Berne, Indiana
Please find enclosed personal check for $2.00 to pay for my
renewal. Your magazine has a nack of stirring up pleasant memories
as well as some unpleasant ones of years gone by. I was born in
1885 and can well remember the days when the threshing rig came
along without the blower, the self-feeder nor the grain weigher and
My father was the community straw stack builder. I was grown up
when I was first sent to help the neighbors thresh and of course I
was asked to take up my father’s straw stack building career.
Somehow I soon had the nack of handling straw the easy way and
liked the job for more than one reason. One of the reasons was that
when a few leisure moments were available I’d walk around and
watch the steamer run and perchance handle the controls. This
created in me a longing to be a thresherman.
The season of 1919 I had the opportunity to be water boy to a
rig in our neighborhood and that fall bought half interest in that
same outfit which was a Rumley steam threshing rig. A 22-65 engine
and a 36×60 separator, This was a large outfit when it came to barn
threshing but did good work. We always had enough power providing
the fuel was good. We, as many others, had to quit and let the gas
tractors take over. However, it seems that the aroma of steam
cylinder oil is still in my blood.
