This old barn was slipping badly in April and the owners let it be known that they were going to tear it down. Last week they put it on the ground, and they burned it a few days ago.
The very nice pin oak on the other side of the remains was only about twenty feet from the fire, and it is now 'well done.' They will probably call me to ask for shade tree advice. Oh Well, or words to that effect.
Every summer I get calls from homeowners with dying trees hoping for an answer and a miracle. More often than not, the problem is due to construction damage to the trees which occurred five to fifteen years before the owners noticed a problem. In this first picture you can see that several inches of soil have been moved. Those few inches were home to a large portion of the root systems for the trees on this home site.
This tree happens to be on the edge of the property, and it was sorely wounded by the earth moving.
Here you can see the dead top of the tree. All you can do now is take it down and replace it with a new tree.
As I inspect trees in these altered sites I see lots of oozy places which are manifestations of various root rots which infected the trees when the wounding occurred. You can also see exit holes from borers which thrive on these compromised trees.
Here is an important skill to have if you drive on gravel as much as we do. Gravel gives you lots of flat tires, usually from old nails that are lurking on the surface. I have found that if I hold my speed under 40 MPH I have fewer flats; over 40, one of the rear tires will take a hit on a weekly basis. That is why I tend to putt along like an old man.
Pull the nail out of the hole with pliers or Vise Grips, use the probe from your plugging kit to make sure the hole is open all the way through. Thread a plug into the applicator tool, push and wiggle the plug into place, pull the applicator out, and air up your tire. You can plug a tire without removing it from the car if you can spot the nail and remove it. You can also plug the tire while it still has air in it, if you notice it getting low as you drive.
Go to a tire shop and have the tire patched properly as soon as possible. Tire plugs are great to get you going again, but they can cause air to go between the layers in your tire, delaminating them. In the slide show above, this tire was worn out, but was needed as a spare until we could get to town for a new pair on the rear axle.
You have probably heard Helen Kane perform this song; it is one of her classics. This is a very nice dance band version of the song presented by KSPM01. It will help you get through Monday morning. Be sure to click on the link and read the extensive notes about this record.
Here is a neat gadget that every Ford mechanic needed in his shop in the Good Old Days. I will put the answer in Comments.
William Seyb and Dallas Kerr showed this Wood Brothers engine at Midwest Old Threshers forty years ago. William and Dallas are no longer with us, but you can still see this engine operate at Mt. Pleasant every Labor Day weekend.This week's Crank Up is a comedy double of Harry Lauder and Billy Murray. Harry is having a grand time before heading home after an evening with his drinking buddies, and though it sounds like a lot of fun I am afraid I would have to think about my head in the morning. Maybe I 'guess and fear' too much. A Wee Deoch And Doris was recorded on October 18, 1911.
Mr. Murray offers some good advice in his Vaudeville presentation, but he has me worried about the poor guy who got his whiskers trapped in the street car cable. Billy recorded this obscure classic on July 15, 1907.
'Turn On The Heat' is one of many great songs form the early talkie, 'Sunny Side Up.' FuzzBear posted this version of the song on You Tube, and it is played on his Orthophonic machine. You should look up the movie if you have never seen it. The scene featuring this song is really quite incredible, and the movie is a real 'Upper.'
I went out behind the barn a few nights ago to try the July E-Postal Target, and with careful aiming I used nearly ninety shots to make my points. A perfect score would be eight shots. I went out back again tonight and used different tactics. I snapped off six rounds as quickly as I could at the area of the target I wanted to hit, checked the target, reloaded, and shot again. I made the points I needed with seventy-two shots, and that is enough improvement that I have sent this one off for scoring.
GSC, one of our regular visitors has graciously shared some of his family photos from the Oxnard, California area around 1930. These are great glimpses of farm mechanization. The first photo is a baler at work. GSC speculates that his grandfather cobbled this up from a stationary baler, and I agree that it is probably a 'conversion' baler. Compare it to the ad from a 1921 Thresherman magazine, and you can see that a power source and platforms for the workers have been added. This vintage of baler required that two people be present just to tie the baling wire around each bale. I wish we could see how the hay was picked up to be fed into the machine.
This is GSC's grandfather; he obviously was a talented tinkerer.
In this photo we see four wagons very heavily loaded with sugar beets.
This is a thresher for dry lima beans. Harvesting crops used to require lots of workers with an iron constitution. You worked long days in hot dusty conditions for your pay. Old timers have told me that working on a stationary baler with moldy hay was the very worst job on the farm.
(In this photo the Vise-Grip is putting the retaining ring on. Two Vise-Grips will easily walk this ring either way for you.)
(Lift out your old pump and compare it to your new one. Install the new rubber ring on top of the tank, ease in the new pump, and re-install the retaining ring.)
These old Thresherman magazines are mighty brittle and I fret a bit every time I pull the stack out for one of these posts. This issue has a pretty serious tear, but it still makes a nice picture. I think the engine powering the thresher is a Case, and I wonder what has happened to the operator's platform. Case engines usually had a bunker with a water tank below and coal above. There probably was some kind of mishap that damaged the bunker, but no-one in this scene is available for comment.We have a special project going on in the True Blue studio. Some of the You Tube fans are clamoring (That may be a slight exaggeration.) for more Harry Lauder records. I found six sides of Harry Lauder tonight, so for the next several weeks we will be posting doubles; a Harry Lauder performance and one of our regular Friday night Crank Ups. Tonight's selections are Roamin' In The Gloamin' and Too Much Mustard, which is a Turkey Trot recorded in 1913. I have no idea how you do the Turkey Trot, but it sounds as if you need happy feet for it to work.
Roamin' In The Gloamin' was recorded in 1911 for 10 inch and 12 inch discs. This one is the four minute 12 inch version which includes an amusing narrative.
On a cold, wet February night in 2004, I had to go to my office after hours, and Susan rode along. On the side of the road I saw a couple of eyes in the weeds and stopped, backed up and shined the headlights to discover a very wet kitten. I hopped out to pick it up, and it ran, so I had a brief chase in the mud running it down. As we continued to the office, Susan said, "This cat has a broken leg." That was a downer, but Susan tried to make it better by telling me she would take the cat to the vet in the morning so I wouldn't have to kill it. 
You have seen the flood news from the Midwest, and from what I witnessed on my trip to Iowa, it is worse than even the depressing news organizations can show. Bottomland fields in the Mississippi system aren't going to produce anything this year, and the effects are going to be severe for everyone who has connections to the farm economy.
We are under attack by Japanese beetles in Southern Illinois. They have wiped out our plums and apples, and are also eating cypress, basswood, oak, and pecan leaves. These things even eat elm. I didn't think anything would eat elm. 
From the collection of Rev. Norbert J. Lucht of Athens, IL, the November 1966 issue of Engineers and Engines Magazine displays a very nice old-timey photo of the Good Old Days. Notice the absence of hard hats, and the abundance of whiskers and overalls. These guys did not spend all day hitching their pants up as they worked.
I've been up in Iowa visiting family and I did some looking around and reminiscing while I was there. The Dublin general store was built in 1874, and was used up until 1964. It is leaning north and east, and the foundation rocks have settled in so the siding is down to the ground. There will have to be some major repairs soon if it is to be saved. There is a new tin roof on it, so this old building has friends.
I was surprised to see the old wooden bridge over what used to be the Milwaukee Railroad at Grace Hill. It looks just as good as it did years ago.
The old church at Grace Hill has had a tin roof as long as I can remember, and it has a good foundation. It is still used for a community reunion every year. It is far enough out in the sticks that vandals don't seem to find it.
This old school building east of Grace Hill is losing its roof, so it is a short timer. When I was in high school, the owner used it as a shop where he rebuilt engines. He overhauled a Model T engine for me; that is what he learned on when Model Ts were in common use.
I was surprised to learn from this sign that the Copperhead movement was active in Iowa. A lot of Iowa men fought for the Union. Illinois had lots of Copperheads, but they were concentrated in the southern end of the state.
This old school building is well preserved, and even the shed has been fixed up. The shed was for the teacher to stable her horse, and for storage of firewood or coal.
There are still two outhouses.
It's no wonder this sign is on the door;
NO CATALOG!
Here is a Norway maple that developed a double-stem trunk and a multi-stem top many years ago. The double stem formed a bad joint with included bark, resulting in the tree splitting to the ground. The current owner of this tree has attempted to make it better by tying the two sides together with a chain. Cabling a tree can extend the useful life if it is done right, but the method pictured places pressure on the cambium which will kill it, causing dieback and rot in the stems meant to be saved. Cables need to be anchored with lag bolts designed for this application, or bolts with a washer and nut on the back side of the stem. Cabling should be done only by those with arborist training.
This tree also has a girdling root, and it is choking the stem of the tree, which is evidenced by the fungus beginning to show at the base of the trunk. This was caused by poor planting technique. Potted and burlapped trees need to be inspected before they go in the ground, and all circling roots must either be straightened or cut. I prefer to cut them because it makes the work go much faster.
If you look closely you will see we have some tips dying in the top of the crown. This tree truly is a goner, and it is time to replace it with a new tree. The sad part of this case is that proper planting, and a couple of snips with a pruner thirty years ago would have made this into a sound shade tree. The good news is that there is plenty of room to drop this tree if the owner finds someone who knows how to do directional falling.
Francis Lee Morgan was born at Makanda, IL in 1872. The photo in this post was taken inside the shop, and the little girl (Orpha, my dad's mother) in the lower left was born in 1906, so I am guessing these pictures were snapped around 1910. There is a New Way hit and miss gas engine for powering the lineshaft system near the right side of the picture. I always enjoy looking at old photos like this, and I am always surprised by the details that I didn't notice before.
It is a small gun, but in her little hand it appears full size! She is already able to run through the function and operating drills, and will hit the range this week to break it in. She is as happy as a kid with a new toy.
When we finished the shopping for her new pistol we looked at the Air Soft guns. I have a nephew turning 8 years old in a few days who is showing interest in guns already. I looked at several models and settled on this one to get him started. I will be dropping in on him today and expect to see some smiles.
The featured engine this week is from the pages of Engineers and Engines Magazine, Nov-Dec, 1968. Ray Strappazon provided this nice threshing scene of Vic Heitman's (Manhattan, IL) Port Huron engine and Ray Kestel's Advance Rumely threshing machine.
My best pictures happen when I hand off the camera to someone else. Susan took all of these, and she provided the flowers, too.
