Glimpsing the Past In Pine Village, Indiana

Farther to the northeast, Herb Crane and his son Loyd, a former football team member nicknamed 'Jersey,' ran their Avery Under-mounted for a ring. At sundown one day late in the steam-power era, the Avery with threshing machine in tow came chuffing up the road and stopped in front of my great-grandfather's farm. Charlie Allen, the hired man, meditatively chewed a straw while Herb swung down from the cab and sauntered over. Jersey leaned his elbows on the Avery's windowsill and watched. 'It's gettin' dark,' Herb observed. 'It 'pears that-a-way,' Charlie responded. 'What do you say to letting us keep our rig in your barn lot overnight?' Herb asked. Allen squinted at the sunset reflected in the black paint of the engine's cab. 'I reckon you can keep her here,' Allen consented, 'but not by the barn. Put her back there along that fence where the land kinder slopes down.' The Cranes obeyed then walked up the road to town. The next day came and went with no sign of the Cranes. Other days followed. The thresher was moved away later that winter, but, despite repeated promises to come get the engine, the Cranes abandoned it. For three or four years, the hulk rusted where it sat. Eventually, it was junked. My father saved its big clevis as a souvenir. He surmised that the Cranes must have known that something was seriously wrong with the engine.

The steam era was drawing toward an end. Two Rumely engines and two threshers belonging to Fred Albright were housed in a large shed to the left of the easternmost road in 'Oklahoma,' the curious name for a neighborhood of houses near the railroad in Pine Village. The shed burned the heat was trapped. Jake, the engineer whom Tom's son Charley occasionally replaced, was an easy-going fellow. 'He was slow moving, but every movement counted,' my father said. Jake would whistle through his white mustache. On that hot afternoon, a lazy melody floated above the chuffing of the engine. Suddenly, my father noticed smoke rolling off the water tank. Afraid of fire, Joe got Jake's attention. With a calm, deliberate manner which my father found frustrating under the circumstances, Jake opened a valve to fill the scorched, empty tank.

Around a steamer there had to be plenty of water. Where Jake was threshing, the water wagon would pull up, and a hose from the engine's injector would be placed in the tank. The Huber drank water directly from the wagon until the water hauler decided it was time to get more. He would attach one end of a hose to the nozzle low down on the wagon reservoir and insert the other end in a small livestock tank beside the engine. He would fill that tank with the water remaining in the wagon's reservoir, then he would set out to refill the water wagon from a stream, a well, or a large stock tank, pumped by windmill, at a distance from the threshing. Charley Cobb also kept a livestock tank beside the Reeves engine east of town.