Pictures of "Stuff" from my Gallery

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

First of all, I'm a steam guy, but have collected many unique photos over the years. Some of my photos don't fit the steam, tractor or engine categories. I wrote Craig and suggested an area whereby we could post items such as posted here. He gave this senior citizen a hint that it already existed. I've told him in the past that old people shouldn't be allowed access to computers, as I'm able to screw up the best of computer and electronic technology.
Gary Yaeger
This first photo is one I believe was sent to my grandmother years ago from her son in-law Rudolf Tarrach in the state of Washington, showing a neat old blacksmith shop. I especially like the Little Giant trip hammer at left.

This was the modern shop of Frank Strouf, a real estate agent and Reeves machinery agent who owned and had a 30+ crew who farmed his 7000 acre farm north of what is now Denton, in the Judith Basin of Montana.

This is a picture of my grandmother Yaeger's 1923 Atwater Kent "Breadboard" radio. I still have it and it still works great. LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN!

[Kevin Small]

20 Reeves Highwheeler,
I wonder if there is some REEVES Steam Engines parts laying around the shop??? Do you know what make of car is in the photo. I would guess that it showed up in many other Strouf photos. Yes I check all the other Forums too!!!! KEVIN

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

Originally Posted by Kevin Small

20 Reeves Highwheeler,
I wonder if there is some REEVES Steam Engines parts laying around the shop??? Do you know what make of car is in the photo. I would guess that it showed up in many other Strouf photos. Yes I check all the other Forums too!!!! KEVIN

Kevin,
Hello! Yes I finally ventured over here today. I do not know the name of this automobile? I don't see any Reeves steam engine parts lying around the shop, but did you notice the Reeves Pulley Company split wooden pulleys on Strouf's line shaft?

I am not smart enough to identify this car. Hopefully some sharp SmokStacker will do that for me? Since you are curious about Strouf's cars, I included a 1910 photo showing Frank at the steering wheel of this right hand drive automobile, which I can't identify any more than I can tell you why it has tire chains on it, other than it may have rained on some of that gooey Montana gumbo soil?


Kevin, This also looks like the correct place to stick this newspaper add from over in the Judith Basin too? I dont recall the name of the newspaper at Denton, Montana at this time.
Gary

[JeffK]

Wow what nice photos. This is so interesting ,all these snapshots, Someones life frozen in time for a minute. One of my favorite websites is the library of congress American Memory [The great depression] And all these type of photos come up. Keep them comming!! I keep looking for my face from a previous life

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

This is a horse pushed combine shown in the Dupuyer, Montana area. I don't know if it had a ground drive or a motor to turn the equipment, but would guess it to be ground drive?

This is a mule pulled scraper owned by "Pickhandle" Burke and is shown on top of Main Street Hill in Lewistown, Montana (town I was born in) in 1913. He was a contractor and Lewistown businessman and was headed out to start construction on the new Milwaukee Railroad line from Lewistown to Great Falls. The thing that fascinated me about this picture is the "pusher mules" on the rear. When I was a little kid, I always thought I wanted to run a "pusher Cat", filling scrapers in construction when I grew up. The house just behind the lead mules, atop Main Street Hill, belonged to Judge Dockery. The kitchen sink drain in that house was considered to be the "exact center" of Montana at that time. It has moved two times in the past 20 years to other locations.
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

Originally Posted by JeffK

Wow what nice photos. This is so interesting ,all these snapshots, Someones life frozen in time for a minute. One of my favorite websites is the library of congress American Memory [The great depression] And all these type of photos come up. Keep them comming!! I keep looking for my face from a previous life

JeffK,
Thanks... You are very kind. I could get lost in the Depression-homestead era so easliy. There were a lot of victories and one big bunch of disappointments in that time period.
Gary

[John Davidson]

The car in the blacksmith shop is a Dodge Brothers, probably 1916 give or take a year.

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

Originally Posted by John Davidson

The car in the blacksmith shop is a Dodge Brothers, probably 1916 give or take a year.

Thanks John,
Dodge would have been my guess due to their unique windshield mounting, but I kind of didn't want to get hammered... again.... and knew someone out there, like you, would know.
Thanks,
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

This is a neat photo too. I bought it years ago at a Kalispell antique shop. I paid too much then, but practically stole it in today's (gasoline?) dollars. My dad and his brothers had a McCormick push binder they used to open up fields with. Then after they shocked (stooked, for our Canadian friends) the bundles so the rest of the binders could take over. Much of their fields were following creeks. "Cricks" if you're from Montana.
Gary

[John Hanson]

Gary, that scraper has about the same configuration as the elevating grader that they showed at Wetaskwin AB last summer... if memory serves, they had 16 Percherons out front and 4 behind.... something I'd have loved to see. A friend sent me a magazine article about it just a short while ago.. pretty interesting!! http://hcea.net/v02/index.php?set_al...view_album.php
JH

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

Originally Posted by John Hanson

Gary, that scraper has about the same configuration as the elevating grader that they showed at Wetaskwin AB last summer... if memory serves, they had 16 Percherons out front and 4 behind.... something I'd have loved to see. A friend sent me a magazine article about it just a short while ago.. pretty interesting!! http://hcea.net/v02/index.php?set_al...view_album.php
JH

John,
That's some site!! Thanks for sending it. I'd recommend anyone who likes old construction equipment look at it.
Thanks,
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

This first picture shows the King Brother's cook car in the Judith Basin, west of Lewistown, Montana. It is being moved to another threshing location by horses.

This is a most unusual photo. It shows two women and a boy INSIDE a cook car. It is the only one I have ever seen taken inside. It was in the Buffalo area of Montana's Judith Basin.
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

Here is a picture I took at the late Oscar O. Cooke's Dreamland Museum near Billings, Montana several years ago. It shows two Holt "self propelled" combined harvesters.
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

This is an old McCormick binder being pulled by horses. Notice the wooden wheels, dating it in circa 1881.

This is a photo I took at Rollag of a wooden wheel binder there.
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

Fellas,
I didn't know where to post this photo, but it shows Lance Barnes of Belgrade, Montana (left) with a pair of unusual Emerson-Brantingham moldboard plows. My dad and his brothers used E-B disk plows behind their steam engine. These plows use the same frame as the disk plows, but have moldboards instead of the individually mounted disks.



This photo offers little in comparison, but this is a picture of Dad and his brothers plowing with 32 reeves #7181, pulling six sections of six disk E-B plows.
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

This is a photo of an early Mehmke farm horsepowered threshing machine. The elderly man holding a boy at right is Carl Mehmke's great grandfather holding his father, Walter Mehmke, circa 1901.


This is a photo I took of a flywheel and belt type of horsepower, belted to an old hand fed Aultman-Taylor threshing machine with an elevating raddle type stacker. It was at Cedar Falls, Iowa at the 2nd annual Blackhawk show in 1958.


This is the Motichka Logging Company near Columbia Falls, Montana in the early 1900s hauling 18,000 feet of logs on a bobsled.


This has to be the first Ford Mustang???? It shows yankee ingenuity at work during the tough times of the Great Depression. The Dover ladies in Montana's Judith Basin, near Buffalo, hitched a team of harnessed horses to their "motor-less" 1926 Model T Ford Coupe and are headed to a women's club meeting. Also note, the tires are 30" X 3-1/2" clinchers, the standard wheel and tire for the early production 1926 Model T Fords. The 4.40 X 21" tires and wheels were an option until mid-1926.
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

This first photo is a picture of a header and barge cutting ripe wheat in Montana, which was threshed loose, or not in a bundle. My dad and his brothers used one sometimes. Other times they used the binder.


This is a picture of (I think?) an Aultman Taylor separator being ferried from Whitefish, Montana to the head end of Whitefish Lake to the Crane Brother's farm in circa 1910.


This is a very old type of threshing machine which was hand fed and did not have an elevator stacker in back. Someone had to pitch the straw away from where it fell, with a pitchfork. Carl Mehmke owns it and the 18 hp Case portable steam engine powering it.


I took this photo of an early raddle stacker, hand fed separator threshing on the last day of the 50th NTA in 1994. Wauseon had 5" of rain prior to this time, during their show.
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

More fodder? This is another photo of a header and barge in use in Montana.


This was William Redle's Aultman Taylor threshing machine and a huge straw stack it built near Columbus, Montana years ago. I don't know whether the A&T chicken came out to inspect the strawstack for grain carried over?


This is a photo of an emigrant train arriving in Montana with a pair of Milwaukee RR boxcars with homesteader's belongings. My wife's paternal grandfather, Jefferson Davis Simpson, arrived in two feet of snow at Moore, Montana in 1916 with a carload of goods, brought from Beloit, Kansas in another Milwaukee RR car. Jeff was a second cousin of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy and he was a first cousin of Usysses Simpson Grant.


This is a picture taken in the heart of Montana's Judith Basin, Lewistown. My grandmother Yaeger's cousin Joe Regli and their neighbor Robert Keller are shown freighting with jerkline outfits circa 1898.
Gary

[20 Reeves Highwheeler]

A couple of more unusual threshing machines?

The late Danny Roen sent me a copy of this photo shown near Medora, North Dakota, of a threshing machine on skis. I am not positive why anyone would need a thresher on skis, but there was threshing done after the snow fell, as my dad remarked about his threshing with snow on the ground. If it is quite cold and not wet, it works well, I guess. If it was heavy wet snow, that didn't work too well?


This is a Sageng motorized thresher. It was self propelled, but parked and made a stationary stack from threshing like any other separator. Morris Blomgren sent me this picture.
Gary

[MoRo]

Right about threshing in the snow and cold, Gary. If it's cold enough, snow isn't "sticky" so it just falls off the grain. The cold keeps the moisture content down so it stores pretty well and makes the straw brittle to make it easy to knock the kernels out. It doesn't take much warmth or sun to start the snow melting just enough to ice the sieves over and everything goes right out the back, so I'd immagine that threshing during the early part of the afternoon might have been suspended. Possible they could only run a few hours right away in the morning.
The same holds true for combining late crops nowdays. Sunflower and corn growers have all done their share of combining in the snow, sometimes going at night when temps are coldest and shutting down sometime in the morning.