Thirty Years At The Throttle

After a two-weeks layoff we went back to work and a neighbor boy and his two sisters started coming to the mill about every day. One frail little girl, eight years old, took a surprising interest in the engine, watching me fire and wanting to help, she would take the scoop and gather chips and scraps of bark for me to put in the fire. She wanted to know what that glass with water in it was for and I told her that was so the engine would not blow up and if she ever saw it empty to run home. After we came home she wrote and said the man that took my place kept water in it too. One day I was using the cut-off saw to square up some boards and turned around to see Dorothy trying to remove a piece of wood right by the saw teeth. I pulled her away from the saw and showed her how a piece of bark could be cut off by the teeth when you could hardly see them. She didn't bother it again.

As the winter cuttings of logs were about sawed up, we decided we had better open our own garage again, so it was with regret that I closed the throttle on the Case for the last time and, incidentally, closing the book on my active career as engineer.

As I look back over the long years, I will be seventy-nine come September fifth and by the way, I was on an engine seven birthdays in a row from 1907 on. With the new stronger metals, increased steam pressures, condensers and gears running in oil, it seems just as they learned how to build an efficient engine the curtain fell.

Joining the Midwest Old Settlers and Threshers Association, Inc., I attended the reunions each fall. One year firing a Geiser and another year driving a Case around the half-mile race track in front of the grandstand. I also attended Neil Miller's show at Alden where I had the pleasure of driving an Aultman Taylor like the one we bought in 1914. At one show I noticed an old fellow trying to start an injector, so I said, 'It may be too hot; let's put some water higher than it is.' We filled a bucket and set it up high, then steam blew back into the bucket, so I asked him if he had taken the unit apart and he said he had soaked the parts in weak acid to remove lime. I sent him to look in the bath. Soon he returned with the steam jet and with it replaced, it worked perfectly.

One thing gave the gas tractor the advantage in the past was the coal and water trouble. As the farmer usually burned wood, he disliked having coal left after threshing and there was nothing more aggravating than to start doing chores at night, finding gates open, stock scattered and water tanks dry. Later on a small truck, with coal bunker and water tank could have furnished clean water if having had to be hauled several miles.