Why?

I am a fan of air conditioning.  Willis Carrier is my hero.  Yet I ask "Why?" is this wonderful convenience so often and so severely abused?  This is primarily in reference to public spaces.  How you use your unit in your own home  or in your automobile is  your business.  Enjoy.  But it is essential, at least in the Midwest where summer temperatures typically hover in the nineties that one carry a jacket or sweat shirt with him if he is planning a foray into a restaurant or public office.

Following a number of wonderful days in Kansas where the temperatures were often in the low nineties we headed homeward.  Typical Midwestern day, we stopped in Springfield, Illinois for an evening repast.  We were seated eight feet, literally eight feet, from the device pictured here.  Observe that  it is set calling for 70^oF and that the thermometer component records 70^oF.  I had to get up, go outside in the ninety degree heat, walk to my vehicle and get a jacket so that I could partake of my meal.  Hands were still cold, but my heart kept beating.

Mid America Show 44, Page 2

I arrived at the venue about 10:45 Thursday morning, Thursday advertised to be the opening day of the show.  But I arrived a bit early, for many of the featured items were not yet in place.  In fact, I spotted two semi transporters loaded with the old iron waiting to be unloaded.

 The Ford 9000 hauler was interesting in its own right;

it is more than 25 years old!

 Two trucks full of old tractors.

 Unfamiliar marque.*

 I don't know Empire, either.  *click*

 I do know Avery because I have a friend in Minnesota

who has been searching for a certain model Avery.

 I was not surprised that Porsche made tractors, but I was

surprised that someone imported them.

 Fageol: now that is an artistic wheel. *click*

 Long.  Really?  *click*

 Love Tractor.  Okay, there are those who "love" tractors.
*click*

 Silver King.  There were two of them, one behind the other on the truck.
*click*

 Custom, which begs the question, custom what?  *click*

Another fun summer day in the Midwest!

*A bit of digging on the Internet suggests that Farmaster is a defunct U.S. company who imported Chinese-made Jinma tractors and sold them under the name Farmaster.

Mid America Show 44

It's tractor time!  The Mid America Threshing and Antique show starts today here in Perfect.  I trekked out to the showgrounds on my bicycle and made the rounds.

Last year's featured brand was Allis-Chalmers and the year before that it was Oliver.  This year the feature is "Lesser Known Brands."  I am starting this tour by featuring a nice old Huber manufactured in Marion, Ohio.

Those solid rubber tires are bolted to the rims.

I've a feeling the operator is in for a rough ride.

 Need to saw some logs?  See that power take-ff there just

behind the transmission?  Four cylinders at your service!

Weekend Adventures, part 3 #T

3.  To the reunion!   #T

Saturday, minutes before noon we arrived at the park for the reunion.  The temperature could not have been measurably below 100^oF, if any at all.  But the organizers of the party foresaw this possibility-- I mean it was Southern Illinois, mid-July-- and our assemblage gathered in the reserved and nicely air conditioned meeting hall.  Understand that the party included descendants of BBBH's paternal grandparents but also descendants of the sibling of one of the in-laws, a tribe that BBBH went to great pains to convince me that she is no relation to at all.  She isn't, but what fun to tease her about some of the people connected, however distantly, to her relatives.

My approach to a houseful of strangers?  I'm here, what have I got to lose.  There were  about 75 people present, fewer than they had at the last one of these we attended, but nevertheless a rather neat cross-section of mid-America.  The attendees ranged in age from three to ninety-three, male and female, multiracial and bound to be a fun group to accost individually and require conversation of them.  So that is what I did all afternoon, except for the time I was stuffing myself with goodies from the carry-in.

One young man, I'd say 58 to 60, I found as I asked him for his excuse for attending, is single, the result of a divorce, lives in the Florida Panhandle and is a distance runner.  He was wearing his club logo and I asked if they had a website.  He assured me they did and gave me the address.  He and they run half-marathons, marathons, marathon-and-a-half, and hundred mile runs.  I don't get it-- any of it-- and frankly admitted to him that while I admire people with such passion and tenacity I cannot run two steps, never could.

One old guy actually seemed to believe he was oldest man present.  Absurd.  There were at least three other guys older than he, including yours truly.  He is 81.  He found it hard to believe that brother Glenn is 93, but when I told him I am 84 he looked at me and said, "Yeah, I believe that; you certainly look it."  I wandered off.

Visited a bit with a nicely coiffed white haired lady of a certain age.  It turns out she lives less than 25 miles from us.  She belongs to the clan to which BBBH denies relationship.

Big black man, 42 years old, six-foot three, 350 pounds (that's a guess-- could be more) was an interesting conversationalist.  The two youngest of his five children were with him, daughters 13 and 17.  He talked with pride of two of  the others, including the one who had made him a grandparent.  The fifth one, though, was the source of heartache for her father.  I tried to give him some encouragement on that front, pointing out that she is still quite young and sometimes people have to pass forty before any good sense soaks in.

This man wore a name tag that read, "William," and he told me I could call him "Fat"; everyone does.  I thanked him for including me in his circle, then told  him that if I didn't know him I sure as heck would never walk up to him and call him Fat.  Here he raised his right hand, back up, to show me the ring he wore.  Very large-- really large-- gold ring with the word "FAT" embossed in raised letters and studded with 21 diamonds.  Small diamonds it is true, but diamonds nevertheless.  Blessings, Fat, live long and prosper.

In a facebook post I told the best story of the day by the man who told  his mother-in-law, a life-long smoker and who had Alzheimer's that she did not smoke, and she believed him and never smoked again.

So the final one here, another young man, fifty-something, is a Spanish professor at a small Midwestern university.  Serious conversation for the most part, two educators hashing out the problems and outlining the prospects for education in our land.

A good day; tired and so to the hotel to kick off the shoes, BBBH and I shared our individual stories of the day.



 

42nd Edition, Mid-America Show

 We spent the first two days of this year's celebration of Oliver equipment in our air conditioned cave, and with good reason.  We are much too old to be out and about in this August's weather offerings.  Saturday morning, though, the sky was occluded, the temperature was lovely and I went to the doings.  I strolled leisurely through the grounds marveling at the ingenuity of our species.

The first set of machinery that caught my eye was a display of single-cylinder yard and utility tractors.  It appears as though these little  monsters could handle a wide variety of chores, up to and including sawing up fallen timber.

 Where this collector found the paint for this beauty I know not, but it certainly made the machine a standout in the crowd.

 The featured make this year is the Oliver.  An old Oliver was the first (and only) tractor that I drove in actual farm work, turning the soil following the wheat harvest in Liberal, Kansas in 1952.  Mr. Rohrer had a big hit-and-miss John Deere as well, and my friend Wes was assigned to it.

 The Oliver Chilled Plow Company operated out of South Bend, Indiana and had factories in other locales.  The company was purchased by White in 1960.  White manufactured tractors under the Oliver name, and under the Cockshutt, Minneapolis, and White names as well. The Oliver 2255 also sold as the White 2255 was the last Oliver tractor.  From 1974 the company used the White brand only.

This event is held at the Tipton County Fairgrounds each August.  I have attended for several years and enjoy it every time, marveling at the machinery and talking to the old guys and gals who love their equipment.

Old Silos

 Sharkbytes discovered a very interesting steel silo which she shared with us here.  

There is a wonderful old vitrified tile silo four miles from our house.  It is all that remains of an abandoned barn lot. The silo sits on the boundary between a soybean field and an old woods.

We drive by this location often, and BBBH and I have had some interesting conversations about a dream of building a home on this spot and incorporating the silo into our new digs.  I'll not rehearse the silliness of our "plans" but I will say that we have come up with some great ideas!

Less than a mile due south of the tile structure is the farm of a dear friend of ours.  This old banded stave silo sits about an hundred yards from the house.  There are numerous modern structures between the house and the silo.  I am sure that Little Jo Ann could have told us the history of this silo, but she passed away this summer.  As many times as we visited this farm, it never occurred to me to ask about that.

Go visit Sharkey's silo.

(Apologies for the photography.  These pictures were taken within five minutes of each other, but I had to shoot into the sun on the first one.)

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

Hemerocallis fulva

We have several stands of orange day lilies, the common roadside lily, or ditch lily as some call it.  When I first came to Indiana in the 50s, one of life's little pleasures in June and July was to drive down the roads enjoying the massive displays of these flowers. They could be seen along berms, beside small streams, and even in some yards from time to time.  Some roadside areas were populated with what many called cornflower, which was wild chicory, and Queen Anne's lace.  These Delft-like displays of color often alternated with the vivid orange of the lilies.

I have a fondness for these flowers, whether aesthetically pleasing to my eye, or nostalgically pleasant to my mind.  Most people consider these lilies to be weeds, even referring to them as "noxious weeds."  Those people are seeing their apparent wishes to eradicate them come to pass, for with the growth of population, expansion of commerce and industry, increased need for more arable land, and especially the transformation of highways into freeways, and the upgrading of byways into highways, habitat for these flowers is shrinking rapidly.

The Hemerocallis fulva, scientific name for these lilies, does indeed have an invasive habit, and thus might be viewed as a weed.  (Weed: any plant that is where one does not want it.)  Certainly one would be unwise to plant one, just one, of the tubers anywhere near hybrid daylilies, for in a matter of a very few seasons, there will be only orange lilies in that area.  However, by dint of sufficient effort to dig away and corral the rascals in the desired location, they become lovely flowers.

The Midwest in my mind's eye, viewed on a leisurely drive along an eighteen-foot road, today exists only in the memories of those who experienced it long ago, or in the fertile imaginations of east coast city-dwellers who think that we still live in the stone age out here.

Reporting from Perfect, Indiana, this is your fly-over country correspondent, Buford Bumpkin.