[AT] My cover is blown

[Dean VP]

Dudley:

Actually not as extreme NW as one might think. About 20 miles from the South
Dakota border and about 35 miles to the Minnesota border. Rock Valley is a
lot closer to both borders.

Spencer, IA is still a pretty vibrant community. It is the distribution
center for the NW part of IA and there is quite a bit of business based
there. It is also close to the IA Great Lakes which is a major
tourist/vacation/water sports/fishing attraction in IA. It also is host to
the Clay County Fair which is one of the largest county fairs in the
country. Actually a quite nice place to live and work. 

The winter we lived there was just an awful winter. At the time I owned a
1956 Crown Victoria Ford (wish I stilled owned it) but I wiped out the
automatic transmission in it when trying to get unstuck in a snow bank, a
few days before our daughter was expected to arrive. I was a bit panicky as
I had no way to get my wife to the hospital so I bought a brand new Ford
Fairlane 500 off the local dealer's showroom floor. The 56 Ford had reliably
started every morning even in the 40 degree below weather even though I
didn't have a garage at the time. Well, I got the new car home a day before
it was time to go to the hospital early the next morning. Guess what? The
new car wouldn't start that morning at 6:00AM. I still had to call a cab to
get her to the hospital. I was not a very happy new car owner. It had again
been 40 below that evening. Oh well. Live and learn.

The silo's you are referring to I believe are called "Stave Silo's" made of
interlocking concrete slabs or blocks. Then with steel rod bands around them
with a liner sprayed (painted) on the inside to seal them. Now that you
mention it, I think the ones on our home farm are still standing. They were
pretty sturdy but one heck of a lot of work to empty before silo unloaders
became popular. The silage would freeze at least 2 feet all around the inner
edge. One heck of a lot of hard work to pick axe the inner frozen stuff out
as the silo was manually emptied. Some farmers would make the mistake of
leaving that collar of frozen silage hoping it would eventually thaw and
drop down. Well, it eventually did and more than a few farmers were
suffocated due to that.

Many of the older barns were not maintained very well primarily because they
are not used much any more. When I was a kid every farmer had several milk
cows, loose or baled hay, etc so the barns were quite valuable buildings.
Today, almost none of the farmers milk anymore and don't even have feeder
cattle on the yards any more as everything has gone to very large corporate
operations with just a very few of them. So the old barns set empty.  One of
the recent excuses I heard was that if they truly fix up the barns and paint
them the county tax assessor comes along and increases their property taxes
dramatically. Don't know if that is really fact or an excuse. I suspect a
little of both.      

Dean A. Van Peursem
Snohomish, WA 98290

I'm a walking storeroom of facts..... I've just lost the key to the
storeroom door 


www.deerelegacy.com

http://members.cox.net/classicweb/email.htm



-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Dudley Rupert
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 9:00 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: RE: [AT] My cover is blown

Dean,

Boy, when you say you're from NW Iowa you do mean the NW corner.

<snip>