Wonderful To Remember

day and asked me if I thought he could get a job as pitcher with
the machine that he knew that I had already hired out, to be the
engineer of. Course I had nothing to do with the men who were to be
the crew, but I told him that I would inquire into the matter for
him, also would recommend him to the owner of the machine. However,
in my judgment of him wanting to go along as a pitcher, he seemed a
little old for the job. Anyway, I was successful in getting him on
and he stood up remarkably well with the other men who were not
over half his age. You see I did actually have an ax to grind here,
because I was going with his beautiful Irish daughter whom I
married a few months later.

Well, back to the machine itself, ‘the theme of my
story.’ The engine and separator both happen to be manufactured
by the Geiser Manufacturing Company of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. I
am the only one now living of that crew. The man standing on the
step of the engine was the owner of the rig, and his name was John
Kellogg of Glasco, Kansas, not far from where I live now. We had a
nice run that year and good weather for threshing. This was a
smooth running engine and an easy steamer. The picture was taken on
the Mike Griffin farm, southwest of the town, Simpson in Cloud
County, Kansas. I had run this engine a few days the previous year
finishing up a stack threshing run in the same neighborhood. This
time the machine was parked on a farm where they had finished the
shock threshing run and pulled in there. It was here that I got an
introduction to something that as a boy engineer of seventeen years
had read about but had never tried to do.

I fired up the engine about daylight on that morning in
September when we were supposed to begin threshing and with the
separator and coal wagon pulled across a field into the road and
started up a long, but not too steep a hill. The man who was to be
the separator man was steering the engine, standing on the steel
table about a foot above the platform. Without any warning,
whatsoever, a flue let go and water flooded the fire box putting
out the fire and blew the fire door open. Steam of course, engulfed
the whole machine and the separator man jumped from the table right
into the feeder of the separator. We both escaped getting burned,
but the steersman, when he jumped into the feeder punctured his
hand on a raddle spike, rather severely. I was frightened of
course, but never left my engine.

Mr. Kellogg then went to town and brought out a new flue and a
man to put it in. The boiler was still hot and after several
attempts, the repairman gave up trying to get into the firebox. He
told me I would have to put that flue in as he was too big to get
through the door. After all, I was the engineer and could learn
this trick no younger. I crawled in that hot fire box, knocked that
flue loose and they pulled it out the front with a team of horses.
They broke double trees and log chains, but finally the job was
done. I had gone in there without a cap on, so imagine what my head
looked like. I fired up again, pulled it a mile and a half to the
job before getting any dinner. This boy was never so black and
hungry, but he had learned considerably more about running an
engine. I found that it was one thing to read about it and
something else to really do it. I was proud of my lesson that I had
learned, even though it was a tough one.

Well, so much for the stack threshing debut, a little more about
the run the following fall. I learned a very valuable lesson that
year that stayed with me throughout my threshing years, and and
that was ‘to be ever on the alert while operating an
engine.’ I just happened to be where I should have been at the
proper time. We were cleaning up and I had reduced the speed
somewhat by partly closing the throttle. Mr. Kellogg was tending
the separator and gave me the signal to stop, by dropping his hand.
At the same time he did this, he some way placed his other hand on
the feeder raddle and a sprocket caught it and started pulling his
hand around the feeder shaft. I quickly reached for the reverse
lever and pulled it clear back at the same time closing the
throttle. My quick action saved his arm from being badly broken and
mangled. I never forgot that either!

These incidents that I have mentioned here were all with Geiser
machines as pictured and my beginning career as a threshing
engineer. I was reminded of it all by reading the story in the last
issue of Album about the Geiser Manufacturing Company of
Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. Before this experience I had already
owned and operated a ten horse Advance traction that my lather had
bought for me, with which we sawed wood and shelled corn, but that
would be a separate story. I had also, at this time, graduated from
my course of steam engineering and like many other throttle
pullers, had many years with many makes of engines. Maybe more
about it at a later date. Those were all wonderful days to think
about, and how thankful we should be to have the wonderful magazine
now that we all have the Iron men Album and the wonderful folks who
make its existence possible. Those days are gone but still
wonderful to remember.