When the Thrashing Machine Came To Our House

During the summer a thrashing machine pulled by a tractor passed by our house from time to time.  It was always exciting to watch it go by.  It was pulled slow with men standing on it to make sure it cleared tree limbs and possible low power lines.  I never knew where it was going.  Its owner had been hired to so work somewhere.  In 1940's they were becoming a rare site and a cause for wonderment. The one day it came to our house.

The excitement was high when a thrashing machine pulled onto our property in the summer of 1948.  It was pulled by a John Deere Tractor or Johnny Popper as they were called for their unique engine popping sound. To one side was a large spinning pulley or power take off.  A wide canvas belt was place around the power take off then run up to the thrashing machine to power it up.  Once the belt was put in to place and started to turn the thrashing machine would slowly come to life.  It would shake and rumble with all its clanking belt chains, spinning cogged pulleys.  The grass was pitched on to a conveyor belt that carried up and into that mysterious machine.  As a kid I had no idea what evils took place in that living thing's insides.  All I could see was the large pipe spewing dust into the air and firing chaff into a pile.  As it shook as it was some living thing it slowly poured the tiny grass seeds into a bag. This was big time.

 Neighbors came over to help feed the contraption.  Many brought over their own grass to feed it.  The whole process didn't take long.  A half day at most.  When we were finished each farmer collected his bag of seed and went home.  What I was surprised about was how small the volume of seed that was collected.  Unlike the great amounts of wheat and barley I later combined in eastern Oregon that were measured in pound and better yet tons.  These amounts were measured in ounces and pounds for all that work.  Although I suspect its value was great.  The seeds were very tiny and it didn't take a lot seed to plant an acre.  But it was exciting for an eight year old boy.

Today we only see thrashing machines in farm shows or steam ups.  But in the late 1940s they could still be found in rural areas.  The combine harvesters were well developed.  But for small amounts of grass a thrashing machine worked fine.  Many of the farmers on the Lower River Road were small acreage farmers.  Making a living off of 15 to 30 acres.  Some had dairy cattle; others farmed garden vegetable and sold them at road side stands.  Most were older long time farmers.  Many of the younger farmers were people returning from the war and had the land before they left.  The younger guys all had jobs away from home and as we did. I guess we would be called hobby farmers today.  Why did the thrashing machine come to our house?

Sometime around 1946 or 47 the property to the east of our place was being sold off.  Mostly divided up into large parcels for people to build on.  Not lots, yet, but an acre or more.  So people bought the land next to our house and built their home next to our driveway, much to the chagrin of my parents.  So to prevent any more cozy neighbors from hemming us in my folks purchased the land portion at the back of our property for additional pasture land and prevent people from building there.

Most farmers flooded irrigated their property from a network of ditches fed from the Savage In order for this type of irrigation to work the land needed to be graded away from the ditch that went through the back of our property.  So once we bought the land it was surveyed then graded.  At intervals a ridge was graded in.  They ran the length of the field away from the ditch. They looked much like speed bumps.  They were to channel the water along the length of the field. Once grass was planted and the ground settled down it was hard to tell they were there until you drove over them.  It took a while for the grass to mature so the cattle to graze on it.  So to recover the cost of the grass seed it was allowed to go to seed its first year.  It was then cut, dried and thrashed to recover that seed.  I was never sure it paid for itself.  But if a number chipped in for the thrashing machine it most likely didn’t cost much.

The grading was done by our neighbor Pat McFadden.  He used his horse and a Fresno grader to level the field.  It is a wide bucket with a bladed edge that is pulled across the ground skimmed off the dirt.  On the back is a long handle that would tilt up the Fresno to dump the dirt.  On the front were a couple skids that allow the lifted bucket and clear the ground to dump.  It worked great and was the way roads and other leveling was done long before road graders or the huge scrapers were used as we see on construction sites today.

That was not the only time the thrashing machine came to our neighborhood.  A short time later it came to Pat McFadden's house.  I am not sure of the event.  It was at the time our sister, Barbara, was born.  My mother was in Josephine General hospital giving birth.  At the same time Wayne and I had been promised a trip to Camp White near Medford to see and air show.  World War Two planes were going to perform a dog fight.  We couldn’t wait.  But first we had to help with the thrashing.  At noon Lucy McFadden had a big crew dinner in her dining room. The only time I remember that room being used.

 Then we had to go to the hospital to see our mother and sister. Except kids were not allowed in the hospital in those days.  Also mom had to stay in the hospital for a number of days and in bed.  Was anything wrong?  No that is how it was done.  So we had to wait in the car.  In the meantime the air show was under way.  Well between the thrashing bee, the hospital.  Well we didn't make it in time to see the dog fight.  We did get to see the planes.  Ah well.  I still think about missing the airshow.  In those days a drive to Medford was not the forty five minutes it is today.  No I-5.  Just Highway 99 weaving its way along the river and through the country side. 

Whenever I attend an old time thrashing event I thing about how it came to our house and did real work.  I love the rumble and roar and of course the smell of the blowing chaff.

Pat McFadden

Pat McFadden was a special person in my life and I suspect Wayne's as well.  He lived owned a farm across the highway from us.  The first time I remember him was just before we went to Salina, Kansas during the latter part of WWII,  I don't remember much.  The first thing that sticks out in my mind was he was taking us to catch the passenger train in Grants Pass.  We loaded our stuff in his car, but there was no seat on the driver's side of the car.  Pretty soon he comes out of the house with a kitchen chair.  Says something to the effect that it would work and off we went. Little did I know  how important he would become in my life. He would in many way our surrogate grandfather.

He was average short, built square and of Irish decent. He was older than my parents. He was a low key person. I only remember him getting perturbed at us one time.  He always wore loose fitting jeans.  Not cowboy stuff, but working clothes.  As I remember he did smoke, who didn't in those days.  He had large fingers and freckles on the back of his hand.  He always wore leather gloves that when he wanted to stop and talk  he would roll them up and stuff the into his back pocket.  Most important he seemed to talk to us as adults.  He never ordered or talk down to us. He would just ask or suggest.

 My favorite memories are when he would stop working lean against a fence and talk about something we were doing or if we had read something.  He was really interested.   Knowing, as young boys, we didn't read much on our own. But to spur our interest in things  he would ask  a questions about thing just to get us to think. One time he me ask if I had read a certain Read's Digest book selection on Alaska. He knew I hadn't, but wanted  to peak my interest.  He said I ought to read it.  So I ran home and spend a couple days reading it.  I was about 10 or 11 at the time.  I was a slow reader and it was tough for me to get through, but I wanted to be able to discuss it with him so plowed on. That may have been what got me started on a life time of reading. I still think about that article.

One day out of the blue he ask if I knew the 23rd psalm.  Even though I went to church  in truth it was not part of my Sunday School learning.  He was not a religious man.  He never any church that I knew of. He did feel people should know this one psalm.  Why?  I think he felt it was a universal passage.  To him it was the basics of the Christian religion. He felt everyone should know it.  So he took the time and effort to try to teach it to me.  I would be with him during some chore, soon he would stop what he was doing. Roll up his gloves put them in his back pocket, pull our a cigarette and proceed to drill me on the 23 psalm. Like many pioneer people it was part life's kit.  You had to learn to do things on your own.  That went for doctor'n and preach'n.  In the old west you never knew when you would be called on to pray for or bury someone.  It was just a good thing to know and it covered all the bases.   

In the book  "They Settled in Applegate Country" he is mentioned as a dairyman.  I suspect he was.  Like many farmers in on the Lower and Upper River Road country, he farmed a small acreage. Ten to twenty acres.  Doing what ever he could to make a living. Prior to the 1940s and 50s you could make a living on a small place.   He did have some dairy cows when I first remember him.  Only around 5 or so.  Not twenty or thirty and of course not 200 to 300 or more like to dairies today.  I do remember a Surge Milking machine, so he didn't do the milking by hand.  The milk was put in milk cans and put in a cooler.  Each morning a Grants Pass Creamery truck came to pick up the can in exchange for clean cans.  The mike would be from the evening milking and the morning milking.   I can still hear the clanking of the cans and the muted sliding sound as the delivery man slid them across the metal floor of his truck.

 As the milk laws became stricter Pat had to up grade his milk handling equipment.  He installed a refrigerated  bulk tank that pumped the milk from the cow to the tank then directly into a milk truck.  It was getting to be too big an investment for the number of cows he could handle, so around 1952 or so he gave it up.  The days of the real small dairyman were gone.  The larger 30 or 40 head dairies, like the Johnson Golden Guernsey, had taken over.  Of course those days are long gone as well.   

Pat always kept a horse around to do field labor.  He never used a wagon, but hooked up a sledge.  He would use it to haul hay, produce or anything else that he wanted to transport around his place.  Many a time Wayne and I would ride the sled heading out to do some kind of work or just to get in Pat's way.  There was always something to be done on a farm.  Fixing fence, cleaning barns of manure, cleaning irrigation ditches it all went on the sledge.  I don't remember the horse having a name.  It could have.  It was controlled by clicking of your tongue or whoa.  Mostly you just let him go.  Not real instructions were needed.

However, he did borrow a tractor to plow for his produce gardens, mow hay and pull a bailer for that hay.  However hauling the hay to be barn was done with his horse and sled.  It was always fun when he borrowed a tractor.  I don't know where he got them.  They all seemed to be late model tractors.  But that I mean, 1939 and later.  In 1948 a 1939 tractor was a late model.  The ones I remember were a Ford, John Deere and a Farmall.  The Ford was low to the ground with kind of like a car, while the other two had big rear tires and small front wheels that were close together.  I always thought the latter two would roll over.  But they were really designed for row crop work while the Ford was for more open work.  Anyway he always allowed us to ride with him.  Maybe even drive once in a while.  

Pat always grew several acres of produce that he would sell to the public traveling along Lower River Road. I was never sure if he sold it any place else.  We would go to town with him once in a while and he didn't when we were along.   He didn't have a road side stand as the Horn family did down the road.  He just sold from his yard.  He grew about any kind of produce you can think of.  Corn, beans, tomatoes, pumpkins, and watermelons.  [The watermelons are a story in themselves] 

Each spring he would prepare the ground for planting.  So he would hook his horse to a harrow and a clod buster.  The clod was a 2x4 platform about the dimensions of the harrow and pulled behind the harrow to smooth out the ground and of course breakup any  dirt clods.  You could stand on the platform as the horse pulled you along.  Once he had things lined out he would ask if we want to take over.   Boy Howdy, does a horse ....  So he handed us the reins or ribbons as some old timers called them and off we went.  He would stand there for a while watching then disappear leaving us on our own.  I think we grew up more right there as any place else.  He trusted us.  So we would spend the afternoon working those the ground.  Not that that we were always angels.  But we knew when we had been entrusted with something important.

Not many young people even in that time grew up knowing how to work a horse.  Granted the work was not heavy, but is was done an older way from an older time.  A horse to Pat was like a dog.  Not necessary, but just a good old friend to have around.  It was very gentle and just walked along.  And it was cheap.  It just ate grass and hay, which he had anyway.

Once in a while Pat would hook up an old plow and do a small area.  I now know why they called them foot burners.  He would tie the reins together and toss them over one shoulder and under his arm on the other side.  Grab the plow handles give the signal usually a clicking sound and off he would go.  Even what appeared to be a slow walk for a horse was a human quick step.  Walking in the furrow left by the plow was no easy trick.  I think Pat just did it just to remember how he did it in days gone past.  You were hot foot'n it along.

Oh!  The watermelon.  Pat's watermelon were not the big variety you saw in the store.  They were small like a little beach ball.  On a summer afternoon while we were hanging around Pat would pick a couple while he was collecting his fresh produce.  When we go to to his house and things put away he would say.  Come on let's see if that melon is any good.  We would sit on the back stoop and he would pull out his pocket knife and split it open.  It was good.  But in truth they were not full of fruit.  Usually they were partly hollow in side.  For some reason we couldn't grow really good watermelon on that area.  My mom was always disappointed.  They were not like the good one she got when growing up in the Applegate Valley.  I don't know.  But I know the excitement when we opened them up with Pat.

That is just a touch of the McFadden I knew.