| One time the
"machine" was at Losch's and was to come to our place next. Why I climbed up on
the wind pump tower every little bit to see if they were done and would be leaving for our
place. After all that anxiety and it did head our way I'd be out at the road
"watching." 'Course soon as it made the turn at the cross road I was hyped up
like you wouldn't believe. Then a few moments later I could hear the crunch of the gravel
from those big broad steel wheels. A threshing crew
consisted of at least three men, sometimes four. The owner of the rig was generally the
boss, engine man, overall supervisor, quite a "looked up to" individual in the
community. Next was the separator man, he'd be second in command. Then the "water
boy." A fourth member usually some lad "run-and-fetch-it"...
"gopher," officially he was called the blower boy. A job he shared with the
separator man. Most of the straw from threshing was stacked out side, and if there were a
lot of straw and the farmer wanted it all in one big stack, it took a lot of doing to get
that. The blower pipe on a threshing machine was we'll say fourteen feet long, then it
could be telescoped out perhaps twenty...twenty two feet.
There was a mechanism on the machine that could be engaged
to move it from side to side, also up and down. Then out to the end of the pipe was a hood
affair that could be regulated with a rope to cause the straw to go straight out, off to
one side or the other, down, or even back toward the machine a little. The blower on a
grain separator kicked out a powerful blast of air. I know it had to take more energy to
run it than the threshing mechanism itself. A conscientious blower boy earned his money.
Some farmers liked to "work" their stacks, but a good man on the blower could
make a better one without.
Now the water boy, no he wasn't some guy to keep everybody
supplied with drinking water. A steam engine used a lot of water, barrels and barrels of
it. A "rig" also consisted of a water wagon, a tank on wheels, offhand I'd say
held fifteen barrels. By today’s standards he earned his money too. A water wagon was
equipped with a big hand operated suction pump mounted clear up on top. The favorite place
to get water was where a road crossed an open ditch. He'd park his horse(s) and wagon on
the bridge, throw a long suction hose down to the water in the ditch, and start pumpin.
With the pump being a good seven feet up from the bridge floor, and the water at least
five feet below meant he had to lift some fifteen barrels of water at least twelve feet
high, and on the double. The engine man might even be giving the
"get-the-hell-back-here" tootin' on the whistle. |
