The Rusty Iron business is a little slow this week, so I’ll play Scott Shalaway and tell you a nature tale that I call (with apologies to Steven Spielberg), A Close Encounter of the Striped Kind. Nuisance For a couple of weeks, something has been digging up Nancy’s flower bulbs at the front of the [...]
I’ll continue the story of my Korean experience, and try to work in some references to Rusty Iron, although rust was just as thoroughly despised by the Army brass as dirt. I left for the Far East about the end of October, 1953, and had my very first airplane ride from Pittsburgh to Chicago, where [...]
Ten years ago Farm and Dairy published a couple of my columns about my experiences in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. I’d like to rerun them (slightly revised) in honor of the veterans of that struggle, as well as the veterans of all our wars and especially, the men and women serving in [...]
How many readers have heard of the MacDonald car that was built in nearby Garfield, Ohio? For that matter, how many have heard of Garfield (not Garfield Heights), Ohio? Garfield is a tiny community of about twenty homes and a busy feed mill along Ohio State Route 534, right along the Norfolk Southern railroad a [...]
During the 1800s and early 1900s, many American farmers were extremely conservative and disliked innovation and the unconventional. This was especially true when the first automobiles appeared on country roads about 1900. The first cars were bought by more or less affluent individuals who mainly lived in towns and cities and who headed for the [...]
Erma Dickey Wonstetler was appointed assistant Postmaster of the tiny U.S. Post Office in Signal, Ohio, in 1906, at the same time as her father, Jefferson John Dickey was appointed Postmaster. She served as his assistant until he retired in 1940, and then succeeded him. Typical day. The Post Office served about 200 customers and [...]
Someone recently asked me why some horse drawn plows throw the furrow to the left, while others (most in fact) throw them to the right. The answer is that it’s strictly a matter of preference, custom, and prejudice. The right-hand plow is well-rooted in history. Illustrations of seventeenth century English plows show that they all [...]
Wilbur George, a friend from near Carrollton, told me he had an old, wooden grain drill that he had bought some years ago at the Rogers sale and used every year to plant a couple of acres of oats for his horses. Local dealer? The stenciling on the hoe-type drill reads, “Missouri Force Feed Grain [...]
As everybody knows, there were many, many manufacturers who tried their hand at building tractors back when the world was young. Most of these didn’t last long; their early demise was caused by competition, poor design, lack of reliability, high cost, lack of working capital or bad economic times. Republic Many of the early automobile [...]
As some of you may have gathered, I have an extensive collection of old farm magazines from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. I like to read through these from time to time, and sometimes I pass along some of what I find interesting. In the March 1940 issue of the Farm Journal and Farmer’s Wife [...]
