ENGINES, ENGINES, AND MORE ENGINES

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Soon our family moved from the little log house on the grandfather estate, to father's share of that same farm which meant more building and more machinery. There I saw my first horse-power. We had used steam power, but this outfit got the job and to me it was a novelty to see the eight horses move around and around, each horse stepping with expert precision over the 'tumbling rod' and to hear the yelling and popping whip-lash of the driver. Yet, with all the animation, poetry of motion of those circling horses, something was lacking the smoke, the sizzling steam, the pop valve and the whistle.

In our community, if one would say 'Mahlon Susong' he would bring to the mind of the listener stallions. When you saw him, he was always on a stallion. That was his business. So, when you speak the name 'Harrison Wexler', steam engines come to mind, and threshers. Always on his place you would see three or four steam engines, one of which was of vertical type. We called them 'tub engines'. This type was propelled by steam but steered by oxen. I do not need to comment on the roads of that day. It was all fun to the kids, just to see the traction engine slip and slide. We would help cut cedars or raid a roadside fence for rails to aid traction. If all this was a headache to the crew, it was a picnic to our crowd of little sinners.

Think then of 'setting' in unthinkable places separator in hallway of the barn, engine up on a hillside above the barn. You who have threshed only over prairie and plain do not know what I am talking about. To level this engine it required a stack of cord wood to bolster up the front wheels. You of the plains imagine this, only with us it was not imagination. As we slept we did not dream, we had nightmares. Great fun though.

Never to be forgotten was the time when Henry Little of Bluff City, pulled the first J. I. Case traction engine I ever saw into our place. It was brand new, a beautiful center crank with an 'Independent pump' on the left side. The basket weave and circular design of the guard grills, I could never forget. Nor Henry who was so good to let me ride with him from set to set. He was in my audience as an old man, once as I spoke, but now has passed from us.

I remember too, the first complete Aultman-Taylor outfit. This model transmitted the power through a rod, bevel gears, the clutch near the crank shaft. For our country, it was-geared a bit high. Some called this the 'sunflower' drive.

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