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Sometimes it just cant be Re:Nice 3490 MM Sells Fo

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farmscrap

05-04-2006 10:17:13




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The scrapping seems to happen in cycles. Back in the 30s my Dad and his brother had amassed a pile of iron and steam tractors and engines of all sorts that covered 10 acres on their Dads Nebraska farm. All the neighbors around thought they were crazy. My Dad told me that they had many steam tractors that run, because they just fired them up and drove them home. It was in the dust bowl days and at the height of the depression. Their farm wasn’t in much better shape and was on the foreclosure list to. But they kept it going by trapping for skins and hunting for food. They started taking in the junk and any metal they could get. The bank heard about them taking the metal and got in touch with to clean the farms that were foreclosed on to get the old stuff of them as even then steamers were obsolete then. They even got a running big old iron wheeled White gasoline truck off one of the farms which they used to haul iron with. If the old steamers didn't run or seemed to be unsafe to fire thy dismantled them and hauled them in pieces on the old White to the thier farm. As the pile got bigger and bigger, all the people around thought they were nuts, as metal was so cheap then it wasn't worth the time cost or trouble to save it.
But after a couple of years of making this pile, metal was going up. Then a guy came thuough and stopped at the local city with a train and he was asking around for any one that had scrap to sell, well the locals quickly pointed to my Dad and his brother,s pile. He bought the whole 10 acres of their engines and the like, he then hired them to haul to the train where it was loaded. Dad said they hauled with the old White and drove the tractors that would run. On the last load they put the old truck on. The guy hired them to go on the train with them to scout and haul scrap all over the midwest both Dad and his brother had a job that paid great wages of $4.00 per day and room and board on the trains living car. Well you know they paid off the old homestead only just before it got taken too and it is still in the family my cousin has it how. By then most of the neighbors had either lost their farms or were going to. What seemed nuts at the time become their savoir. Before my Dad died he always talked about what if they could have saved the steamers. You know what they are worth now. So saving old stuff sometimes just isn't an preservation issue it becomes an economic one. When Dad left the train the old White went to scrap with it.

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