O. W. Bowen, known as Ori to his friends, is an original Steam
Thresher man. Although he now makes his home at Woodman, Wisconsin,
he has traveled many miles tending the ‘steamers’. Ori has
been a guest engineer at the Zumbro Valley Reunion since the first
reunion in 1955. His favorite line is the Advance, and when he
comes to the Budenski farm he sort of adopts the Advance 22. Maybe
he was operating this very engine at Durward Steinmetz near
LaFarge, Wis. When Robert purchased the Advance he asked Mr. Bowen
if he would like to operate it at the reunion. The answer must have
been yes, because on Friday before the reunion Mr. Bowen drove into
the yard. Mr. Bowen has many interesting stories to tell. I
promised myself I would someday attempt to put an almost complete
threshing history of O. W. Bowen down on paper.
His first threshing experience started as many others had, as a
band cutter. He then graduated to straw stacker. But the item that
interested him most was the shiny new Peerless engine. It was in
1901 in the state of Wisconsin that he decided some day he would
operate an engine. Since they were stack threshing, his job went
well into the winter, and Wisconsin winters usually are miserable.
But he did get to operate his new side-mounted engine near the end
of the season.
In 1907 he became a full time engineer on his own rig, a Star
manufactured by the C. Aultman Co. of Canton, Ohio. The engine was
a top mounted 12 hp and powered a 28 x 54 separator with a 20 bar
cylinder, in keeping with the year. This separator was hand fed the
first season. The second season a Garden City straight feeder was
added. This rig operated a total of 3 seasons in Grant County near
the Little Green River.
This was very hilly country. With each move the unexpected
happened. One particular hill was very steep. He started up the
hill with the engine and separator with a team out front. They did
not get far before it was obvious they would have to make the load
lighter. So the Loose concaves were removed and the stacker taken
off as it was a slat stacker and easy to take off. They got to the
top of the hill with the engine but it took eight horses to get the
separator up the hill. The other side of the hill did not look so
steep so they started down. Things went fine until the engine
started to skid with the drivers locked in reverse, the engine
skidded about ten feet. They were going down through the woods and
brush and the upper drive wheel came into contact with a stump and
it was too steep to backup so they ran over the stump and then had
to grub the stump to get the separator across. When they got to the
bottom of the hill the road was sand and they had to plank across
that. They got to the next setting in a reasonable length of
time.
A few years later a new blacktop was put in the very spot that
Ori and the crew had trouble in and Ori says that it is a very
pleasant drive now.
From the hills of Wisconsin Ori could hear the echo of the tall
wheat stories of North Dakota. Ori went to Dakota for the season of
1922. Then from 1926 to 1934 O. W. Bowen worked the engines in the
wheat fields of North Dakota. He operated many engines. Among them
were the 22 Double Port Huron, a 22 Double Nichols and Shepard. His
favorite was a 35 hp Compound Advance. This big engine powered an
equally big separator of the Avery line. It was a 44/64. It had all
the proper equipment and was located near the Canadian border in
September shock-threshing. On the 20th of September in 1926 it
started raining and snowing. Some of the crew quit and the cook
happened to be one of them. So Ori took what he thought to be a
temporary job as cook for ten men while the weather was bad. It was
three weeks before the weather cleared up and the crew went to
threshing again. Only two of the original crew finished the season.
They were O. W. Bowen and the tank-man.
Mr. Bowen has experienced firing with straw, wood, and coal. The
North Dakota threshing was done with straw and coal. Much of the
Wisconsin threshing was done with wood or coal. Mr. Bowen operated
steam engines in five states – Wisconsin, Illinois, North Dakota,
Iowa and Minnesota.
In Iowa, Mr. Bowen was guest engineer at the Davenport Reunion
in 1954 where he operated a 12 hp Advance for Justin Hintigen of
LaMotte, Iowa.
In Illinois Mr. Bowen had the honor of operating a Port Huron
Compound 19-65 hp at a reunion.
While in Minnesota, Mr. Bowen operated a Minneapolis engine in
1924 threshing, using straw to fire with. Since 1955 he has been an
engineer at the Zumbro Valley Thresherman’s Reunion.
He has owned a total of five engines in Wisconsin. They included
two Advances of 16 hp; one 21 Compound Advance, one 18 Advance
Rumely and a 12 hp Star.
With this colorful career behind him, we sincerely hope O. W.
Bowen enjoys many more years of this one time occupation which is
now a grand hobby. Good luck, Ori.
This was written by Marilyn Trelstad and printed in the Zumbro
Valley
Threshermen’s Booklet of 1959.
