9. The Threshing Reunion ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

On Labor Day Weekend each year, Joe drove the family the hundred miles to Pontiac, Illinois, to attend the Central States Threshermen’s Reunion. The event featured around fifty steam engines, half a dozen OilPulls, and several big prairie tractors. Every day, a steam engine was belted to a thresher for a demonstration of steam-powered threshing. As the threshing ring to which Joe had belonged had only recently disintegrated, Robert was familiar with threshing machines. His parents had photographed him standing beside the Nichols & Shepard Red River Special the last year that Joe had threshed with his friend Don Akers. Then Joe had bought his first combine, an Allis–Chalmers, which replaced the threshing machine. Had the family not attended the Pontiac show each year, Robert might not have been acquainted with the steam engines that originally supplied the power to the threshers that separated the wheat and other small grain from the stalks on which the grain had grown. Joe’s mother’s brother, Uncle Charley, who had died in 1931, had taught Joe how to run farm steam engines, which Charley had run professionally. Joe loved to see the steam engines at work again—if only for a weekend in Pontiac. Robert and Charles looked forward to the annual trip to the threshing reunion.

The family scurried around before dawn to get ready to go. Ida packed a picnic lunch of tomato soup, which was kept warm in thermos bottles. She wrapped a big block of cheddar cheese with a sharp knife to make cheese sandwiches. Other bottles held milk and coffee. A loaf of bread and a freshly baked apple pie were carefully deposited in the basket. Finally, a red blanket was folded and placed on top of the basket in the trunk of the car. Cookies, as well as other snacks, were arranged beside Ida where she could monitor them.

When Robert was five, the family was scurrying around before dawn on a Sunday. Usually, the family made the trek to Pontiac on a Saturday, but, in that year, Joe had chosen Sunday so that he would not miss an important Masonic meeting on Saturday. The week before, Joe had ensured a safe trip by having Glen Bisel put plenty of air in the spare tire. Glen also made sure that the coolant passages throughout the engine were not blocked. Even though Joe would not be sitting anywhere in stopped traffic—and even though his trip was not all that long—it paid to be sure that the radiator would not overheat. Many drivers carried a jug of water to refill a radiator whose heat (and, therefore, pressure) increased beyond the pounds of resistance from the cap. Cars with clouds of steam streaming out from a raised hood were common sights along roadways. The drivers of such vehicles were forced to wait until the car cooled down before refilling the radiator.

In those days, people dressed up to attend any fair. Accordingly, Joe wore a pair of pleated slacks, a starched and ironed short-sleeved shirt having a pattern of light green fish, and a wide-brimmed straw fedora hat. Ida wore a full skirt with a green and blue floral print and a light blue blouse. The boys put on their best tan shorts and new shirts with horizontal red-white-and-blue stripes. When everyone was ready to go, the sun had not yet awakened.

“Are all the animals fed?” Ida asked Joe.

“Yes,” he replied. “I gave the cows enough feed to hold them until we get home.”

Joe and Ida had not bothered to lock the doors to the house. In those times, no one in the town had a reason to lock a door.

“You did shut off the light in the kitchen, didn’t you?” Ida asked Joe.

“Yes,” he answered, “and I made sure the light was off in the boys’ room.”

The car pulled out of the driveway and headed west.

For the first many miles, Robert was too excited to nap, but, after a while, he felt drowsy. His head nodded, and he leaned into a corner of the front seat. He remembered hearing Ida asking Joe “Are you sure we will make it there?” and Joe replying “We have a good spare.”

The next thing Robert knew, the car was parked along a road in the middle of Illinois and Joe was using a jack to lift the flat tire off the ground. The sun had arisen. Charles and Ida were standing behind Joe and watching. After Joe had changed the tire and everyone was back in the car, Ida said, “I hope the spare will get us there—and back. There won’t be any place open to work on a tire on Sunday.”

“Glen looked at the spare and said its patches were good,” Joe reassured Ida.

On went the car. Just outside Chatsworth, an all-too-familiar bumping sound began. Joe looked grim.

“What will we do now?” Ida asked.

“Somebody in Chatsworth will be able to fix a tire,” Joe said.

The car limped into town. Joe stopped at a closed service station. A couple walking to a nearby church noticed the flat.

“Bill can get you back on the road,” the man said to Joe. “He’ll be at church.”

The couple went into the church, and, soon enough, another man came out and introduced himself as Bill.

He opened the door to the service station. Before long, he had patched both tires. When Joe took out his wallet to pay Bill, Bill waved his hand and said, “You folks just go and have a good time at the reunion.”

Joe pulled into the parking area of the Pontiac 4-H fair at 11:00, giving an hour to look around before the noon whistle. Ida said she wanted to see the crafts on display at the ladies’ building while Joe and the boys walked along the line of engines. Joe and Ida agreed to meet at the car for the picnic lunch at 12:00.

Robert, Charles, and Joe strode beneath the tall trees that shaded the park. As they neared the engines, smoke scented with cylinder oil drifted among the sun-dappled leaves. Robert was a little ahead of Joe and Charles. He wandered behind an engine and watched as a woman put a shovelful of coal in the firebox. She was wearing a plaid blouse and jeans. An engineer’s cap was perched jauntily on the back of her head. She turned around, saw Robert dawdling there, and asked him, “Do you like steam engines?”

Robert was delighted that such a great person as a steam engineer would take notice of him. “Y-yes,” he stammered.

Joe and Charles stepped up.

“Does he belong to you?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Joe replied. “His name is Robert, and this is Charles. I’m Joe Rhode.”

“I’m Doris Lindenmier, and this”—she pointed a gloved hand toward the engineer on the platform of the engine next to hers—“is my husband, Lester.” Pulling the glove from his right hand, Lester reached down from the platform of his engine to shake hands with Joe.

“I’m pleased to meet you both,” Joe said. “We’ve been coming to Pontiac every year for several years, and I’ve always enjoyed seeing your engines. My uncle was the engineer for a Reeves outfit in the teens and twenties.”

Doris nodded smartly. “They’re good engines!” she said.

Both Doris and Lester ran Reeves engines, which were parked beside one another under the trees. Lazy billows of smoke rose from their stylishly shaped smokestacks. An RN, Doris had the additional responsibility of serving as the reunion’s nurse.

Robert felt a growing fascination for farm steam engines—a fascination that would last throughout his life.

Doris, Lester, and Joe talked briefly about Joe’s uncle’s experiences on various threshing runs, and then Joe said, “I suppose we should be moseying on.”

Doris and Lester waved as Joe, Charles, and Robert walked farther down the line of steam engines. They crossed an open area, and Robert was amazed at how quietly a steam engine could come up behind them so that Joe had to take the boys’ hands and move to one side, allowing the engine to pass. “Chuff, chuff, chuff,” the engine sounded, as if it were breathing.

Just before the noon whistle, Joe brought the boys back to the car. Ida had already spread the red blanket on the soft grass in the shade of the tree beside the Chevrolet. Soon, everyone was eating lunch.

Robert did not care for tomato soup, but, on such a special occasion as getting to go to the steam engine show, he could tolerate it without complaint. He liked the cheese sandwich, and he especially liked the apple pie!

The boys laughed and covered their ears with their hands when the noon whistle took place. From the area where the steam engines were parked, the madcap whistles shrieked and tooted in deafening abandon.

Later that afternoon, Joe and the boys watched as steam threshing was demonstrated. “Rumble, rumble,” the thresher sounded, as its numerous pulleys and belts came to life. Men with pitchforks stood atop two wagons piled high with bundles of wheat. Alternating from one man to the other, their forks lifted sheaves and dropped them on the feeder with its conveyor belt that brought the bundles to the chomping knives and the spinning cylinder teeth, which knocked the grain loose. Eventually, the grain made its way through a loading tube into a wagon while the chaff and straw blew from a big tube in back onto a straw stack. The threshing machine received its power from a big belt that crossed over the flywheel of the steam engine and over the thresher’s main pulley. The two machines were separated some sixty feet. The crowd of onlookers was so large that Joe had to thread his way to the front so that Robert and Charles could get a clear view of the thresher in action. The nicely dressed members of the crowd smiled and politely made way for the boys to work their way forward.

When the threshing crew stopped so that the throng could go to the reviewing stands for the daily parade, Ida joined Joe and the boys, and they sat on the lowest bleacher. One of Robert’s favorite engines was a Keck–Gonnerman owned by Joe Weishaupt; it had Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse painted on the bunkers! Ida had spent her earliest years within a short walk of the Keck–Gonnerman steam engine factory, so she loved the Kecks exhibited in Pontiac. While Joe often stayed for the whole parade, on this occasion he said that the family might want to get an early start on the return trip to Indiana. When almost the last of the steam engines had rumbled past, Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert left the stands and started toward the parking area.  

Joe must have had a premonition. On the way home, the thumping noise returned. Another flat! As before, Joe slowly changed the tire. Eventually, the Chevrolet pulled into the driveway and parked. There was still enough light to make it easy to milk the cows. The next day, Joe bought two new tires.     

Spare Moments at My Folks' Farm 5

Almost every Labor Day Weekend when I was growing up, my parents loaded the 1950 Chevrolet with a picnic basket, blankets, and thermos bottles, and we headed out for Pontiac, Illinois, and the Central States Threshermen’s Reunion, 100+ miles away. The show featured farm steam engines smoking and whistling on the 4-H fairgrounds. One of the principal purposes for such engines was to provide power to threshing machines, which separated wheat and other small grain from the stalks that they had grown upon and which collected the clean grain. As my father’s uncle had trained my father to run such engines long ago, Dad thoroughly enjoyed the nostalgic rally under the massive oaks. My mother had grown up within a short walk of the Keck–Gonnerman steam engine factory; accordingly, she loved the Kecks exhibited in Pontiac. One of them—an 18 HP owned by Joe Weishaupt—had Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse painted on the bunkers. Of course, I loved it!

Joseph C. Rhode (1918–1999) with Son

Standing Beside Reeves Steam Engine

Owned by Lindenmier Family

At Central States Threshermen’s Reunion

Pontiac, Illinois, 1953

Even though a boy my age was selling hotdogs, we ate our own dinner (as farmers called the noon meal) when all the engines blew their whistles. I had to hold my hands over my ears because I could feel my eardrums imploding from the sound of so many whistles shrieking at close range. Little did I know that the hotdog boy was John Spalding, with whom I would one day write the nonfiction best seller titled The Steam Tractor Encyclopedia.

Back then, my mother served our dinner beside our car. We were not alone. Up and down the lines of vehicles were other families spreading their blankets and munching sandwiches in the shade of the mighty oak trees. We always ate tomato soup and cheese sandwiches. Not a fan of tomatoes, I looked forward to dessert. Mom made the best pies, cakes, and other baked yummies! It was not at all unusual for me to be presented a quarter of an apple pie that bubbled in the oven just the night before. My parents drank coffee; I drank milk. To this day, I can recall the fun of picnicking at Pontiac!

When we strode around the grounds to watch the steam engines, as well as the Rumely OilPulls, we had to glance over our shoulders to be sure no parading engine was sneaking up on us. At the age of four or five, I wandered behind a 16 HP Reeves engine that was parked and being fired by Doris Lindenmier. She and her husband, Lester, were engineers, and both exhibited Reeves engines. Doris turned around, saw me dawdling there, and asked me, “Do you like steam engines?” I was delighted that such a great person as a steam engineer would take notice of me. That day, she planted the so-called “steam bug” in me, although I was 40 before I could afford to buy a steam engine of my own. I took it to Pontiac, and Doris, still showing engines, invited me to follow her in the parade. As our engines proceeded, my tears of happiness were glistening in the sunshine.

To return to my elementary school days, I will mention that, at one of the shows, I admired the 50 HP Case, then recently restored by Sam Haley. Maybe Sam inspired me to purchase a 65 HP Case many years later. His sons, Jim and John, helped me during the steep uphill learning curve of operating a ten-ton steamer. Eventually, they built new bunkers for my engine.

When I was a kid at the Pontiac shows, legends were forming. Some of them I knew then, some I came to know later, and some I never knew. The legendary engineers included such names as Dan Zehr, Milford Reese, Wilbur Collins, Homer Dixon, J. D. Roberts, Art Erickson, Sylvester Fosdick, Ray Ernst, Herb Beckemyer, Russell Helm, and Henry “Father Time” Lucksinger. I could name many more, and I apologize for not naming them all. The Central States Threshermen’s organization was too big for me to name everyone here.

Typically, on the way to Pontiac or on the return trip, Dad changed a flat tire. In those days, flat tires on trips were expected, even customary. One year, Dad’s spare tire also gave out, and a long delay occurred while Dad searched through a town for a mechanic who could patch tires.

In certain years, Dad bought a model for me in the flea market. I still have my Lesney Models of Yesteryear Allchin traction engine, made in England, which I was given at the 1961 Pontiac show and my American 4-4-0 locomotive, which Dad purchased for me at the 1962 reunion—both in their original boxes. I also have a 1904 Spyker automobile in its box that Dad gave me when we attended the Pioneer Engineers Club show in Rushville, Indiana, in 1963.

The trips to engine shows were highlights of my younger years. I get what Pontiac citizen Bert W. Johnson meant when he said in 1968 that the excitement felt at threshing reunions was like “steam bubbling in your veins.”