MEMORIES

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27809 East State Rt. T Archie, Missouri 64725

while cleaning out my desk I came across these two pictures and decided to write the story behind them.

These were taken in western Missouri near a little town called Adrian. We were in the middle of a drought and the temperature was around 100 degrees. We had a very wet spring so the wheat, we thought, had turned out pretty well. The rig pulled in around noon and consisted of a 25 HP Russell traction engine and a McCormick-Deering separator with a water wagon. The crew was made up of 13 men and three boys. We hauled the bundles in on a model 'A' and dumped the wheat in a John Deere wagon. Really, this was a pretty common set-up in its day, but as Paul Harvey would say, 'Now the rest of the story!'

It I asked you to tell me what is different about these pictures I am sure some of you would study and study and maybe find something wrong with the way the engine is set, or the separator is pointed in the wrong direction, or the belt is too tight, or the belt is too loose, but in all reality, there isn't a thing wrong with the machinery, the difference is in the people that are in the pictures. No, it isn't the way they are dressed, how they are standing, or even where they are standing. It is how they acted when these pictures were taken.

In those days, people cared for one another, there wasn't any welfare because your neighbor would take care of you. Everyone knew what a hard day's work was, and when the kids were out of school they worked right along side their parents. God was still Number One in their lives and they still practiced the Golden Rule. No one was in a big hurry and took pride in everything they did. But most of all, we cared for one another, no matter what happened we were always friends, where together no problem could become too much that as a 'crew' we couldn't overcome.