9639 Highway NN, Cedar Hill, Missouri 63016
This 1? HP Gade was originally purchased in 1925, through the
Joe Anderson Plumbing and Hardware Store in Olds, Iowa. It was
purchased by my brother-in-law’s grandfather, Rudolph Lindeen.
Rudolph bought it to pump water to a primary livestock tank, which
fed several other tanks that were downhill from the primary
tank.
Electricity came to the farm in 1929. Then the Gade was used
only to run a corn elevator. When Rudolph bought a tractor in 1936,
the Gade was no longer used. In 1939, Rudolph bought a vacant
farmstead with no electricity. The Gade was used there to pump
water for 25 head of cattle.
My brother-in-law Jerry remembers as a child going to the farm
with his dad, Arnold, to start the Gade. He recalls it would start
less than half the time, and quite often his dad would give up
trying to start the Gade and pump the water by hand.
In 1950, the Lindeens no longer had cattle, and the Gade sat
motionless at the vacant farmstead. In 1963, a tornado went
through, destroying the buildings and dumping a huge maple tree on
the Gade, bending the crankshaft. In 1965, Jerry dozed the
remaining building, trees and the Gade into a fence line, where
they were burned.
In 1998, a neighbor was dozing out the fence line, where the
Gade had lain for years. Jerry went to see if the Gade would turn
up in the dozing. He saw a piece of the flywheel sticking up out of
the fresh dirt. He stopped the dozer, hooked a chain on the Gade,
loaded it in his pickup and brought it home.
Amazingly, everything was there, except for the rocker arm. When
he dropped it out of the truck on the concrete, the cylinder broke
off the crank-case, the connecting rod broke, and what was one
engine was now two pieces.
One day while I was visiting Jerry, he showed me the Gade and
laughingly told me I could have it if I could get it running. After
several months of restoration and frustration, the Gade made its
first pop on January 8, 1999.
