twostepn2001

A friend sent me pics this morning. Started on Monday cutting sesame seeds. He does quite a bit of custom combining and cotton stripping. He bought the black Pete several years ago The he got the silver and black Pete this past summer. His brother started cotton stripping on Tuesday. lt's a JD CS 690, makes the round bale or module. They have a trailer that they pull with Silver Pete that will haul 10 of the cotton bales to the gin. ln this particular field,the rows are planted on 40 inch centers with 80 inch skip rows. Different widths row skips makes for some odd looking configurations on the strippers.

Found this pic of some windmills in the Texas panhandle near Spearman. Collection belonged to a man that had been collecting windmills since the early '50's. lf you can zoom in close enough, you can see him kneeling on the platform of the windmill second from the left. They say he did all the maintenance on them well into his 90's and until his death at age 94.

lf l squint my eyes a little, l can almost see my Dad in this pic. The 806 LP, model #30 cotton stripper, the old scruched up straw hat. l have to give credit for this advertising pic to Brady boy and sharing it with me several years ago.

Gary, last week during all the Halloween "scary movie" week, l watched a movie about Sarah Winchester, the widow of William Winchester,founder of Winchester Repeating Arms. lt was more fiction than fact, but it did show a catalog with all the Winchester rifles and......Winchester roller skates...lol l didn't know anything about the hand tools and knives which shows how much you can learn here!!

ln one of the FB groups l'm in is about the history of the Texas county l was born in. Back in the 1880's when it was first formed, the county seat was a small town named Emma. ln the 1930's the county seat was moved to Crosbyton, Texas. After the last cotton gin shut down there in the 1950's, Emma became a ghost town. But here is a ad from the Emma newspaper dated 1-25-1929 for the IH dealer. l think it's kind of neat that it was also a hardware store.

The reason behind the 7 row lister was to make the ridges or "hills' between the rows. Then later when planting, they used a a 6 row "buster" planter. back then, the row spacing was on 40 inch centers. Now days, most cotton is planted on 30 in. centers but some are experimenting with 80 in. centers. l'm sure there are other reasons, but the main one l've heard is the savings of irrigation water on 80 in. rows. like Steve C. said, the reason for double markers was one for the front wheel and one looking down the hood. When listing, my Dad liked to stand up and steer the tractor. Said he could make straight rows that way. And there was some people that used a narrow front tractor to list with so the reason for the center marker furrow. ln 1959, my dad and another man invented the front mounted lister markers. The reasoning behind that was they could get straighter marker furrows by mounting them on the tractor frame instead of on the lister itself and getting the side draft of being mounted on the lister. Here are a couple of pics l drew several years ago to show what it looked like.

This 806 LP with a 6 row cotton planter was the very first 806 on the south plains of Texas. My Dad got the second one a few days later. This is a 806D pulling a 7 row lister near Hermleigh, Texas in 1966.

My nephew is part owner-manager of the second largest gin in Texas. He told me several years ago that there are two main reasons for module fires. Friction or static electricity from high winds. Or a faulty bearing on a stripper or picker. The cotton may be burning or smoldering but nobody notices it and it gets into a module. And a module can burn internally for several days before anyone notices.

l took this pic about 15 years ago at a gin near Lamesa, Texas. They lost nearly 100 modules before it was all finished. Consensus was that high winds started the fire (friction of the wind blowing against the cotton) and then helped it spread. Took almost two weeks for it to finally be put out.

Been there done that!! A cousin from OKC and his mom (Dad's sister) came out for a few days during Thanksgiving. At first we just played catch with the cotton bolls but then it escalated into all out combat. l thought l had won till we got back to the house and Dad found out about it. Turned out me and my cousin both lost that battle...lol

Fifty years ago........ Just recently found.....

The only example of the XC-99 was put into service and made its first operational flight in July 1950. It was used as part of Operation Elephant in which it broke a record by transporting 101,266 lb of cargo, a majority of which included engine parts and propellers for the B-36, from San Diego to Kelly Air Force Base in Texas. The XC-99 would go on to break its own record in August 1953 when it transported 104,000 lb worth of cargo from Kindley Air Force Base in Bermuda to Rhein-Main Air Force base in Germany via the Azores islands. The unusual design features of the XC-99 prompted many public spectators to turn out to watch it during the journey.

few days ago, OBG posted a pic of a Moline Universal tractor that was like the one that Anson "Delta Dirt" had. Here are some pics from the Fiber Max Center Museum in Lubbock, Texas. lt is mostly the history of cotton grown on the high plains of Texas but have a lot of other things too. They have restored this one. l have no idea what kind of tractor this is but l bet that somebody here knows. Here is a chuck wagon from the Swenson ranch near Aspermont, Texas. They even have a Grumman Ag Cat spray plane hanging from the ceiling. The next pics are for Gary...lol Here are some cotton strippers waiting to be restored. This is one of the tractors that was in the tractorcade to Washington D.C. in 1979. This another tractor that was in the same tractorcade. This a set of cotton scales. They were used in field to weigh cotton sacks during picking,also used in the gins and compresses to weigh the finished cotton bales. And of course l have to add a pic of a old truck for Gary and Roger!! Cant forget sledgehammer either so here are some pics of old tools and anvils. These are some old gin stands. They are what actually separate the seed from the fiber. Those signs on the wall were hung on just about every gin in the country advertising what kind of ginning system they had. For the toy collectors among us, they a really big collection of all colors and brands.

At least Lead Belly said it right and called them "bolls" instead of balls.

That pic of the Allis-Chalmers with the planter and go-devil was taken in 1939 by depression era photographer Russell Lee at a farm near Ralls in Crosby county, Texas. Which by the way is where l was born. But not anywhere close to that time frame!!! lol l have this pic in my "cotton files" too. Not much info about it except it says "A salesman demonstrating a cotton harvester at a farm in Crosby county, Texas in 1929". lt don't say anything about what kind of machine it is or who built it. That cotton harvester you posted was called a "sled". They pulled over the cotton and it went between those fingers and was completely stripped, open bolls along with non open bolls and leaves and bark off the plant. Here is a pic of how they used them. Pulled by mules, then the "baskets" just dumped the cotton on the ground. Then crews with pitchforks and wagons came along and picked the cotton off the ground and pitched it into the wagons.