“It’s quite a machine,” he started, then quickly added, “but, you know, these machines have not really changed that much in terms of basic design. The biggest thing they did was they took the old threshing machine, made it mobile, then they combined the operations of cutting the wheat straw and threshing it. The rest is the result of a whole lot of field testing.”
“Is that right?” Jig mocked. “But what would you really know about it?”
The old man did not reply. He merely continued with his examination of the threshing unit. It was Emus who was next to talk. “Tell us about it. Would you tell us how you started combining?”
The old man slowly moved along the side of the machine before sitting on the rim of one of the large tires. Beside him sat an ornery looking block of wood that the men had used earlier as a base for their jack. After sitting there a while, he said simply, “it is hot. If a little wind comes along, it might turn into a real good combining day.” Then he got to the heart of his thoughts. “I like the look of this machine,” he continued. “I like the simplicity of it. It reminds me of the old Massey Clipper. The Clipper was a simple pull-type combine, with few moving parts. When you went to the field with it, it worked, and it worked all day. It had a five-foot cut, and a threshing cylinder that was almost five feet wide as well. It had a straw walker system that made it very hard to plug.”
“Well, this is no Massey Clipper,” Jig chided.
“I hope it is,” the old man replied quickly. Jig was left without any understanding of why the old man had said that.
Finally, it was Emus who said, “Jig, let up a little. I want to hear what the old man has to say”.
There was a considerable silence before the old man said any more. Then, he started.
“In 1934, I bought my first combine, with my brother, God rest his soul.” With that the old man paused. It seemed that even after all these years, he could not think about his late brother without breaking down. “When we bought that first combine, the immobile threshing machine was king. Many of the old timers thought that a mobile combine was not a functional tool for their farms.
When we brought that first combine home, a combine that was bought with hard earned money, my dad wouldn’t let it onto the farm. He made us park it on the road. That was a hard blow to the two of us.
We had bought that machine with borrowed money. We needed to combine a lot of acres of wheat to pay for it. But, as soon as my dad refused to even let it come onto his property, we knew we had an uphill battle on our hands. We knew then that it would be hard to convince people to even let us harvest a few acres with it so we could demonstrate the capability of the machine.
They resisted us fiercely. It was as though we were upsetting the social order on the farms. The large families, who lived on the farms in those days, were used to having a lot of work to do. They were used to needing their large families, large families who were needed to do all that work on the farms.
Threshing provided them with a lot of work to do. More importantly, it set the tone for all the other work that had to be done around the farm. The kids in those days were expected to work. They were not expected to bring combines or other play toys home to the farm.
To make matters worse, 1934 was the hottest, driest year, anyone could remember. To give you an idea of how dry it was, we planted hills of corn in April that year, in dry dirt, and we never did get enough rain to bring the corn up. The oats straw was so short that the horse drawn mowers couldn’t cut it. The oat straw would simply bend in front of the knife, and pop back up behind it. I remember, we turned the cattle into one field and within two days, there was almost no evidence left that it was ever an oat field.
Matters were compounded by the fact that there was absolutely no money on the farms in those days. The price of oats had fallen to fourteen cents per bushel, and we didn’t even have any to sell at that price. We proved one thing that summer though. You can live on home grown rhubarb and homemade apple sauce, but it gets monotonous.”
“If it was that bad, then why did you buy the combine?” Emus asked.
“That’s a good question,” the old man acknowledged. “Some of us had real bad allergies for dust and wheat pollen. Some called it hay fever.
In my case, I couldn’t handle the wheat dust. I sneezed constantly, while I worked in it. My eyes watered and I felt weak. We sneezed just as badly for several days after we had worked in it as well.
But to the farmers of that time, hay fever, like our combine, was seen as a synonym for ‘lazy’. It would not have been surprising if there had been a rebellion against the demands of work on the farms in those days. The threshing beat continued day after day all summer. It was usually hot, dusty, dirty work without thanks or pay. As an added bonus, on some days you might even get kicked by a horse.
No one was interested in putting our combine to work in 1934. Of course, the reality was that even if they were, most of them didn’t have the money to pay us for the work we would do. No, we worked on the threshing beat in 1934. We worked on it all summer there along the Middle Road.”
THRESHING ALONG THE MIDDLE ROAD
“Heeyah!” the hard older man screamed, “Heeyah!” he yelled over and over at the boys who carried their loads of ninety-pound wheat bags from the threshing machine, which had been set up about a quarter mile from the barn. The lads that worked at carrying grain often weighed less than their cargo. But, this didn’t matter to the overseers. They wanted production, and the only way they knew to get production, was to keep everyone to their tasks. The overseer was a task master, all right. He was not going to be a lily-liver and show compassion, or give in to fatigue.
Young James battled to hold the burlap bag against the grain spout of the threshing machine. As it slowly filled, he noticed how awkwardly it felt, how the weight of the wheat spilled in many directions as it settled into the bag. As it filled the bag, it became heavier and more awkward to hang onto. Still, he hung onto it, feeling the strain of it, especially on his hands and fingers. As he did, he shielded his face from the onslaught of dust that poured everywhere into the air. He hung onto it desperately. He thought of the overseer as he tried to ensure that none of the wheat spilled onto the ground.
When the bag was finally full, James quickly tied the top of it with binder twine, hoisted it onto his left shoulder, wobbled with it, before he got his balance and steadied himself, and started to walk. He continued to wobble, struggling with the weight of it for eight steps or so, straightened himself, and started across the farm field in the direction of the barn.
“Heeyah!” he heard again, not sure this time if it was meant for him, or for one of the horses working there. “Heeyah!” he heard again, this time sure it was meant for him.
As he moved a distance of about 100 feet from the threshing machine, he again felt his knees buckle. He quickly stiffened his resolve, not wanting to endure the scorn that would be directed his way if he took a short rest, or fell. As he thought about it momentarily, he felt his feet slide on the freshly tramped straw. A feeling of fright took over his mind as he started to fall. He could feel his entire body strain as he fought to hold onto the enormous bag of wheat. He steadied himself, but then slid again on the slippery straw. As he slid, the weight of the bag shifted over his shoulder and started to fall off of the back side of it. As he again strained to hold onto it, he felt his body being jerked straight upward as he struggled against the weight of the bag.
The incidental motion caused him to pull his head upward so that he had a full panoramic view of his surroundings. And what a sight he saw. There, in