalis from childhood experience is still
there in the form of the steam tractor that first caught my
eye.

The parentage of this engine is difficult to define. The boiler
has absolutely no identification on it other than the O & S
marking on the fire door. Therein lies a problem for the state
inspector will not certify the boiler though it passes the
hydrostatic test. Similarly, the vertical steam engine is devoid of
nameplate or any other clue to its identity. It is a D valve engine
of which many hundreds were built in the heyday of steam. It is a
non-reversing stationary type. Though in its present service
reversing capability would be convenient the lack of that link was
circumvented by installing a gear box from a Chevrolet automobile.
This assembly of parts and pieces is all carried on the rubber
tired chassis of a former self-propelled Massey Harris corn
picker.

Now if the individual pieces of equipment are difficult to
identify so is the original builder. Merritt bought it through an
IMA FOR SALE item from Mr. G. W. Tapp of Rushsylvania, Ohio, in
1975.

It was trucked home to Green Bank where it has remained. Every
now and again it is fired up and steam raised enough to at least
blow the several whistles that it affords much to the amusement of
the neighborhood……old and young alike.

Did you ever hear of the expression, ‘a twinkle in the
eye?’ Well, here is a man that has a twinkle in his voice.
Underneath the West Virginia drawl there is always a subtle little
inflection in the voice that has a touch of humor. Among the
collection of machines is a grist mill. The Gum family grind and
market to their friends and acquaintenances stone ground corn meal.
They have a stamp that they use on the paper sacks to show that
this product is Stone Ground Corn Meal ‘BY GUMMY.’

As I rummaged through the barn listening to the stories of this
and that, I must have counted 20 old gasoline engines. These had
been collected and made to run again. But of all, there had to be a
favorite, naturally. It was a Maynard gasoline engine originally
sold by the Charles Williams Stores long since out of business. It
is a 3 HP unit with the serial M9841. It is in beautiful condition.
At the time it was getting a ‘touch up’ of bright red paint
in anticipation of the summer shows.

Mrs. Gum is not to be left out of the activity either for she
has a little Jaeger engine that is done up in a delicate blue
paint.

I think that my favorite of the collection is a Fairmont Railway
Motors 6 HP two cycle engine made in Fairmont, Minnesota, carrying
serial #28440. I like this engine since it was used originally on
railroad inspection cars and avoided the necessity of reversing
mechanism by simply adjusting the spark either ahead or behind
dead-center. Thus the engine would run in the direction that the
spark was set. Many of these cars mounted the engine so as to drive
the flanged wheels through a flat belt pulley arrangement with an
adjustable idler to furnish the ‘clutch’ function.

The collection has little engines of the Maytag variety and a
big 10 HP International Harvester engine. There are Jaegers and
Deeres and an Economy engine from Sears

Roebuck and Company. There were machines of all interests to be
seen peaking out from under a tarpaulin here or back behind
something there. I felt just like a kid in the candy store for I
didn’t know where to turn next. And, for a total stranger
walking in off the state road out front I was as welcome as an old
friend. Truly, steam can make warm friends.

A big city service station would have looked at my tire with
dollar signs flashing in their eyes. But not these hill country
people who have learned to ‘make do.’ My tire was plugged
and ready for service. And, I was ready for a big ‘railfan’
weekend up on the mountain listening to the stack music of old
three truck Shays and a Heisler that took me back to my childhood
in memories of logging railroads in these wild and wonderful
mountains.