"Today, as I awoke I was carried back in time to a day when thrashers came to our house. I might have been 3 1/2 at the time. Dad took me up on the big steam engine and blew the whistle. I was petrified for a second then screamed as loudly as a small girl can. IT was such a startling shrill, loud noise! While half asleep I thought I heard it again, but it was only a passing train on the Norfolk and Western (one time Wabash) just south of our house about 4 or 5 blocks.
Thrashing always came in early August and meant school would soon begin. We, as children, were excited because the neighboring families always exchanged help. Even the women would help prepare the big meals at each others houses. While we were small we ran errands but always had a chance to play as well. Now we did get together during the summer other wise but thrashing days were the highlight of the summer days for us. I guess we kids realized school would start soon after teh last week of August. We had to make the most of the freedom to run or just enjoy watching clouds drifting by as we dreamed of future fame or fortunes.
In 1929 we were at Arthur Post's (Arthur post was related to Great Aunt Catherine Anspach Post, but not to me) farm when we saw a strange sight. Our woods across from our house was on fire! Well, the thrashers unhitched, took their buckets, mops, brooms and whatever else they thought would help and galloped on horse back down the half mile to the fire. When I say down I mean it was mostly down hill. They managed to get the fire out because there was water in both ponds, not always true in August. It had burned ten acres of wooded area but not all of the woods, by then.
Dad had been burning out an old stump the day before and thought it was all out. However it wasn't and a wind had fanned it into a blaze that caught. Only now fifty years later is the ten acres wooded again. It was not a piece of land suited for any other use. I learned then the real need for care with fire. That was a very unusual thrashing day.
Most Thrashing days would start with the arrival of the thrashing machine hauled in my earliest memory by the steam engine, later by a large John Deer Tractor. Many neighbor men with wagons and horses would come to help bring the grain from the fields where it had been cut and shocked to cure as much as a week before, usually only 3 or 4 days would elapse. Generally thirty or more men would work together to get the big job done in a day or sometimes a day and a half. Always hoping no rain would cause delays and make it difficult to cure the grain. The women would be busy at the old wood
stoves making meat loaf, fresh bread, gallons of coffee, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. Pies had been made the day before and usually were fruit....apple, cherry, mulberry, and elderberry were favorites.
We kids filled pails with water, got towels out, and set up the wash day wash stands with tubs of clean cool water under the tree for the men to clean up in. We were the running water on the farm. We ran for it a lot on thrashing day!
In my last days on the farm the combines had arrived and there might be 6 or 7 extra men with their tractor drawn wagons that came to help. Meals were much the same as cooking a company dinner. The big difference was that these young men, my age, wanted lemonade or milk to drink. Gone now the huge coffee pots. Did we ever drink coffee again? Some of us after we grew older probably did, but not the huge pot fulls of those days gone by. "
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