THE GOLDEN SPELL OF HARVEST

Key features of a stationary thresher are clearly visible on the rig pictured above, parked in front of a hotel in Poison, Montana. Above the machine curves the straw chute while the spout which delivered the clean grain angles downward. Less visible here but clearly seen in the bottom photo is the self-feeder, into which Central Montana farmer, Bob Abbott is pitching grain. With this exception the machine performed all threshing operations. Occasionally, however, the straw pile became awkwardly high, as in the photo at the left, and the rig had to be pulled to another location.

All day long the blue-gray autumn haze churned with sound. The deep moan of the wind stacker, audible miles away, mingled with the shaking and chattering of internal sieves and screens, the clatter of the beater and of chains on sprockets, the steady hiss of belts over pulleys, the growl of the cylinder and concaves as they tore a stream of bundles to shreds, and their occasional grinding cough when the feeder delivered a bundle crosswise. All the while there was the smooth roar of the multi-cylindered tractor or the bang bang chuff-chuff-chuff of the one-cylinder Oil-pull which, between them, powered most threshing machines.

When rain threatened, work extended ino darkness at day's end, and might continue until midnight. Men loaded their wagons by moonlight or the light from burning shocks. Automobile headlights illuminated the working area around the machine, or the machine was moved at dusk to a safe distance from the strawstack, then the owner fired the stack for light to work by.

Straw stacks burned bright orange and red all over the wide countryside. The smoke billowed away before the wind, strong and acrid near a fire but mellowing with distance. Two miles from its source it became a fragrance like that of burning leaves.

At moving time the last two teamsters to unload drove their wagons aside and returned to clean up around the feeder. One man gathered fallen bundles and straw with a fork; the other used a broad shovel to scoop up detached heads. They worked in a choking gray cloud of dust. Chaff, undersized kernels, and dirt dribbled into open collars and over damp skins.

At last the engineer eased the tractor forward to take tension off the belt. All steps involved in setting the machine were reversed. Then the machine moved along the shortest possible route across fields and meadows to the next site. Fences meant nothing; a man hurried on ahead, pulled the staples out of a few posts or tore a few posts out of the ground, and laid the wires flat while the rig moved over them. On level prairie it could lumber from farmyard to farmyard in a line as straight as the flight of a bullet.

III. Threshing was adventure

On the morning when threshers came to my father's fields, I woke very early to a clatter and clink of utensils in the kitchen, a sizzling of eggs and pancakes frying, a fragrance so irresistible that I leaped like a hooked trout. I dressed by the lamp glow that came up the stair well, and hurried downstairs and outdoors. There the teamsters were ready to start for the fields, although only the dimmer st s had begun to fade from the sky. In our long driveway, out of the slowly brightening twilight, more wagons loomed, rumbling. As they arrived, each man fastened his reins with a half hitch to the high standard at the front of his rack, and let the horses stand while he went in for breakfast. Every man, without fail, found time for a jocular acknowledgement of a small boy's fascinated interest.