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.

  

Digging a Basement

Some time around 1947 or sor dad decided to dig a basement under our house.  Our house was small with two bed rooms, bath, living room and kitchen.  We ate in the kitchen.  With two bedrooms my brother and I slept in one and mom and dad in the other.  With one bathroom centered between the two.  For some reason it was decided to build the basement rather than add on to the house, that is an other story.  Oh I know the reason, a utility basement was more important than a place to sleep.

After consulting with a builder that lived around  Doreen Ln area.  Dad started the project. As he did everything he would do the work himself with guidance from a local expert.  In this case the builder helped build a conveyor belt.  I remember going to the builder's shop off and on while my dad consulted with him. One of the first dad had constructed was a couple wooden roller that moved the belt.  The belt was made of heavy rubber that was cut to length and two ends fastened together.  The belt was about a foot or more wide with wooden slats attach to carry the material up and not slide back.  A long wooden trough was made with the rollers attached to each end and an electric attached to the top roll to pull the belt along.  [Later this operation was used to put baled hay in the barn, but that's another story.]

First the entry to the basement was decided on. It was placed beside the back porch.  It would be an outside entry.  The main reason it was cheaper and it was a utility basement so they didn't want things tracked into the house.

Next is was necessary to cut a section of the foundation away.  This was cut the width of the entry door.  That required the purchase was a star drill.  He seemed to be proud of the thing.  It was a man's work.  Heck it was just a hardened steel rod with a cross hatch or star at it's tip.  It's purpose is to drill holes in rocks or concrete.  A sledge hammer was used to drive it into the foundation.  Once numerous holes were drill through the foundation in several places in he broke the pieces out. It was a laborious task.  No power tools for dad if you could do it in a cheaper more manly.  In truth the job was not nearly big enough to own a power too and rental stored was not available.  Power tools were really not in the hands of the average home  owner.

Once the foundation was cut away the digging began.   The dirt was put into the trailer and hauled away.  Much was hauled along Lower River Road.  Mainly along the north side of the road between our house and Rogue Lane.  Along the irrigation ditch.  It is still still there today.  No one ever said anything.  But then we were in the country in those days.  Rogue Lane was not.  The field on the north side of road was a hop field.

Each evening he worked on the project.  My brother and I did the choirs and helped dig.  When he came to a footings under the house the old one was removed a concrete block was put down and a longer 4x4 replaced it. The side walls were cut about a foot from the foundation.  To keep the house from sagging he would put a level on the joists and jack the house up until level then put shims in to keep it lever.   Things went well.  Well until.  Construction without a problem is not construction.  Anyway.  There is a summer high water table.

The project was started in early summer so the ground would dry out and the water table would be lower.  That was fine, but not one thought about summer irrigation.  Much of the Lower River Road was irrigated by flooding the fields and lawn with water from the ditch that paralleled the road.  There were also additional ditched that covered the properties away from the road.  We had a pipe that went under the road and provided water for our lawn, garden and pasture land.  No thought was given to the water table coming up with out the winter rains.  About mid August during the hight of irrigation season up came the water table.  It flooded our new unfinished basement with two foot of water.  What does that make.  Why it makes a very good indoor swimming pool

A swimming pool it was.  That is until mom heard us playing in the water our mother heard us.  She just came unglued.  She let us know in no uncertain terms that we were not to be down there.  The concern was the  wet walls could sump allowing the foundation to come down as well dropping the house into the basement or in one heck of twist.  So during the next couple weeks they were on pins and needles waiting for the water table to go back down.  It did once irrigations stopped and harvest began the water subsided and work began in earnest and with a since of purpose that fall.

In a short time forms were put into place and concrete poured.  No mixing ourselves.  Trucks came in along with professionals to make sure the walls and floors were poured properly.  Things went well from then on. Except the walls did leak some, but the floor by design was tilted toward one corner and some minor groves cut in to allow the water to drain to one corner were a sump pump was place to pump the water out.

A wood furnace was installed to provide welcome winter heat.  The kitchen wood stove was moved to the basement and we got one of those electric stoves.  Not new of course, but a good used one.

The basement was our place out of the weather.  It was a shop, furnace room,clothes wash and drying room, butcher shop where we cut and packaged our own meat of all kinds. We also canned fruit and vegetables. We even had an home made incubator to hatch chickens.  It worked, but purchasing baby chick was easier. Of course the furnace required wood so that is how Wayne and I spend most Saturdays mornings stacking a weeks worth of wood.

It was also a place to go do something when it rained.  The hay loft and the basement were our out of the places.  

But those are stories in themselves.  

Our First Bike

My brother and I got our first bike when we were about nine or ten.  Living in the country and being kids it was about the only way we had to travel.  Ah but more important it was the prestige of just having one.  It didn't matter what kind it was or how it looked just the ownership was key.  I say our, because it was one bike between, Wayne and myself at the time.

Our dad said we could own a bike when we had enough money to buy one.  Ya right.  We did earn money working around the farm.  But that was little and no where near the price of a new bike.  Besides mom really didn't want us to have a bike.  She felt that the Lower River road was no place to be riding a bike.  The traffic was fast and a fair amount of it.  So the edict worked for them both.  Dad didn't want to spend the money and mom didn't want us on the road.  Some where during a summer day in 1951 or so things changed. In truth I am not sure of the year, do remember it was summer.  

On that fateful summer afternoon Wayne and I were sitting in our backyard discussing the ways of the world with our friend, James Beed.  During the course of our conversation about the fastest way to cut down a tree, the biggest cow pie was in our pasture, I had really bad poison oak and other important facts, Jim announced he was getting a new bike.  A three speed.  Three speeds were the wave of the future.  Wow that's cool we thought, but the bigger wow was what was he going to do with his old bike. Of course you never come straight out and ask.  That would show you are desperate and you were never desperate.   After a bit of hinting around that we just  might be interested in taking his old one off his hands. You learn at a young age how to bargain.  You never tip your hand. Finally he  said he might be willing to let us buy the old one. Will is one thing, but at what cost.  He thought for a minute,  a long minute, as we sat holding our breath in a cool manner then Jim said five bucks. FIVE BUCKS!   With a sense of joy, yet with controlled  nervousness we said we would have to check. With a quick step we headed into the house to check our rat holed savings.  Moving with a fear he would change his mind. A deal was not a deal until money change hands. Even then it was questionable among kids.  After pooling our funds we came up with the FIVE BUCKS.  Asking our parents was not necessary, we hoped.  That deal had been struck when we were told that "you have to earn the money your selves".  The bike was ours.  We were kings that summer.

When we told our parent we had bought a bike that afternoon.  Their response was well-stunned.  There was nothing they could really say.  Dad did come up with a weak "is it safe".  Safe really met did it work.  It worked.  

The bike was an old 1930s or 40s fat tire bike.  Painted red with a tank mounted in the straddle bar. At one time the tank contained a horn.  Now there was just a button that did nothing.  The seat was big saddle with coiled springs.  Still the most comfortable seat ever built.  We spend many an afternoon washing, polishing and of course lubing the bike.  The various axles required oiling by a little clip coved port built in to the axle.  You lifted the little clip cover and squirted in some oil from a oil can.   The spokes always required polishing, because the oil would drip from the hubs and along with dust left a dirty film on them.  One trick for polishing the hubs or axles was to place a loose fitting piece of leather strap around it.  As you rode along it would do the polishing for you.  That was a summer to remember.  We were free to range much further than before.  We did do a lot of walking along Lower River road, but now the possibilities were endless.  Although we could only go one at a time.  Or one walk the other riding the switch.  It was not satisfactory but it was a start.  

 In truth after we share rode that bike for a month or so dad took me down to a used bike shop on G Street and purchased us another used bike. Then we were off to many adventures.  Riding to Riverside park to swim or to White Rock our favorite swimming hole.  We could ride to school at Ft Vannoy, or pick beans on the Upper River road.  Ride up Granite Hill to the railroad tracks through the cemetery.  But those are other stories .    

The Trailer

The idea for this blog started at my dad's funeral in 2005.    After the funeral my sister, Barbara, ask if I could write things down of my life in Oregon.  She is some what younger than my brother, Wayne and myself.  By the time she was old enough to remember many things The family had moved to Ely, Nevada and later to Roseburg, Oregon.  My life pretty much matured on the Lower River Road.  I tried several times to write it down.  But as many of life's event things start to get complicated as you keep recalling things.  Then attempting to cut them down to size.  Your choice is to cut it down, Grants Pass or a day by day account of events.  Then it hit me do a blog.  It does not need to be in any order except as events come to mind.  Stories will breed stories.
    
To help keep me on track while speaking at my dad's funeral I thought about a trailer that was part of our life's from the time I was born until it was sold in 2002.  By that time it had been in the family for 62 years that I knew about. A TRAILER!  Yep.  I am not sure when it was purchased.  It may have been used to help move my parents to the Lower River Road some time in 1940?

What I do know it was part of our family during World War ll.  Around 1942 dad was inducted into the Army Air Corp.  He was a Veterinarian so received officer's commission.  His job was to inspect troop food supplies and its preparation facilities. He did not leave the States.  Salina, Kansas was the furtherest east he got.

So leaving the  Lower River Road to fend for it's self off the Russ family went to war.  They loaded up the trailer and off to Wendover Air Base, Utah.  They found a home in Wells, Nevada.  We lived there a few months and then he was transfered to Monahans, Texas.  Loading up the trailer in Wells and off they went pulling their family goods behind them.  The next stop was Salina, Kansas.  However my mother pulled the trailer back to Grants Pass, Oregon.  Repacked suit cases and took the train to Kansas.   This all lasted until 1945.  Then we all settle back on the Lower River Road for the post War years.

The trailer then became a utility vehicle. When dad built a new barn it was used to haul supplies for it's construction.  It was used to haul dirt from a basement dad dug under the house. [a story there]  Much of the rock and dirt was dumped along the Lower River Road.  I suspect it is still there. He hauled pigs and cows for our farm.  Then some time around 1948 or so it was converted into a trailer to haul larger cattle.

 Originally it was built of 1 by 4s and ran on wheels with a leaf spring suspension and painted black. A little light for cattle.  So it was beefed up with 2X4 and 2X6s.  A drop gate was built so the animals could walk in. With a stanchion to hold their heads.  It was painted green.  The walk up gate could be removed so it could haul hay, manure, household good.  It was still a utility trailer.  Many a time Wayne and I used it as a manure spreader.  We loaded it up and then walked behind pulling it out on the pastures.  [ah another story]

We moved to Nevada in 1956. It still was used as a utility vehicle.  Buts the farm animals use was no more.  But then it took on the additional duties of a camp trailer.  [oh joy].  Many a fun night was spent unloading camping gear on our many travels. A  Disney Land trip camping in a public parks out of a cattle trailer.  We felt like kings, ya right.  I did like Disney Land and was one of the first people to visit.  But out of a green cattle trailer.

In 1961 they moved Roseburg and the trailer was still being used as a utility vehicle.  Some time around 1980 or so it was converted into a boat trailer and finished it's life thus.

Anyway that was my story that day.  So this is my story to day and have several Lower River Road stories out of this one.  Yes it is history.  and this is history.

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