A few weeks back, a friend of mine from Nebraska put a picture of an old rusted thresh machine on Facebook. What is it? The caption read. I knew what it was but felt saddened that most people would not know.
The arrival of the thresh machine and threshing crew was one of the big events of every farmer’s life back in the 1950s. It is a major part of my memory of growing up. Threshing would take place when the oats were golden and ripe.
Pa would go with tractor and the binder, to cut and bind the oats into bundles. Then all of the family would go out and take those bundles and lean three of them into each other, making a total of six, then put the seventh one on one end. To the best of my recollection, those where called shocks.
This was the time of year I hoped for no rain, because if it rained, those bundles had to be turned and reshocked so they would dry out.
As the youngest of three, I believe I whined the most. It was hot out in those late July, early August days. We were way out in the field, there were bugs, and the water we brought out with us would get hot in those glass quart jars.
When it was our turn for the threshing machine and crew to visit, I would be mostly stuck in the house, where the cook stove was fired up and cooking massive amounts of food to feed the crew and neighbors who came to help. Then, when the crew moved to the neighbors, we would in turn go and help them.
I remember being scared when I had to wait on tables carrying large bowls or platters of food. I recall being mortified once when I spilled gravy all over. Those days were always filled with excitement and a bit of dread.
The excitement was in the large, noisy threshing machine, and the wagon loads of oat bundles being hauled in from the field, and being pitched into the machine. I was never allowed to get anywhere near that chaff belching beast, nor did I want to. I had a healthy fear of the noise and pulleys. Besides, I didn’t want that itchy chaff down my neck.
However, as the straw piled up in one area, the oats was being brought into the granary. That is where I hung out when the work in the house was done. I can’t remember all the details, but I know that I was enthralled by the oats in the granary.
I think part of the nostalgia from threshing machines comes from the fact that neighbors of that era tended to work together for a common goal. Some of our neighbors had telephones, but we didn’t. Instead, people would simply stop in and talk awhile. Whichever farmer was ready first would go first, with the others pitching in. Then the machine moved down the road, as did the crew and the neighbors, until the threshing in the neighborhood was done.
Some of that might still go on in different ways, but for the most part, that sense of neighborliness is gone. Now everything is instant: cell phones, text, email, Facebook. How often do we work together for a common goal?
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