My Father Said ... 2

On the cool day following a warm Christmas in 1998, my father, Joseph “Joe” Rhode, entered the house after doing his chores, hung his heavy denim coat on the rack, made a cup of coffee, sat in his customary place at the kitchen table, and began reminiscing by saying Jake St. John owned a side-mounted Nichols & Shepard engine with which Jake ran a sawmill near the Pine Village Cemetery. Jake sold the sawmill to the Cranes, and they powered it with their undermounted Avery steam engine. The Cranes also used their engine on a threshing ring, or run, northwest of Pine Village, Indiana. In driving the engine to the ring, they passed in front of a farm owned by Joe’s grandfather Tom Cobb. In a conversation on December 27th two years earlier, my father said that, “at sundown,” Charlie Allen, Tom’s hired hand, gave permission to Herbert “Herb” Crane and his son Loyd, nicknamed “Jersey” or “Jers,” “to park their Avery steam engine and thresher” on Tom’s farm overnight, “as it was getting dark. Allen smelled a rat and wouldn’t allow the engine to be parked in the barn lot but made them park it farther back, where the ground sloped down to the north.”

Print of Avery Undermounted Steam Engine

In Collection Published in 1954 by Elmer Ritzman

Editor-in-Chief of The Iron-Men Album Magazine

“This might have been in 1928 or ’29,” my father continued, “but Charley Cobb would have moved the engine sooner, so this probably happened in 1930, for Charley died in 1931.” Charley was Tom’s son and was an expert steam engineer. “Charley might have permitted the engine to sit there for a year but not for longer.” Joe said, “ … despite frequent promises to move the engine, the Cranes left it there.” Charley moved it away during the winter after the fall when the engine had been abandoned. My father speculated that the Cranes knew there was something wrong with the engine—so wrong that they were no longer going to fire the boiler.

My father took the big clevis from the Avery as a souvenir. In the 1990s, he presented it to me for use on my Case steam engine. Someone borrowed it when I was exhibiting my engine at the Central States Threshermen’s Reunion in Pontiac, Illinois, and never returned it to me, I am sad to say. I wonder if the new owner of the clevis realizes that it once graced an Avery steam engine.

After disposing of the Avery by leaving it on Tom Cobb’s farm for Charley to collect the scrapping fees, the Cranes “bought a Case [crossmotor] tractor that Joe Williams had purchased to replace his Reeves engine.” Meanwhile, the Cranes moved the sawmill a short distance beside the newer east part of the cemetery. My father continued, “Joe Williams had used the Case tractor ten years, approximately. Joe had died … and Lizzie [his sister] sold the Case tractor to the Cranes.” During our conversation on the 18th of October in 1997, my father said, “Joe Williams had replaced his Reeves engine with an 18–32 Case crossmotor, and [he had] used it to thresh.”

I remember well Jersey’s son Lester, nicknamed “Let,” who worked in the lumber division of the elevator east of town. He was consistently in a good mood and exhibited a great sense of humor.