[AJD] 115 mile journey: another story

[Robert M. Massengale]

Bill - 

I enjoyed your Uncle David's recollections of his tractor journey.   Most of all I salute 
the attitude toward getting the job done...  whatever it takes and not regarding it as 
anything especially  noteworthy.  A hallmark of his generation that I've long 
admired.

I've volunteered at the National Museum of the Pacific (old Adm. Nimitz Museum) 
collecting oral histories from our marines, soldiers, sailors & airmen who fought in 
the Pacific Theater.  The memories of our greatest generation are invaluable and I 
regard your Uncle David's memories in the same light.  It would be great if the 
Collectors Center had a similar effort to collect the same kinds of stories and 
memories as they applied to the early years of mechanized farming.  It's probably 
too late to catch many stories from the men and women what made the transition 
from mule and plow to tractor, but we know from some of the recollections that 
occasionally appear on this list that the kids of those farm families have wonderful 
memories from the 30's through the 50's.  It's more than history... it's our heritage 
and I would love to see the same level of effort put into preserving those memories 
that we see lavished on our old iron.

Thanks for sharing your Uncle;e David's memories with the list.

Mike Massengale
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624

> This thread got me to thinking about a family tale of a similar
> journey in the early 40's.  So I e-mailed my uncle, the original
> person in the story; Uncle David just turned 80 about 2 weeks ago and
> has amazing recall of details.  Following is his recount of another
> long tractor ride when he helped my dad move from Battle Creek to
> Minburn, both in Iowa.  On the map it looks like about 145 miles to
> me.
> 
> This guy is a storehouse of information, very articulate, and he's not
> in real good health.  I'm sure gonna miss him one of these days... The
> A I drove for your Dad to Minburn was a 1941, one of the first 6
> speeds with a top speed of a little over 13 miles per hour. I had a
> mounted 226 picker on it and pulled two flat racks loaded with farm
> machinery. I left the Marshall farm a little after 10 A.M. the day
> after Thanksgiving in 1946 with temperature about 15 degrees faranheit
> and the temperature didn't improve. I wore the sheep lined flight suit
> that Chris was issued by the Navy, jacket and pants and did not get
> cold as a result, especially with a tail wind the whole way. I was
> familiar with that uniform from my time in the Navy flying as tail
> gunner, a couple hundred hours, part of the time training up to 25,000
> feet; under those conditions we could plug in electric heat wires in
> the uniform including boots and gloves but I didn't need that for the
> tractor trip and was quite comfortable.
> 
> The farm I started from is about 10 miles northwest of Battle Creek
> and had gravel into Battle Creek where I topped out the gas tank about
> 11:30 A.M. From B.C. I had some diagonal road to Scheswig and on to
> Denison where I picked up my first pavement, highway 141 about 3 miles
> northwest of Denison. About a mile before Denison an Iowa Highway
> Patrol car came along and pulled in ahead of me, escorting me through
> the west side of Denison on 141 and went off about his business about
> a mile south of Denison. I made Manning about 5 P.M. when it was
> getting dark and parked the outfit curbside, and walked to a hotel
> about a half block away, uptown.
> 
> I got started about daylight the next morning, made Perry around noon
> and headed south hoping I had figured out the gravel roads to the
> Howard Hill farm. When your dad, who had driven down a pickup load
> that morning, heard the tractor coming up the road at the Hill farm
> about 2 P.M, he was one happy guy that I had arrived without any
> problems. As near as I can determine it was at least 120 miles and
> could have been 10 or 15 miles more. I had to shift down to 5th gear
> occasionally on some hills, probably about 8 miles per hour.
> 
> When we get together again I have a couple other interesting
> experiences helping out your dad while I was in college in the late
> '40's. About 1950 while I was farming at Battle Creek I bought the
> binder I had hauled down to your dad on that trip from your dad and
> hauled it back to Battle Creek on a truck.
> 
> 
> 
> B²
> Bill Brueck (brick)
> Chatfield, MN, USA
> 
> Confusion is a higher state of knowledge than ignorance.
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