The Dukester

Congratulations, and I hope there are many more in your future.

My mom used to talk about her first car, a late Model T Ford coupe--with wire wheels, no less! she lived in Albion, MI at the time and had graduated from Washington Gardener High School class of 1928. She had saved money all her life and had enough to buy this car to drive back and forth to college at Olivet, MI. She always said she could see out and drive that car better than any we'd ever had in the family since and felt more confident doing it. She was fairly tall at 5' 7'' and with her "special pillow" under her "behind" she could operate the T real well and see everything including looking out the rear window and pushing the pedals to back out of the long driveway they had had at the house on Ionia Street. She just hated the "Big '38 Buick" we had and let me, starting at age 12, drive it everywhere we went when Dad was away at work. I was a "Ford man" way back then and hated the Buick too and treated it mercilessly when I drove it. Thinking about it, I bet Mom would like my '05 Ford Five Hundred, it is so easy to drive and you can adjust the seat plenty high enough to see out real well, have to use the mirrors to back up, but they are the best mirrors I've had on anything since the West Coast mirrors on the 1970 Ford F-100 I once had (the only brand new truck I ever bought).

Yeah, I know you could get FE big block engines in Fords as early as 1965 models......my 1970 F-100 had a 360 big block and I could have got a 390 if I'd wanted it.

I remember one Regular and a couple of F-20's being used on farms in my area back in the early 1940's. They were okay tractors I guess in their time, but not nearly as nice a handling tractor as an H nor did any of them have a road gear as I recall even though they all were on rubber. The older Farmalls had 220 cu. in. slow turning engines while the H's had faster turning engines of 152 cu. inches. The only older Farmall I ever ran much was a neighbor's F-12 on steel which always seemed awful slow and underpowered compared to the more modern styled Farmall H's, John Deere B's and Allis WC's that many farmers had....along with the many little Fords. One guy had an F-20 that was "pretty stout" that he said could pull it's 2-14 plow better than his M could pull it's 3-14's......until he put a M and W kit in the M, that is.....

They sure built quite a straw stack on that "setting" of the thresher.....I wonder how many acres of grain they had put through that machine to get that big stack. Does anyone have any idea of what their yields were. I remember 30 bushels to the acre being a good yield for wheat and 50-60 being good for oats back in the 1940's when I was in the threshing crew. Most of the farmers had 20-25 acres of wheat and oats total, a few might have 40 or 50. Often I had to blow the straw into a haymow in the barn, then if there was still more we'd have to "reset-up" and blow the rest in a stack in or near the barnyard. Sometimes there was a fenced off area for the stack and someone would be on the stack positioning the straw and trompping it down to make a neat "loaf of bread" looking stack while I ran sort of windrows of straw ahead of the stacker guy with the blower. I had to be careful, the stacker didn't like having any straw blown on him.

Henry Dreyfus did the Johnny Dearies styling.

Yep, the car is a '38 Buick.....Our family had one just after the end of WW II. I'm not sure which model it is. Ours was a "Special", the smallest one. It still had a " Dynaflash" straight 8 OVH valve engine that burned quite a lot of gas.....and oil. My Dad kept a supply of sandblasted spark plugs and the wrench in the glovebox 'cause the old girl fouled plugs often. I never liked it and was happy the day it got traded for a '40 Chevy.....which was a lot better car.

Curious what you have to say about Half and Half tobacco....around here they used to say the half and half was "Half Horse---t amd Half Hay".

Dukester! You are correct. I get Alvordton (LeRoy Blaker's hometown) where the first NTA shows were originated and AD Baker, of Swanton, Ohio who built the Baker steam engines. How many lashes do I get for THAT ONE??!! Gary PS: I added this picture or NTA 1949 Steam O Gram, with AD Baker and his first steam engine. He is shown with a longtime employee of his, but somewhere I have another photo of AD and LeRoy beside this engine. That Steam-o-Gram is kinda interesting...it has my uncle listed as a Charter Member of the NTA. (Frank C. Denning, Jonesville, MIch) I lived with him and his family for 4 1/2 years Farmall farmin' and milkin' cows. 1947-1952. (H, W-6,) Uncle Frank took my Grand-dad's 30-60 Model "S" Rumely Oil Pull to the NTA show several times back in the late 1940's and 1950's. We still used it on the sawmill in those days....so it was still a "worker".

Oh, Oh, I see a boo-boo. Baker's were built in Swanton, Ohio, not Alvordon. Hmmm, maybe I'd better be careful...the post says "tested at Alvordon" not built at Alvordon. Maybe it was tested at Alvordon...... Anyhow. I liked the Bakers...and the Port Hurons. Remember one Baker was on rubber tires all 'way round...Silent beast on the road. All of those Bakers I saw had simple engines...the "Ports" had those famous Woolf Compounds. My Grand-dad claimed the "Ports" were the most economical on fire fuel and water having the compound engine cylinders. Incidently, I remember seeing Mr. A. D. Baker at an early National Thresher's Show at LeRoy Blaker's place near Alvordon...saw Edgar Bergen too......think it was the 1947 show....I'm kinda proud of that.....I'm the kid kneeling on the water tank on Le Roy's 32 HP Port Huron in the panorama picture taken then...I was a world whippin' 13. Not a lot of us left that were in that picture I 'spose.

I "aced" it,......but then being 77 years old and a sort of "car freak" all my life, it figures. Like OBG I've had a lot of those models...and wanted or knew people who had most of the others. Cars of that era may have been more than a little "excessive" but they sure were colorful. That helps me remember them. The new models generally look pretty drab to me in comparison....and I just don't care much for most of them.....you set too low and the beltline is too high. I "fall" into most of them and have to "climb" to get out.

Boy, that Mogul and front end loader is something else! What a contraption! It looks like it's about 2 chugs and a few clicks short of being darned good and stuck in that first picture. Wouldn't that make a video...and then some? Man, these old pictures you guys put on here are just terrific, Thank You!

It's a corn husker/shredder....Gosh , I just don't know about you westerners...heh, heh.

Nice scene there Darryn, the 300 sounds pretty comfortable running that separator. Beautiful flat country you've got there. Whoever held the camera did a good job, nice steady hands. Was it Cameron? Just kidding...probably Melissa. Hope everything is going good for y'all. All the Best, Duke

The Edsel is a 1960, according to books I got and my failing memory they were only made in 3 model years...1958, 1959, and 1960. The '60's look a lot like Fords of that year. The '58 was "all it's own", the '59 got kinda "Fordy" (lighter and cheaper) and the '60 was pretty much a Ford under the chrome trim. (No more womb nosed grill). My Grandpa McCormick (my Mom's step-dad) was a strictly a "breathing horsepower" farmer. he was just a little guy about 5'5" and 125-130 lbs. but he could manage 4 big Percherons pulling either a 2-12 John Deere "gang" riding plow or a single bottom JD sulky plow. He never used a walking plow, said he "Just couldn't keep up with any team he ever had walking", even had a sulky he pulled behind his springtooth. He had cultipacker, disk and John Deere 999 corn planter with seats, "McDeering' grain and corn binders and stood on the foot boards of his Oliver Superior grain drill. He did it all...usta use Grandma to drive the team while he loaded hay with a McCormick-Deering hay loader on his nice rubber-tired '28 Chevy axled flat rack wagon. He'd do 2 big loads a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Always milked 6-8 Guernseys with a McCormick-Deering milker and Grandma seperated all the milk right in the kitchen with the McCormick-Deering cream seperator in there... and cooled the cream in the well-house next to the house and fed the skim milk to his Durocs. My Dad usta say "Watch how he drives his car and you can see why he never got a tractor".