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- [Madison] Capital Times, September 9, 2004
- by John Oncken
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It's easy to get the impression that the really important things in life were invented yesterday.
Most of us never give a thought to how life existed before television, computers, DVDs, SUVs, copy machines, baseball batting helmets and digital cameras. All, however, are rather recent inventions. None existed when I was in high school.
What was life like before the advent of many of today's basic needs? Maybe people are looking for answers when they attend the dozens of old tractor and farm equipment shows held each year across Wisconsin.
Why else would so many people -- young and old -- travel long distances to places such as Edgerton, Burnett, Symco or Pickett to pay money, park in a dusty field, walk on rough land and get covered with dust to look at old tractors and farm equipment?
The Rock River Thresheree held over Labor Day weekend at Threshermans Park near Edgerton again offered hundreds of old tractors, lot after lot of unique small engines, garden tillers and farm tools, and a vast array of old farm equipment.
The event drew hundreds of exhibitors who hauled their "old junk" from near and far. They came by flatbed trailers and by vans crammed to the ceilings.
As usual, thousands of spectators came to look and touch, take photos, ask questions, sit in a 100-year-old steam engine, talk, imagine and to marvel.
People attending old farm equipment shows know that history didn't start yesterday or even last year.
They know because they can see and touch a 100-year-old steam traction engine (tractor) built by the M. Rumely Company of LaPorte, Ind., around 1900.
They imagine the 6,000 workers who built the Rumely Oil Pull tractors that hit the farm market in 1910. And they can see the 60 or so actual Oil Pull tractors on display and watch them in the parade as they wend their way through the valley in front of spectators lining the hills on either side.
No more than a handful of folks at this annual get-together ever actually used the Rumely tractor on a farm. The last one was made in 1931, when the company was bought by West Allis-based Allis Chalmers. And despite the fact the last Rumely was made 73 years ago, it was the featured tractor at this year's Thresheree.
Al Bronson of Otsego, Mich., and his cousin George from Kalamazoo, Mich., remember their grandfather owned a Rumely Oil Pull tractor on his farm when they were kids. Their memories were so good that both now own Rumely tractors.
"It was a great company," says Al, a retired auto mechanic.
"The Oil Pull tractor was unique and worked so well," George adds.
Oil Pull was a concept that was invented and died with the Rumely company.
"It used oil instead of water to cool the engine," Al says. "The engine was started with gasoline, then switched to kerosene. It ran at a very high temperature because it was cooled by oil rather than water."
"Kerosene was much cheaper than gasoline," George adds. "There wasn't much gas available in those days."
The Rumely company began making threshing machines in 1857 and expanded into pump jacks, corn shellers, feed mills, corn shredders, plows, silo fillers, hay balers and a wide variety of farm equipment.
Many historians credit the steam engine as a major force in farm mechanization. Although the Rumely company had been making steam engines since 1861, wheels and a gear drive were added in 1882 and the machine became self-propelled. The result? For the first time plowing America's farm fields began to move from the horse and walking plow era.
Visitors at the Thresheree had the chance to see a Rumley steam engine pulling a 12 bottom plow as it worked a field along U.S. 51.
Scott Thompson of Tremont, Ill., publisher of the "Rumely Collectors News" calls the Rumely, "the most collectible tractor in the world."
"It was a great company that made an outstanding tractor that lasted a long time," he says.
"Unfortunately, the company couldn't survive the Depression," Thompson says. "Allis Chalmers bought them for the outstanding dealer network Rumely had built."
Prior to the Depression there were over 200 tractor companies in the United States. Only a few survived.
Yes indeed, there was life and smart people long before computers, cable TV and satellite global positioning.
Consider: When the Rumelys, Cases, Deeres, McCormicks, and so many other genius farm inventors began making tractors and other farm equipment, they couldn't copy anything because there was little to copy. Same for the inventors of silos, silo unloaders, manure spreaders, hay loaders, balers, milking machines, silo fillers and threshing machines.
Those pieces of equipment are still used on farms today. True, today's models have more bells and whistles, and are bigger and more efficient. But there is a direct line between those original blacksmiths and nutty inventors who made the "firsts" decades ago.
I'd guess that's why old and young alike gather at these old farm equipment shows.
It's where a 6-year-old city boy can talk on even terms with an 85-year-old guy with an oil can in one hand and a wrench in the other.
It's where a gathering of men and women of all ages can lean on a wagon holding corn that just came through an ancient corn shredder and talk about the past and not be embarrassed.
It's where history is living and actual and real and you can know it because you can touch it and watch it work.
All the smarts didn't come with the telephone, electricity and computers. They were here long, long before.
And smart people have always been innovators and inventors.
"Most such things are tied to saving labor and time," one old-timer suggested.
I believe it.
