303 Fisher Road, Fitchburg, MA 01420
It rained Monday through Friday of the week before the show and
the set-up crew found themselves sloshing as they laid out the
field. But as tradition has it, Saturday morning, although the sun
did not brightly shine, the rains stopped. By early Friday evening
over a hundred exhibitors were already on the field and at noontime
Saturday the spectators were witnessing all the activities of the
traditional Yankee Engineuity in Action show.
Two vertical and one horizontal boiler pushed steam for the
50-odd steam engines on the steam tables and the one large engine
on the grounds. Bruce Dexter cut his annual load of shingles on the
Chase shingle mill powered by a tractor. Brad Eisner kept the crowd
pleased with his hot air engines. Our two tool displayers, Nelli
Bates and family and Phil Whitney and family, put on their usual
show of antique tools and hand implements with the Bates doing some
log hewing and despite the warm temperature the Whitneys displayed
ice cutting equipment.
This year we were fortunate to have more tractors than usual and
a rare industrial Massey-Harris was brought in by John Dupre.
We had our first fire in our nine year history when gasoline
leaked from the carburetor of the 9 HP engine on the flatbed truck
of Richard Fournier was ignited by a backfire (See Dec. 1985 GEM).
With typical New England volunteer tradition, between 30 and 50
pounds of CO2 and dry chemical extinguishers appeared
from the exhibitors and made quick work of what could have been a
very dangerous situation. Dick washed the engine down and was all
set for Sunday’s exhibit.
