Geigertown, Pennsylvania 19523
Dear Anna May and Walt Townsend McNabb, Illinois You have a
request in Nov. & Dec. GEM for letters from some old timers
experiences of yester-years.
The year is in the twenties. I am old enough to remember the
activities going on during an average day on a small business place
of a wheelwright shop, saw mill, shingle mill, and cider press. My
Dad bought everything in 1921 and operated all of this, different
parts of the year.
Otis Astle of Oxford, Pennsylvania operating his 20-40 Case with
opposed motor. One of the first attempts to convert from steam to
gasoline power. Tractor has a steam engine style governor. Seen at
Rough & Tumble Reunion, 1975, Kinzers, Pa.
Picture of a device made to fit a Model T Ford car, so it could
be used for pulling sulky plow or other farm machinery. On the hub
cap it reads [PULL-FORD]. Does anyone have one and who made it?
Would like some information on it. I recently bought it up at Cozy
Corners, Wisconsin.
Horses and wagons are here unloading logs. The pile is fairly
high in June and July. Dad would mark each log as to the way they
were to be sawed with the owner’s initials.
Now the saw mill was oiled and oil cups of the engine filled in
the 15 hp. screen cooled IHC engine batteries connected clutch
pulled and gas pumped up in the bowl at the carburetor. Mother,
brother, sister and dad are all pulling on the flywheels to start
the days work sawing. With several revolutions the engine was
running and Dad would engage the clutch on the engine. Then he
drove big wooden wedges in back of the engine to tighten the
belt.
By dinner time a big pile of lumber was piled along the lane or
piled on a waiting wagon and Dad would measure the board feet and
charge $10 for sawing 100C feet.
Most all the lumber was sawed at local mills, and planed where
finish work required it. Lumber was shipped to Elverson and
Birdsboro by steam locomotives, but wherever possible to use their
own logs for lumber, local people did.
Dinner might be a little late on Monday. Mother was up in the
wheelwright shop washing. She carried all the hot water from the
cook stove from the house to the shop because a 3 hp. Famous IHC
was hooked to a line shaft for wheelwright machinery and the
washing machine could be run for nothing on the days Dad worked in
the shop.
Mother started the Famous while turning the whole line shaft
because it had no clutch on engine. The lineshaft had wood
bearings. So you engine collectors can see mother had muscles in
her right arm.
Then she would carry the wash down the lane past the saw mill to
hang it up in the back of the house. We might have fried mush and
molasses and home fried potatoes and pork for dinner. The home
fried potatoes are ones cooked the day before and sliced and
browned before we ate them. This saved some time on a busy day.
We will eat in the dining room today in July when it is 90°.
With the cook stove burning wood to make dinner it is about 110° or
more in the kitchen.
We have no electric, no ice man, so we enjoy good cold water
piped from a local reservoir. We are lucky we have a battery radio,
but we can’t listen to it at dinner. We will wait till evening
so we can all have time to listen to it. And thank goodness it is
Monday. Mother won’t put us kids in the wooden wash tub in the
kitchen for our weekly bath.
Well now, Mother has the wash up and Dad is rested after dinner
so they chased me out of the saw dust pile and every available help
is pulling at the flywheels of the IHC to finish the afternoon
sawing.
Dad must get that pile of logs sawed because he has to run the
cider press in September with the 15 hp. IHC. He sawed the shaft
off from the water wheel. He put a long shaft and pulley to the
cider press so the engine can run both. The water turbine would not
run a complete day on the cider press because of lack of water.
After supper we might go to the back of the mill dam for a swim.
This is an old time story for one day. I hope it will interest
you.