Conversation with Random People: Twelve

Here about a year ago, I related a conversation with one of the exhibitors at the Mid-America Threshing and Antique Show.  This year I stopped to visit with him again, talked Sandwich engines, our health in general, and wished him a happy eightieth birthday come October.  He said I had a pretty good memory for an old man.

On down the way fifty yards or so, I saw a display which I almost rode past.

I turned the bike around and went back.  An old fellow visiting a few yards away saw me stop, hobbled over on his cane.  He was the proud tinkerer who created these lovelies.

"Keeps me out of bars and out of trouble.  Actually, I don't drink, never have.  I only have one vice."

"Building these things?" I queried.  He might have been insulted, but he didn't seem to be.

"No.  Smoking."  Okay, he is nearly as old as I am, and if it hasn't killed him yet. . .

"I have never seen sewing machines repurposed in just this way," I averred.  

Then he was off about his ownership and participation in monster truck rallies, dreams of constructing one more "sewing machine" monster, steam-engined this time, his children, his residence and his loss thereof in the Palm Sunday tornado of 1965, and so on.  You see why I was unable to provide details of the conversation, or I should say monologue, for it was sometime before I found a chink in his reverie where I could put in a gracious "Nice talking with you.  Good luck on your next project."

Allison V-12

Green Monster

Grey Ghost