‘Thrashing’ Memories Appear In A Cloud of Steam

Threshing or ‘thrashing’ as the old-timers called it is
the payoff in wheat raising and Hoffman, now 88, figures that
‘close to a million’ bushels of wheat were processed
through his machine.

Hoffman got his start in the Milton Grove area, helping his
father, Samuel Hoffman.

But, in 1919, he bought the property on Anchor Road between here
and Rheems where he still lives today, moving in the following
year.

In 1906, he married Katie Stump, who lived ‘out Ridge Road a
ways.’ They had 10 children and enjoyed 60 years together
before she died in 1966.

For Hoffman, Katie was love at first sight. He remembers well
how he set his cap for her.

He smiles to recall: ‘I saw her somewhere, I can’t
remember where. So, one night I just thought I’d go up there
(to her house), even though she already had a fella. But, I beat
him, because Kattie sacked him and took me.’

In 1921, Hoffman made a big plunge when he invested in a brand
new Frick steam engine, made at Waynesboro, and ‘went
thrashing.’

And, he insists, he’d still be at it today if tractors and
combines hadn’t come along and forced him out of business.
Serving 50 customers, he said, ‘I thrashed many a barn
empty.’

At the age of 88, he still feels competent to tend the engine,
but doesn’t think he’d be up to working inside the barn
with the threshing machine itself.

Hoffman had the steam engine he first began using in 1921 and,
he reports, it’s still in working order, though he hasn’t
operated it since last Fall.

He admits he doesn’t feel quite up to it anymore.

‘I’ve done a lot of work in my time and I’m not
ready to quit,’ Hoffman said, ‘but I guess I have
to.’

Though he says he manages to keep his spirits up pretty well by
keeping busy around the place, Hoffman lamented, ‘When you get
old, you get into trouble,’ and ‘I’m ‘in wrong’
every place.’

Last fall, on Election Day, he was on his way home from voting
when he collided with a parked truck ‘in Rheems, they park so
dumb’ and ruined his 1954 Buick with more than 100,000 miles on
it.

‘I miss my car,’ he said, but admitted he agreed with
his children that he shouldn’t buy another one. ‘I might
hurt somebody, they said, and they are right,’ Hoffman
said.

When Tropical Storm Eloise poured buckets three weeks ago,
Hoffman complained, his roof began to leak and now he’s worried
because, although the new shingles have arrived, the roofing
contractor hasn’t come back yet.

His coal supply for the house ‘is almost all,’ he
reported, ‘and I don’t want to buy anymore buckwheat coal
at $60 a ton, but cold weather is coming on and I don’t know
when the man is going to install the oil burner I ordered.’

A huge Keefer pear tree sits in his side yard, but nobody wants
the pears, so he has to keep cleaning them up as they drop.

And he has a real ‘thing’ with the large maple trees out
front which are just beginning to deposit their leaves which must
be raked up.

Yet, Hoffman admitted, having Dears to pick up and leaves to
rake lets him go to bed each evening knowing he has work to do when
he gets up the next morning and that’s important.

The tall, thick walnut tree at the back of the house is another
problem of sorts, he tells you. The nuts themselves, he said, are
‘deaf’ all dried and shriveled up inside so even the
squirrels don’t want them.

A man came one day and offered to buy the tree for lumber, but
Hoffman can’t sell because the tree may be a ‘line
tree’ partly on his property and partly on his
neighbor’s.

It may appear Hoffman is an old grouch and constant complainer.
Not so. He merely matter-of-factly tells the visitor how it is.

He has no real complaints, even though his doctor told him on
the last visit he has a cataract in one eye.

The impression you get is that Hoffman understands full well
that ‘that’s life’ and he still counts his many
blessings.

Like the eight children of 10 who survive and the many
grandchildren and great-grandchildren and the daughters who visit
at least twice a week to clean and fix the kinds of food that all
he has to do is heat it.

And the memories. Like the family trip to Atlantic City when
they all slept in their 1926 Buick touring car. No motel for them,
he said, because ‘that would have cost terrible and I
wasn’t so fat with money at the time.’

So, the Hoffman family philosophy was, as he expressed it:
‘We just had to work it according to the pocketbook.’

Hoffman’s longtime love affair with steam engines is his
principal interest in life and his favorite reading material is The
Iron Men Album magazine.

He’s belonged to the Rough and Tumble Historical Association
for many years and goes to the annual steam show at Kinzers every
August.

Hoffman likes being his own boss and persistently declines
suggestions he should move into a nearby nursing home or even visit
and have an occasional meal with the elderly people there.

‘If it gets to be too much, I’ll have to do
something,’ he said, ‘but I can’t see myself sitting
around listening to those old ladies chewing the fat.’

Though he’s always been slightly built, Hoffman was a man of
power and prestige in these parts when steam was king.

In command of a goliath machine with huge wheels six feet high
and pulling his gigantic threshing machine, straw baling rig, wagon
of soft coal and water wagon, Hoffman stirred up a lot of dust in
his day with his caravan on country roads and threshing floors.

About all that’s left of those times is the wad of chewing
tobacco he still favors. He started to chew as a young lad to
overcome the dust of ‘thrashing.’

Of course, he’ll never part with his steam engine.

And he’s nourished by the pride of accomplishment still
warming the heart of an ‘iron man’ from the
‘rough-and-tumble’ days.

Sure, the combines and gasoline-powered tractors have taken
over, but, Hoffman said, ‘they don’t get the grain the way
they did in the old days.