Vigo County Fair Gas Engine and Steam Threshing Show

years, and the fair has been slipping a little. I thought about it
a long time, and realized that something new and exciting would
help.

Mrs. Eula Drew, owner of the Great James H. Drew Exposition
Carnival out of Augusta, Georgia, is a dear friend of mine of 40
years. Her son Jimmie is now the owner. Eula asked me to join the
Fair Association and to put my efforts into it. I retired from the
Fire Department after thirty years of service. I then created the
Fire-Police Museum in 1980 and had devoted most of my time to its
operation. The Drew Carnival has been on the midway at our fair for
30 years, and we hope, for many years to come. The fair board asked
me to look into the possibility of putting a steam threshing show
together which would boost the fair’s first two days
attendance.

I broke into steam while living at a children’s home here.
My job was working in the steam power house. We had two return tube
Atlas boilers and three steam engines, so I was well broken in
after four years.

This was a challenge and a chance to get back into steam. So I
called the old pro, Bob Johnson, of North Terre Haute, Indiana, who
has owned two Baker engines and a Nichols & Shepard engine plus
other steam related equipment. We sat down and laid out our plans.
The first thing was to find equipment needed. Johnson’s engine
needed new flues, so we all pitched in and put the new flues in the
Baker. Helping on the project were Leland Creed, Lloyd Creed,
Dennis Ross, and Tom Champion. The Baker is a 21-75. This was in
June, 1988 and it was 100 degrees in the shade. We worked up to
within one week of the fair to complete the job.

Leland Creed was the ramrod boiler maker, overseeing the job. He
worked the flues inside the firebox and he is 75 years old. Bob
Johnson has had a heart problem and he had to act as an adviser on
the job. Dennis Ross cut the flues and Lloyd Creed (son of Leland)
and Tom Champion rolled the flues in the smokebox end, while Lori
Johnson kept busy recording the event with a video camera.

Next we had to find a threshing machine and a binder, as the two
go together. I found an old Mc-Cormick Deering binder 10 miles
south of town in a new coal mine. It was going to be destroyed and
was on the Hunter farm. I contacted members of the Hunter family
and they agreed to let us have it. It had blackberry vines as thick
as your thumb growing throughout the whole machine. I had to use
pruners to cut my way through to the binder. Frank Killion
transported the machine to the fairgrounds.

It was in very bad condition, almost beyond repair. I had to
make new rollers and that took a large lathe. There was no canvas
for it and we had to turn to Bob Johnson, who had saved some from
his threshing days. The cycle bar cutter had to be restored by Coen
Hutchinson. This binder had a bull wheel for ground power and all
of it had to be gone over. All parts were rusted together. With a
lot of oil and hard work we got it loosened up. Then it was ready
for a test, so we hooked it up to a pickup truck and pulled it to
get it to operate. Everything worked fine. Lots of work went into
that restoration!

Next we had to get a threshing machine. I got word that there
was one sitting in a field ten miles south of town, and four miles
east. I found it buried up to the hubs and axles. I had to shovel
it out of the ground. We added air to the tires and to my surprise,
they stayed up. I contacted another volunteer, Tom Fears, who towed
it back to the fairgrounds, by way of back roads at 15 miles per
hour and it all stayed together.

Another big job was upon us a 1932 22-36 Avery separator, made
in Peoria, Illinois. The bottom was all rotted out, the main pulley
and the belting was gone. So my work was cut out for me. The
separator was donated by the Boyll family of Pimento, Indiana. This
equipment was donated to the Fire-Police Museum; we in turn turned
it over to the Wabash Valley Fair Association to be used at the
fair.

Work began on the bottom of the separator. The shaker was made
new from aluminum, the grain getter cylinder was rusted tight and
the beater grates had to be restored. The grain pans and the frames
were all made of new material. Most of the flat chain on the Hart
feeder was renewed. The wind stack was a rusty mess so a lot of
work went into that. All new belting was put in place, a new drive
pulley was added, the conveyor had to be taken apart and restored.
The return elevator was restored and a coat of white paint applied.
The great thing about this job: all materials were donated by Terre
Haute industries.

Late June was upon us and it was time to bind the wheat for our
show. At the time, we didn’t have any wheat so I put in a call
to farmer Fred Wilson, and he came through with four acres of
wheat.

We got to try out the binder, and we had lots of volunteers. The
Hollingsworth men of Vermillion County, plus my two grandsons, Tom
Montgomery, Loran Watson and others came down and gave us a full
day’s work. Without these people we could not have gotten the
job done.

We shocked the wheat and let it stand for a week. We had to work
quickly because we get lots of rain this time of year. We loaded
the four wagons, headed for the fair grounds and put it in the
barns out of the weather.

I next contacted the fire department to supply us with water for
the engines and the coal mine to obtain coal, all donated. We
needed engines so Bob Johnson was contacted, as were Burl Bogart,
of Memon, Indiana and Henry Youngblood of Monrovia, Indiana. So we
had one Case, one Huber and one Baker engine.

I contacted John Curry, owner of Misco Company, and they
transported the engines to the fairgrounds. We were in need of
drive belts, so I called a building wrecker who had removed a 150
conveyor belt from a downtown dime store. The belt was the right
material and thickness. We cut it to eight inch width and got
enough belting for the separator and the baler, plus extra. All the
belting that we cut for the separator was conveyor belting used at
the coke plant and it was rubber covered and it works fine.

Our first threshing show was in 1987. We used rented equipment
from the Clyde Knows farm north of Marshall, Illinois. The show was
received so well by the public that we decided to acquire our own
equipment.

Our second threshing show in 1988 was another hit. We used our
restored equipment and Burl Bogart’s Huber engine, with his
brother as engineer, and Bob Johnson’s Baker engine. The
engines took their turn, one running the separator and the other
running the baler, with John Greene overseeing its operation.

Our third threshing show this past July turned out to be our
best yet, and the operation has helped improve our fair. Getting it
all together were Tom Champion and Bob Johnson. The engine used was
Henry Youngblood’s Case, from Monrovia, Indiana and Bob
Johnson’s Baker from North Terre Haute, Indiana.

In the last week of June 1989 we cut, bound and shocked the
wheat and had lots of help. When it came time to load the wheat a
week later, help was hard to find and we had to hire help.
Volunteer help is a cherished commodity. We would shut down the
separator and bale the straw. We are using a Deering baler. John
Greene of Clay County handled this operation. We had lots of people
watching the poking of the wires through the wooden blocks. A few
had never seen this type of baling. Some came to reminisce about
the past. We would let some kids and women pitch the bundles and
poke the wires and everybody had a great time. This makes the
show.

Tom Champion put into operation his cut off saw with a 30 inch
blade. Using power from the Johnson engine, we cut logs into one
inch-thick sections and gave them to those who watched. Everybody
wanted them. This was a great attraction added to the show. We hope
to saw logs as soon as we can get a saw mill. We are looking into
the possibility of setting up a permanent steam power show, and it
could be run any time the need calls for it.

The creativity of all these steam operations knows no boundary
with the fans and all are devotedly attached to it all. We all must
keep this history alive. It is too precious to let it go. We must
remember, if we don’t preserve what we know and have for future
generations it will be lost forever.