WAUPACA COUNTY POST

November 9, 2000

 

Days of August Define Life of the Thresher Man

By Lowell F. Peterson, M.D.

 

            The amber fields of grain, once more, yielded the bounty of the harvest to the sickle, as had been the case for hundreds of years.

            The McCormick reaper, pulled behind the Farmall “B” tractor, cut the straw, tied the bundles with twine, and spit the sheaves out onto the ground, one after another.  Hired men skillfully placed the grain bundles into “shocks,” north to south, lined up like houses along a city street, to dry like fish on a rack, as the warmth of the sun moved daily, east to west.

            It’s time for the thresher man.

            In 1945, this man again assembled his trusty crew, as he had done each August for the previous 20 years, and as his father before him had done dating back into the late 1800s.

            Why would these trusty men leave their jobs as farmers, truckers, and mill-sawyers for the month of August each year for this six-day-per-week, 12- to 14-hours-per-day job?  They couldn’t imagine themselves anywhere else.  It was a privilege.

            The Reeves steam engine that would run the threshing machine had been fired up for the first time and driven off a flatbed railroad car at the Waupaca depot in 1920 by the thresher man as a teenager and delivered across dirt roads and rickety railroad trellises to the home farm under the eyes of an admiring father.  He had passed a test of succession.

            Unfortunately, and unforeseen, only six years later the thresher man would assume the entire responsibility, forced upon him by the untimely death of his father.  Through the next 20 years, the later summer harvest ritual was repeated annually, moving from farm to farm, to thresh the neighbors’ grain with power generated by this mammoth machine.

            By 1945 the engine was getting old and the flue pipes running the length of the water jacket periodically needed replacing to keep the rusted-out areas from leaking water into the firebox, decreasing the heat, and thereby decreasing steam-driven power below workable levels.  A privileged few, Oscar, Kermit, Pat, Harvey and Walter, made up a lineage of engineers hired to fire and run the engine.

            Walter Grove returned in 1945 for what had become his fifth annual “vacation” from being chief sawmaster at the Strebe sawmill to run the engine.  He enjoyed threshing, but he did not enjoy the thought of having to replace flue pipes from inside the cooled down firebox in the middle of July in preparation for the upcoming threshing season. He confided to me years later that the old Reeves had “bad lungs.”

            The preparatory work having been completed, it was “show time!”

            The Reeves steam engine was fired up until the pressure reached adequate power levels and then the engine was attached to the Huber grain separator.  The engine steamed its way out of the farm driveway, obediently followed by the separator, and made its way down the road toward Clarence’s farm.

            Excitement and anticipation began to mount.  The sight of the steam engine pulling the separator down the road at three miles per hour was a spectacle that drew the attention of the entire neighborhood.

            As the puffs of white smoke from the smokestack cleared the crest of the hill, and the chuga-chuga-chuga sound broke the air with powerful ease, a black monster slowing came into view.  The thought of this sight bring tears to my eyes and chills to my spine to this day.

            The barefoot kids, wit their bib overalls rolled up to the knees, ran to meet the engine, waiting to be scared off by a couple shrieking blasts from Walter’s steam whistle.  The aproned housewives waved white dishtowels in greeting, and the weathered farmers, leaning on their pitchforks, watched motionless in awe.

            The engine and separator passed the one-room schoolhouse, crossed the river bridge and entered Clarence’s hillside farmyard.  The powerful separator was moved into place, positioned, leveled with a slight-pitch to the rear toward the straw blower to aid delivery of the grain through the machine.  The separator was an intricate conglomeration of belts, pulleys, shafts cams knives, shakers, elevators and blowers enclosed in, and attached to, a galvanized steel container majestically set on heavy steel wheels.

            The separator’s grain blower precluded the need to bag and carry the oats to the granary.  Every half-bushel of grain, cleaned of weed seed and debris by this efficient machine, would be weighed, counted automatically, dumped into the blower and wind-blown through 8-inch pipes by a 2,000 rpm fan for hundreds of feet into the awaiting bins of the granary, passing the dust on straight through a screen and out the rear window into the air.  The straw, now separated from the grain, would likewise be blown by a high speed fan out the blower pipe to indoor barn storage or outside to mushroom-shaped stacks.

            Walter would fire the engine; the thresher man would man the separator; a blower man would stack the straw; a “water monkey” would hand pump water out of the streams and ponds into a tank on a wagon and transport it to the thirsty engine with a wagon pulled by horses.  The 60-foot separator drive belt was crossed in the middle, placed on the steam engine’s large flywheel, drawn tense and prepared for its ergonomic destiny.  The escaping steam from the safety release valve was audible evidence of the pent-up power awaiting the signal to be released. The 140 pounds of steam pressure, rivaling  a railroad locomotive and generating 40 to 60 hp on the drive belt, would power the separator and grain blowers effortlessly.  The grease and oil lubricating the gears and pistons, warmed by the heat of the engine, created a characteristic sweet smell that surrounded the powerful beast.

            Each day thereafter began when the stealthy fog lifted and the damp morning dew evaporated into the intensifying heat of the day.  The day would not end until the red harvest sun began to set in the west and the condensing moisture again descended out of the quiet air.

            The neighboring farmers and their hired men all came to help.  Harvest at their farms was coming soon as well.  That’s the way it was done.  No one complained.  Harvesting 40 acres at one farm was not any more or any less important than 10 acres at another farm.  No arguments or finger pointing.  Get the job done and move on.  Brotherhood such as this has never been practiced any better, at any time, anywhere else.

            The wooden wagons, drawn by a team of sturdy work horses, departed to the fields to be loaded with the shocks of grain, one bundle at a time.  The horses walked slowly between the rows, as the men pitched the dried grain bundles onto the wagon.  Full, the wagon and its hired-hand driver departed for the farmyard to await a turn to pitch the bundles into the continuously moving, razor sharp, shark-like jaws of the separator.  Two wagons would unload simultaneously, the bundles of grain entering the machine side by side, separated by a vertical board.

            The easy chuga-chuga-chuga of the engine was unending, as field after field emptied its contents to the insatiable mouth of this hungry machine.  The engine continued to suck up the water from the water wagon and the blocks of wood in the firebox continued to make steam to drive the cylinders and create the power.

            The call to dinner each day was sounded by a short whistle.  The machinery became eerily quiet for 30 to 45 minutes.  Perspiration and dust were splashed off by clean, cold, well water before entering the welcoming farmhouse kitchen and dining room.  Potatoes, beef gravy, beef roast, vegetables and homemade bread filled plates to overflowing.  At least 20 people were amazingly being fed at a single setting by the industrious housewives.  Homemade pies of multiple varieties and strong Norwegian coffee gave the meal an exclamation point.

            Then it was back to work.  Grease the pulleys; start the belt power; release the kinetic energy; hear the musical whir of the belts; unleash the workers’ muscle and sweat.

            In the late afternoon, Kool-Aid, lemonade, cookies and cake were brought out from the house to be consumed under a spreading elm, with only a short break in the work action.

            The scene was repeated day after day.  The march from farm to farm continued, clearing the fields of their bounty.  The sweat poured from the brows of the field workers as their skin bronzed deeper and deeper.

            When the last bundle had been threshed at each farm, and the spilled grain all shoveled from the ground-covering canvas into the trough of the separator, the belts would whir away for a pregnant period of time at full speed, flaunting their power.  The thresher man, after this pause, would then give the signal from the top of the separator that the job was done.  This was the sign for Walter to blow the steam whistle three very long blasts.  The shrill, high-pitched, 200-decibel sound echoed from the hills through the valleys, audible for miles.   It was a sound of pride, of success, of accomplishment.  It reflected, in a lighthearted way, the fun that went with the job.

            An old 1928 Whippet Coupe with an “ooga” horn and a Swiss cheese muffler took the thresher man home after dark each day.  The dopplered sound of the muffler getting closer and closer gave comfort and anticipation to his waiting family.

            The thresher man’s birthday was on Aug. 12, and was celebrated after his evening arrival each year on that date, with ice cream and cake.  The accomplishment of the day by his beloved machines was birthday present enough for him.

            The days of August defined the life of the thresher man.  It was the time when he had felt closest to his dad and subsequently, his sons to him.  These were days of sweat and toil, dust and sun, fun and camaraderie.

            One of the hired men, Vernon Larson, remembered recently that on the 14^th of August in the year of 1945, he had been pitching bundles of grain into the threshing machine at Pete Jensen’s farm, when Jim, the thresher man, surprisingly gave the whistle in the middle of the afternoon.  The action stopped.  The puzzled workers laid down their forks.  What was the reason for the pause?

            As the belts hummed to a slow halt, followed by an eerie silence, Jim walked slowly to the top of the separator and announced to one and all, in his characteristic few words, “The war is over, I think we should take the rest of the day off.”

            Straw hats flew in the air and “yahoos” echoed in the valleys, and the steam engine’s whistle blasted out a steady 200-decibel shriek, joining the chiming of church bells across America, seeming never to end.

            Walter smiled, his red cheeks glowing, his mischievous eyes twinkling, as he closed own the steam engine for the day, spit out his chaw of tobacco, laughed his characteristic laugh, and slowly drove off down County Trunk Q to Rohde’s Tavern, followed by several others.

            The thresher man went home quietly in his trusty Whippet, with the “ooga” horn and the Swiss cheese muffler, a long-awaited, thankful satisfaction in his heart.

            Jim, the thresher man, was my dad.  This had been one of his finest hours.